[Closed] Please help beta test calibre 7

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DrChiper

Yes, today I upgraded my system to Win 11 Pro 23H2, got the very latest display drivers, migrated calibre from 6.29.0 to 7.1.0 and noticed immediately (after the splash screen) the white box issue (see screen shot). I assume it is Qt related, but might also be a case of too quickly enabling the showing of the main canvas before the window initialization is quite finished.

That is normal and not a problem with your system.

[kovidgoyal]

No the db is fully loaded and all UI elements are ready before the window is made visible. That's the whole reason there is a splash screen. You can see the sequence of events by running calibre as calibre-debug -g

This thing is some Qt issue in the new Qt version. It's actually much worse when using remote desktop in some scenarios there the UI actually gets stuck with the white window, the UI is actually functional you can click on things and they work, but all you see is the white window. Definitely a Qt issue.

[Quoth]

I just updated the calibre on my Win 10 VM to 7.1 and despite being a rather slow Win10 (Pro v21H2), the Black box with white box only appeared very briefly. It's a licenced, registered copy.

VirtualBox 6.1 on Linux Mint 21.2 (Mate Desktop on 4K 23″ screen)
Virtual display is 1600 x 1200 (always preferred that to 1920x1080 and had it on 2002 Laptop) 1:1 pixels on real screen.

Device name DESKTOP-CIG2EIF
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700 CPU @ 3.40GHz 3.41 GHz
Installed RAM 8.00 GB
Device ID <cut>
Product ID <cut>
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch No pen or touch input is available for this display

Edition Windows 10 Pro
Version 21H2
Installed on ‎22/‎07/‎2022
OS build 19044.2604
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.4190.0

Real PC is a modified Dell 7050 with 16 RAM, 500 G Byte PCIe SSD and 4T Byte SATA 3.5" HDD on a UPS, so it's as "safe" to use a laptop. Power glitches too common. The VMs are stored on HDD in my "home" directory so they get backed up with regular user file rsync to server, and thence to laptop (which has 500G PCIe SSD and 2T 2.5" SATA. I only use the laptop if going to a relative's house long enough.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

This thing is some Qt issue in the new Qt version. It's actually much worse when using remote desktop in some scenarios there the UI actually gets stuck with the white window, the UI is actually functional you can click on things and they work, but all you see is the white window. Definitely a Qt issue.

I've had an occasional similar Qt issue in previous versions, though not on remote desktop. Sometimes I'd open up a dialog (like Edit Metadata) and if it was partially off-screen, that part would be white when I pulled it back on-screen. Moving the cursor around would 'paint' elements and make them visible. Shaking the dialog (by dragging it around violently) usually fixed it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

No the db is fully loaded and all UI elements are ready before the window is made visible. That's the whole reason there is a splash screen. You can see the sequence of events by running calibre as calibre-debug -g

This thing is some Qt issue in the new Qt version. It's actually much worse when using remote desktop in some scenarios there the UI actually gets stuck with the white window, the UI is actually functional you can click on things and they work, but all you see is the white window. Definitely a Qt issue.

Could you connect to another computer, run calibre, disconnect, wait a bit and then reconnect and have calibre work?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by DrChiper

That is expected as Linux is much faster then Windows: it might also be present there, but us mere mortals are unable to see it.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but on my hardware, Windows 11 starts up calibre in 2.14 seconds while Linux (Tumbleweed rolling release) takes 2.45 seconds. The Windows install has a couple of extra plugins but the libraries are the same.

[Quoth]

9s first time
about 2 to 3 s on subsequent times.

I'd argue that W11 and Linux are a lot different and it's pretty meaningless to claim one is faster than the other. Both current Linux and Win 11 are very much slower than say XP or a 2005 Linux. And Win 3.x starts in DOSBox in seconds.

[capink]

Since we are talking about speeds, has anyone noticed any speed or performance gains with calibre 7+ compared to previous versions? Calibre 7 comes with python 3.11, which is touted to be faster by some margin compared to earlier python versions, thanks to work contributed by Microsoft.

I have not done any benchmarks, but I am struggling to see any noticeable difference.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by capink

Since we are talking about speeds, has anyone noticed any speed or performance gains with calibre 7+ compared to previous versions? Calibre 7 comes with python 3.11, which is touted to be faster by some margin compared to earlier python versions, thanks to work contributed by Microsoft.

I have not done any benchmarks, but I am struggling to see any noticeable difference.

Seems about the same to me as calibre 6

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by capink

Since we are talking about speeds, has anyone noticed any speed or performance gains with calibre 7+ compared to previous versions? Calibre 7 comes with python 3.11, which is touted to be faster by some margin compared to earlier python versions, thanks to work contributed by Microsoft.

I have not done any benchmarks, but I am struggling to see any noticeable difference.

I was about to mention this. I have noticed consistently faster startup times comparing to 6, using a 'calibre-debug -g' log script.

But I'd guess this is really hard to benchmark, given the differences between library structures and size.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by capink

Since we are talking about speeds, has anyone noticed any speed or performance gains with calibre 7+ compared to previous versions?

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Seems about the same to me as calibre 6

Originally Posted by capink

Calibre 7 comes with python 3.11, which is touted to be faster by some margin compared to earlier python versions, thanks to work contributed by Microsoft.

I have noticed a significant improvement in the load times for MS Office 365 applications over the past couple of years… particularly Word.

Even more interesting is that the performance of some add-ins (e.g. ePub Tools) has improved markedly… even though they haven't been updated. IMO, that they still work is in itself remarkable, but that they work better is astonishing. Toxaris' ePUB Tools Dialogue Checker used to routinely wedge on books with lots of dialogue, now it doesn't… the Create date for the MSI installer is 2018-09-11 15:59:42.

Is MS is re-writing Office in Python?

BR

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by capink

Since we are talking about speeds, has anyone noticed any speed or performance gains with calibre 7+ compared to previous versions? Calibre 7 comes with python 3.11, which is touted to be faster by some margin compared to earlier python versions, thanks to work contributed by Microsoft.

I have not done any benchmarks, but I am struggling to see any noticeable difference.

I don't see any difference. Likely the overhead of Python vs all the rest of it isn't big enough and the improved speed too small an increment unless it's a massive python taking ages to return anyway. What's that slithering I hear in the jungle coming this way?

[kovidgoyal]

I was hopeful about python 3.11 providing a performance boost but I failed to detect one, in my testing. It is anyway a pretty small boost something on the order of 10-20% in artificial benchmarks, I doubt that would translate to more than 5% on a real world workload.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I have noticed a significant improvement in the load times for MS Office 365 applications over the past couple of years… particularly Word.

Even more interesting is that the performance of some add-ins (e.g. ePub Tools) has improved markedly… even though they haven't been updated. IMO, that they still work is in itself remarkable, but that they work better is astonishing. Toxaris' ePUB Tools Dialogue Checker used to routinely wedge on books with lots of dialogue, now it doesn't… the Create date for the MSI installer is 2018-09-11 15:59:42.

Is MS is re-writing Office in Python?

BR

Maybe some Windows Update did it.

[capink]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Is MS is re-writing Office in Python?

Microsoft office is probably written in C/C++, so re-writing it in python would make it slower, no matter what improvements they make to python.

But seeing that python has a strong foothold in data analysis, they are integrating it with office more and more to leverage its capabilities and libraries, which is good move for both.

Hopefully we will reach a point where we can write macros using python, which might actually make me switch back to Windows, something I am starting to think about more lately since I am hearing good things about wsl.