Issue with text entry

Thanks @satikusala and @eastgate - I understand now the context.

Many Thanks @mwra. That lets me do exactly what I want, to view the text of one note conventionally, and write a summary of that text in a text window of another note.

Unfortunately, after adding a few words of text in the text window, Tinderbox repeatedly closes and I get an Apple crash report. I have managed to replicate this in a new Tinderbox doc with two notes with a few paragraphs in each, and it may be associated with creating bullet points and adding further text to these.

However I can work with a less elegant solutions, such as summarising text in Apple Notes and pasting that into the required note later.

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Sorry to hear that. Do please make sure to get any crash logs and steps for repetition direct to tinderbox@eastgate.com as such info is important to help the developer find the cause.

FWIW, in case it helps: Where are crash and hang logs found?

Iā€™m unable to reproduce this.

Please email any crash report to tinderbox@eastgate.com; we canā€™t fix what we donā€™t see.

Thanks @eastgate - Just done with a simple test file that replicates the problem
Malcolm

What method are you using to create bullet pointsā€”there are several, those most of us only use one. so it helps to know.

I did this check (v10.0.2, macOS 15.1.1):

I have 4 notes selected, one of which ā€œAnother Noteā€ is also open as a text window. If I edit in the latter window, the composite text in the text pane is not updated, but, if I click the tab (blue area above the view pane) this refreshes both panes and the edit shows up in the composite.

But, still a bit unclear as your edit configuration. In your demo TBX above (up thread) I donā€™t see any bullets in the $Text.

Might it be a good idea at this point to send the discussion of Text Window to its own thread? People might have more to contribute about Tinderbox for longform writingā€¦

[admin] Iā€™ve moved this branch to a new thread to de-interleave with original topic. Boty remain open for further discussion.

Thanks @mwra, and thanks also for moving the thread, I was thinking the same about contaminating the previous thread, I wasnā€™t expecting an issue to take up space.

Re your question, I was selecting bullet point entry via the ruler. However bullet points seem to be a red herring; I found I can get the crash, in a new document with one note, with vanilla text entry into the text window, after about 100 characters at most. Iā€™ve sent the crash reports and files to @eastgate. The challenge is that he canā€™t replicate it (even with the sent file) and unless someone else encounters the problem Iā€™m not sure how this can be furthered.

FWIW, I canā€™t replicate it either. Certainly it is not as simple a trigger as typing in the $Text of a stand-alone window. This suggests either we donā€™t have the causal steps accurately enough or something else running on your Mac is unexpectedly a factor in this. No fault on your part here. The challenge at this point is to replicate your issue in the same software on a different computer.

Iā€™ve tried generating the effect in both the v10.0.2b693 public release and the most recent beta (though the latter hasnā€™t yet addressed this as we donā€™t know the cause!). Both have no problem with text entry. I also have TextExpander running (following the input key stream) so Iā€™d strike that out as a possible factor.

For clarity, by ā€˜text windowā€™ do you mean the $Text area of the text pane of a document window or the text are of a stand-alone text window?

If I understand you correctly, if you make a new TBX file, add a single note and start typing, after c.100 characters of input the app crashes? If not, what else has to be present (extra notes, different focus/selection, etc.)? If there are multiple windows we need to know what type they are.

Sorry for all the questions. Itā€™s a matter of narrowing down the causal context, which may be accidental to your maaer of use but may not be so used by others. Murphyā€™s Law. It would appear the crash logs also arenā€™t (again, not anyoneā€™s fault!) giving the developer any clue as to the context of the crash.

Thanks for the response, Mark

The text area of a stand-alone text window.

Correct. No other complications.

So ā€¦

to explore this, Iā€™ve just shut down my Mac, restarted, opened Tinderbox only, added a first note to the default Tinderbox ā€˜Untitledā€™ window, called it ā€˜Testā€™ and then opened a Text Window and started typing. This time I got about 150 characters entered before Tinderbox crashed.

OK, the is definitely not repeatable here. This would suggest (not proof!) that the issue is something special to your Macā€™s set-up, as opposed to a Macs in general. If you have any utilities that are monitoring the overall text input to you Mac it is worth quitting those sand seeing if there is any difference.

I have a potential candidate for the problem.

I tried turning off anything that might be jumping in and causing a problem, even when no other apps were running. My intial focus was Devonthinkā€™s menu bar items, which keeps going even when Devonthink isnā€™t running. I also tried turning off every other menu bar item that wasnā€™t part of the standard Apple installation (iMenus etc., though I couldnā€™t see why that would intefere.

I then noticed that Apple Shortcuts had become a menu item with a Tinderbox shortcut that I hadnā€™t intentionallly put there, although it was stalling because I hadnā€™t given permissions

Anyway, the crashes still kept happening.

Then I also noticed, in the Tinderbox Text window, that I started getting unpredictable behaviour with the cursor suddenly jumping back to the previous location, and substituting the text that I had just written with some half formed word, as I wrote, with no other feedback.

That made me suspect Predictive text. Going to System Settings I searched for ā€˜predictiveā€™ and in the ā€˜Keyboardā€™ sub-dialogue I saw that all four options, from Correct spelling automatically to ā€˜Add full stop with double spaceā€™ were on. I turned them off, so:

Since then I havenā€™t had a crash, nor any other unexpected behavioiur, when using the Text Window.

If anybody fancies experimenting with turning these four options on, and seeing if they get crashes when using Tinderboxā€™s Text Window that would be interesting and helpful, but not vital.

Hopefully I wonā€™t be coming back on and saying the problem is still there after all!

Ah, yes. Anything that thinks it knows how to write better than I do gets turned off instantly with any device that I own.

I hope the problem is solved for you.

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Writing Tools in Sequoia 15.2 are often buggy and crashy in Tinderbox and elsewhere.

Glad the issue seems fixed. FWIW, this my Settings pane for this:

The inline predictive text does seem to cause an issue, though I use it very rarely. I think it was new to Sequoia and arrived with a default ā€˜onā€™ setting. But if I uses it and see crashes, Iā€™ll likely turn it off. not least, it only knows/suggests school-level vocabulary so fails against my English ā€¦ whose vocabulary has expanded since schooling back in a previous millennium. :open_mouth:

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Another thing that sneaked in without my really noticing. Iā€™ve turned it off now. Apart from it being limited, I think it is also more American than I am (see ā€œsneakedā€).

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I fear that is more due to the ā€˜availableā€™ (i.e. borrowed/stolen) data used for training than overt parochialism. AmE is probably the largest corpus is recent (i.e. likely digital) English.

Iā€™d love to see the continuation if trained on Elizabethan, Georgian or late Victorian (British) English. :slight_smile:

Yrs obediently,
etc. etcā€¦

Huh. I wonder if this has been the source of my crashes as well. I havenā€™t been doing massive typing sprees in recent(ish) intermittent usage but Iā€™ve definitely noticed a lot of crashing. Not just at a hundred words. Iā€™llā€¦ go turn off those predictive toggles and see if it still happens, I guess.

Please send crash logs to support@eastgate.com .

Iā€™ve been doing a ton of Tinderbox work myself, and Iā€™m not seeing any crashes at all. And Iā€™ve got nothing like a reproducible report.

I have done so! Although I didnā€™t get any more crashes after turning off prediction stuff, I also didnā€™t get any more crashes after turning prediction stuff back on, so Iā€™m not entirely sure thereā€™s a connection. But from now on out I will faithfully send crash logsā€¦ and leave the prediction stuff on, just 'cause Iā€™m curious.