Sigil-0.9.12 Released

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

EDIT: I worked with a clean installation of Sigil.

Try it with four fresh INI files in the preferences folder. Make a good backup of the current ones, and then delete the ones in Sigil's preference folder and see how Sigil runs. If it seems more behaved, try manually copying info from your old INIs a bit at a time back into the new ones.

In this way, you may be able to help find which portions of the Sigil.ini (or other INIs) might be problematic. We've already had some evidence that there's sometimes been a bit of corruption in the INI files that is causing some issues. We've also had at least one report that fresh INIs have solved performance problems.

It's important to understand that once your INI files are problem-free, you mustn't let any version of Sigil older than 0.9.11 modify those files. As mentioned in the 0.9.11 thread (yellow warning icon) in the Sticky section at the top of the forum. You need good backups of pre-0.9.11 INIs if you need to roll back to versions of Sigil older than 0.9.11.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by KevinH

So far, at least on mac, things appear to be reasonably stable in memory. If anyone has access to valgrind and could use it to check under Linux that would be usefull.

I have valgrind installed and have used it to run Sigil, but I'm afraid I'm hopeless about the options needing to be specified, or being able to decipher the onslaught of info that gets dumped to STDIN from valgrind.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Try it with four fresh INI files in the preferences folder. Make a good backup of the current ones, and then delete the ones in Sigil's preference folder and see how Sigil runs. If it seems more behaved, try manually copying info from your old INIs a bit at a time back into the new ones.

Hi Diap;

I did what you said and still I have issues. But this time I did something that many of here (with Windows 7 x64) can reproduce. I did the following:

1. After erasing all .ini files, I started Sigil and I changed some things in Preferences (language, dictionaries, type of letters). I closed and started again the program.

2. With a reported memory used of 120MB, I loaded the .epub "Three men in a boat" that I downloaded from this forum.

3. I opened the toc.xhtml tab and I closed the cover.xhtml tab. So, the only tab open was toc.xhtml. At this time, the memory used was 131MB.

4. From here, I started to do click in each link of the toc in Preview pane. But I did it of the following way: I did click in the link "PUBLISHER'S ADVERTISEMENT" and once the tab was opened, I closed immeditely so the only tab open was toc.xhtml.

5. I continued doing the same with all others tab, by clicking in the respective link in toc.

6. At the end, with the only open tab "toc.xhtml" and after doing nothing in the epub (just clicking in links) the reported memory that was being used was 320MB.

So, the memory used by Sigil changed from 131MB to 320MB after doing nothing. Sigil is retaining something in memory, but what?

[DiapDealer]

As Kevin already mentioned on the previous page, you're reading too much into those memory numbers (extremely low numbers, by the way) in the Task Manager. And the idea that Sigil's memory usage changed after doing "nothing" is not really accurate. You opened tabs, which in turn cached resources that closing the tabs will not (and should not) automatically "uncache" That's not how it works.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

I did what you said and still I have issues.

What are those issues (aside from your concerns over memory increases measured in 100s of MBs)?

If there are still major performance issues after a clean install with no saved preferences at all (and by major, I mean seeing "Not Responding" messages), then we need to start looking at issues with particular video drivers and other installed software. The fact of the matter is: there are lots people using the latest Sigil on Windows 10 and Windows 7 who are not experiencing any of these major performance issues. The number of those who are (and have reported them) is extremely low. This suggests that the issue does not lie with Sigil per se, but perhaps with issues that Sigil's new version of Qt has with particular hardware drivers or software on the machines that are having difficulty.

[brent63]

So far so good with 9.12. I have been using it last night and this morning and have had no issues.

Does anyone else have Languagetool as a plugin?

Brent

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by brent63

So far so good with 9.12. I have been using it last night and this morning and have had no issues.

Glad to hear it!

Originally Posted by brent63

Does anyone else have Languagetool as a plugin?

Probably best to talk about the LanguageTool plugin in its own dedicated thread in the Plugins subforum.

[Mister L]

Hello, thanks again to the Sigil team for all your hard work.

Unfortunately I've had some problems with version 0.9.11 and 12 and had to revert back to 0.9.10 with a clean install (thanks for the warning about backing up the preferences by the way, I would have been really upset to lose all my clips and saved searches). I see I'm not the only one here from a quick scan of this thread so I thought I would signal it for information.

After installing the latest version (first 11 then 12 in hopes that would resolve the issue) Sigil became very slow and crashy / unresponsive. When I tried to launch it the memory and CPU would spike showing Sigil as the culprit in the tasks manager BUT it would not open a Sigil window at all until I launched it again. Then, 2 instances would show in the task manager, but only one window would open. While working, if I left it idle for a minute or two while doing something else (in a different app, so focus off Sigil), when I went back to it, it was frozen (unresponsive). When I tried to shut down the app, it would systematically freeze too, every single time. The task manager showed very high CPU (up to 100%) and memory use along with it. There didn't seem to be any other conflicts.

I'm running Windows 8.1, let me know what other info you might need.

I'll try a clean reinstall of 0.9.12 next week hopefully and see whether that resolves the issues, I really hope it does. I don't have time to trouble shoot this week because I have a project to finish, but I wanted to report it anyway.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Mister L

I'll try a clean reinstall of 0.9.12 next week hopefully and see whether that resolves the issues, I really hope it does. I don't have time to trouble shoot this week because I have a project to finish, but I wanted to report it anyway.

That would be the first thing I'd want you to try anyway. Clean install/clean prefs. And keep your good pre-0.9.11 back-ups! I fear that INI corruption (as a side-effect of the utf-8 conversion) is the main culprit, here on Windows.

[Mister L]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

That would be the first thing I'd want you to try anyway. Clean install/clean prefs. And keep your good pre-0.9.11 back-ups! I fear that INI corruption (as a side-effect of the utf-8 conversion) is the main culprit, here on Windows.

Okay I will try that as soon as I have some free time and let you know if it goes well (fingers crossed). If INI corruption is the culprit, does that mean I won't be able to re-import my current prefs in the clean install? (Sorry if you've adressed this already, as I said I'm working on a big project and didn't have time to read every post, just skimmed the thread). If that's the case I'm not sure I want to give it a try, I really use clips and saved searches all the time and it would be a problem to lose them. Is it possible to install 12 in a separate folder to keep both versions, or would there be conflicts somewhere?

No worries about my prefs, they are backed up in the same folder with the sigil install .exes on a different drive to the system (and now I'm thinking I might make a second backup in the cloud), I will definitely keep them safe. But please do always remind us to make a new backup if it's necessary when updating; I had a backup already but it was pretty old, I would have lost some very useful things so I definitely appreciate the alert. I'll try to do that routinely before every upgrade but a reminder is good.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Mister L

If INI corruption is the culprit, does that mean I won't be able to re-import my current prefs in the clean install? (Sorry if you've adressed this already, as I said I'm working on a big project and didn't have time to read every post, just skimmed the thread). If that's the case I'm not sure I want to give it a try, I really use clips and saved searches all the time and it would be a problem to lose them.

Cross that bridge when we come to it. As long as you keep those pre-0.9.11 backups, you should be golden. If 0.9.12 still gives you trouble after a clean install with all 4 INI files deleted from the preferences folder, then INI file corruption isn't the primary suspect. Revert back to 0.9.10 and restore your backed up INI files.

If fresh, empty INI files DOES seem to solve the problem, then we'll probably need to work out a way for you to get me copies of your backed up, pre-0.9.11 INI files. That will help me narrow down which portions are prone to being corrupted when moving to 0.9.11+ (I should also be able to manually upgrade the ini files without losing any data).

Originally Posted by Mister L

Is it possible to install 12 in a separate folder to keep both versions, or would there be conflicts somewhere?

It's possible, yes. But a little complicated on Windows. Especially newer versions where they make it more and more difficult for the average user to create/change environment variables.

You can easily specify a different location to install Sigil, but all versions on the same machine will still share the same preference files. One version of Sigil would need to be launched via a batch or cmd file that sets an environment variable which tells Sigil to look for its preferences somewhere else.

[Mister L]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Cross that bridge when we come to it. As long as you keep those pre-0.9.11 backups, you should be golden. If 0.9.12 still gives you trouble after a clean install with all 4 INI files deleted from the preferences folder, then INI file corruption isn't the primary suspect. Revert back to 0.9.10 and restore your backed up INI files.

If fresh, empty INI files DOES seem to solve the problem, then we'll probably need to work out a way for you to get me copies of your backed up, pre-0.9.11 INI files. That will help me narrow down which portions are prone to being corrupted when moving to 0.9.11+ (I should also be able to manually upgrade the ini files without losing any data).

Okay I'll do that then and if worst comes to worst I'll send you my INI files for debugging aid and conversion if you can (and a huge thank you for that).

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

You can easily specify a different location to install Sigil, but all versions on the same machine will still share the same preference files. One version of Sigil would need to be launched via a batch or cmd file that sets an environment variable which tells Sigil to look for its preferences somewhere else.

Yes that's exactly the sort of conflict I was wondering about. Okay good to know. I'm not sure how complicated that is but it sounds more complicated than would be practical for daily use. I'll keep you posted as soon as I've gotten to the clean install of 12.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

It's possible, yes. But a little complicated on Windows. Especially newer versions where they make it more and more difficult for the average user to create/change environment variables.

When did 'they' ever make the editing of environment variables easy

FWIW I use the Rapid Environment Editor freebie, works fine on Windows 10 1809.

Where is Sigil's use of environment variables documented, I didn't find anything in the doco on a search for 'environment', I tried 'path' too.

I found a couple of individual items in the release notes - SIGIL_DISABLE_CURSOR_BLINK and SIGIL_ICON_SCALE_FACTOR.

And Preferences ->General has <SIGIL_DEFAULT_TEMP_HOME> in Set Folder where temporary files should be created, which suggests an environment variable.

BR

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

When did 'they' ever make the editing of environment variables easy

FWIW I use the Rapid Environment Editor freebie, works fine on Windows 10 1809.

Where is Sigil's use of environment variables documented, I didn't find anything in the doco on a search for 'environment', I tried 'path' too. I did find a couple of individual items in the release notes - SIGIL_DISABLE_CURSOR_BLINK and SIGIL_ICON_SCALE_FACTOR.

BR

Hmmm... you would think I would take the time to document it somewhere after people asked for it and everything, huh?

It's SIGIL_PREFS_DIR
Make sure you've got a good backup of your working prefs if you're going to experiment.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Hmmm... you would think I would take the time to document it somewhere after people asked for it and everything, huh?

It's SIGIL_PREFS_DIR
Make sure you've got a good backup of your working prefs if you're going to experiment.

Added: Should SIGIL_PREFS_DIR relocate the sigil-ebook or the sigil-ebook\sigil directory?

I suggest a locked Sticky Thread at MR - Sigil Essentials. Somewhere to put the little things - env-vars, command line options, pre-requisites etc.

BR