Auto-refreshing preview

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Thanks to your reproducible test case this should now be fixed in master.

Seems to work nicely, thanks!
I'm going to see if I can nail down the frozen "Loading..." overlay. Qt5.15/Qt6 might have something to do with that. Otherwise, I'd expect to be seeing reports of it with the official release (using Qt5.12.9).

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by KevinH

@SilverGreen93



And that is on an i3. My 3 year old i7 laptop (mac) was much faster.

My guess is something you have added on your machine is trying to scan each file being loaded by Sigil and it is really slowing things down.

Are you sure you are using the very very latest Sigil-1.9.30?

Are you by any chance launching Sigil using Calibre's open with?
If so, that is known to interfere with and cause problems for both Sigil and Calibre.

Other than that I am out of ideas.

I will take a look at how much work it would be to temporarily pause updates until a manual reload is done. If easy, I will keep it in mind for a future release (but probably not the next one).

Sorry I can't be more help.

I've even tried it on an under-powered virtual machine that has no hardware acceleration for graphics, and it typically takes less than 2 seconds on any of the book's chapters.

[SilverGreen93]

I did more tests on a Linux Mint machine, the loading times are no longer than 2 seconds for the longest chapter I have.

After playing around with Kasperky and Windows 11 smart screen filter and other protections, I got to a similar timing of about 2 - 2,5 sec.

For sure there is some interference with "smart" something technologies. Will play around more in the future to see if I can pinpoint the exact culprit. Maybe I will install a Windows 11 VM to compare the results when I will have time.

@KevinH, if you can add the feature in the future, I am sure it will come in handy sometimes, as the manual refresh button is already there and will get used. But take your time, I can manage until then.

Thanks for your replies guys!

[User_Z]

Originally Posted by Vanguard3000

I've also noticed in the last few versions that the preview doesn't always update when switching text files if I switch them quickly. For example, if Sigil opens to cover.htm, and I immediately switch to ch01.htm, the preview will continue to show the cover until I hit refresh or make a change that would trigger the refresh.

I confirm the freeze of the preview window.

Such things began to happen after installing version 2.0.0 and then 2.0.1

Hangups are observed quite rarely and with completely different actions in the program. Especially often this manifests itself in the absence of a cover image when opening a file in an editor. In other circumstances, some text and image artifacts remain in the preview window.

To get out of this situation, you need to do some action: click the "Update" button, open another file and return to the previous tab, edit the text...

See the screenshot for an example of this behavior:

[KevinH]

Again not seeing this at all since the previous fix was in place. And not at all in Sigil-2.X series.

Please post a reproducible test case or exact sequence of events I can use to reproduce the issue.

[DiapDealer]

This bug report was pre-Sigil 2.0. And the split at cursor disconnect was fixed. I've seen nothing similar to it (myself, or reported) since.

[KevinH]

Just tried repeatedly by rapidly opening chapters as fast as I can for up to 5 minutes of total time with no issues whatsoever.

My guess is this is anti-virus or defender software checking each file you open and interfering with Sigil.

[User_Z]

I clearly wrote - it is very rare.
Most often when opening a file.

Other users may not show up.

Here I recorded a video for you: opening a file.
Reproduce.

[KevinH]

Sorry I have no way to unpack rar files. Can you just zip them?

By "opening a file" do you mean using BookBrowser to open a new file that was not previously opened in a Tab. Or are you referring to opening a new epub and trying to change the current file while it is being loaded.

If rare, why do think they are not specific to your system? Have you tried ruing out other things first. Specifically anything anti-virus related.

[User_Z]

Originally Posted by KevinH

By "opening a file" do you mean using BookBrowser to open a new file that was not previously opened in a Tab. Or are you referring to opening a new epub and trying to change the current file while it is being loaded.

If rare, why do think they are not specific to your system? Have you tried ruing out other things first. Specifically anything anti-virus related.

Start Sigil - Open the file through the "File" menu.

I don't use any antivirus. Standard system settings - by default. Additionally, unnecessary services are disabled.

Prior to installing new versions (2.0.0 and 2.0.1), there were no such hangs.
When installing new versions of the editor, no interference with the system settings or installation of other programs was carried out.

[KevinH]

So this only happens with Qt6 (Sigil 2.0.x) and not earlier versions. Interesting.

The only change in this area in actual Sigil code was the fix made for updating Preview after a split and that one line change really should not be causing any issues.

Do the epubs in question have very large initial files or very elaborate images? Anything unusual at all? Something that might hint as to how to recreate this issue ...

You are not by chance housing your Sigil Preferences folder or home folder on a networked drive?

[User_Z]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Do the epubs in question have very large initial files or very elaborate images? Anything unusual at all? Something that might hint as to how to recreate this issue ...

You are not by chance housing your Sigil Preferences folder or home folder on a networked drive?

No, I don't think they do. Everything is quite simple there.

One system disk and that SSD.

I can throw off the file that is in the video.

[KevinH]

Unfortunately, even with your test case in use, I have now opened manually using the File menu over 100 different test epubs all with cover images and never once saw anything that left Preview blank.

The problem is MacOS uses multiple Main Windows so we are always starting with a new main window and epub fresh. There is no need to forget the old epub. One of my stress tests is to try to run out of memory by opening so many instances of MainWindows using an Applescript and dragging and dropping a whole bunch of test epubs on it.


They all properly opened up and preview is always shown. So your bug is either Windows specific, or so rare that even 100 attempts in a row with a variety of books never shows anything, or it is caused by something specific to your system.

So perhaps other Windows user can try with your test epub repeatedly opening and replacing (unlike macOS) to see if they can recreate the issue.

If we can recreate it, we should be able to track it down and get it fixed.

[DiapDealer]

I recommend exempting the Sigil preferences directory (and subdirectories) from any active anti-malware scanning.

%LOCALAPPDATA%\sigil-ebook\sigil\

If you've moved Sigil's preferences folder (via environment variable), and/or temporary work area--especially to a folder that is protected by Windows' Controlled Folder Access security feature--consider reverting to Sigil defaults. The defaults will not use any folders that are protected by Controlled Folder Access (unless you've customized Controlled Folder Access)

I just turn Controlled Folder Access of to be quite frank, but I'm not going to advise others to follow my lead on that.