Sluggish Response (resolved)

Hi there TB members,
Since updating to TB7 (including 7.0.1) TB response has degraded considerably. Lag times in moving notes, performing actions (selecting notes, editing, etc.), the lag is also present in outline mode. This sluggish behaviour is present in new docs having only a few simple notes.

My question: is anyone else experiencing a lag problem after updating to TB7 and if so, have you been able to resolve this issue?

Thanks a lot!
P

In short - no. As well as lots of small docs testing forum issues, ideas, etc., may own work uses big complex TBXs docs. If anything, the trajectory is towards better performance. This would suggest your experience isn’t generic.

I’d check Activity Monitor and see if some app (Tinderbox or other) open that’s using a lot of memory - for me it’s usually Safari which needs a re-start every few days.

Within Tinderbox, poorly configured rules/queries can affect behaviour but it’s unusual to see such effects in a TBX with few notes.

As further data point, my experience matches Mark A’s. I have some fairly large-scale and complex files, and I’ve found the latest releases of TB to be either neutral, or improvements, on the responsiveness front. I know that doesn’t solve your problem, but bolstering Mark A’s point that it doesn’t seem to be something intrinsic to the latest TB releases. Good luck!

Tinderbox 7 is very slow on my mac: barely functional–even on small sample notes with no links and agents.
I have explained the situation on a number of occasions.

I had a bit of private discussions about the issue with Mark B and @bmscmoreira.

I was blaming my relatively old mac–2011 version (but, the RAM and SSD has been upgraded).

Since I have been following the builds of TB 7, I have noted that the bug (issue) was introduced at b222. All the builds up until b221 are snappy. So, I am stuck at that build.
Using the map view with the latest builds, b243, has been impossible. The map jitters: slows down my system. And, moving objects on the map is just painful.

check out this video.
http://recordit.co/Dlek2wq8Hb

Dragging a note down and up triggers:

  • 99.1% CPU usage
  • you can also see how the note comes far behind the cursor. It is not smooth. It is sluggish and jittery.

To the best of my knowledge, the issues in map view have been resolved in the current backstage build; they were, as far as we know, experienced only by a handful of people and chiefly involve older computers.

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That will be really great.

I am running TB on a Macbook Pro Retina Mid 2014 with 16G RAM 512G SDD. I am experiencing the same problem (sluggish response, delay in scrolling in Map view, delay in selecting notes) even after a restart with no other apps running. The issue is present even with new docs having only a few notes. Is there any suggestion that you may share to resolve this issue please.

@Pier_Etoile, I fear not. My report indicates only that the problem reported above doesn’t affect all users. I’m not an OS or hardware engineer so wouldn’t like to speculate as the the cause. FWIW, none of my systems have retina displays in case that matters.

For this sort of issue, that affects only some people (equipment/docs) you are better off communicating directly with support. At this point the hunt is probably on to get an affected system to indicate why it is mis-performing. This scenario doesn’t imply anyone is doing anything wrong but rather that a previously unidentified mismatch is in the process of being identified.

Ok, thanks Mark. I will contact support and see whether we can discover the source of this anomaly.

Good luck. I’m just sorry I can’t be of more direct help.

(me: 3 days ago) To the best of my knowledge, the issues in map view have been resolved in the current backstage build; they were, as far as we know, experienced only by a handful of people and chiefly involve older computers.

Thanks for the additional report. Pier Rubesa is the second user with the problem who is not using an older iMac with rotating media; that’s helpful. The pattern is consistent with interference from some system utility or peripheral, but again no consistent culprit has been seen.

Unfortunately, none of our machines is afflicted, and no one in the backstage program experiences the problem, either; debugging this is, in part, flying blind.

Ouf! Any suggestions on what to look for i.e. apps, drivers, etc?

I have already reported that the bug was introduced at b222.
So, Pier_Etoile, try to get b221 from Mark. I don’t have the link anymore. That build doesn’t contain the Quick Links feature: but it has the Composites.

Here is another clue for the developers. The problem appears when the right side of the map (the Text panel) is opened. If I View only (CMD+6) is activated, the map becomes smoother and faster.

Here is another video for comparison:

View only:

[gif]http://g.recordit.co/L28jHxwOmQ.gif

View and Text:

[gif]http://g.recordit.co/lEnHwB1PLf.gif

Look at the distance between the cursor and the note in the two videos.

Thanks for the tip Desalegn. The video illustrates the lag problem exactly. I’m already in touch with Mark, we’ll see what his team can dig up.

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Hello fellow TBers,
I reported this issue several weeks ago. I do use a non-retina iMac, which is certainly a few years old, but not slow at all.
The problem, in my case, does seem to occur only when the text panel is set side-by-side with the map view. I attached a video to illustrate the differences.
I do hope they find a solution soon. In the meantime, I am using TB 6.

Video beta build (sent by Mark): noticeable lag and >99% CPU usage. Hiding the text panel solves the sluggishness.

Video official release: similar experience, high CPU load, and noticeable lag.

Cheers
Mariano

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Hi,

I too am experiencing sluggish behavior with TB7 when in map view. I can also confirm that it does not happen when in View Only, but does in View and Text.

I was also experiencing the sluggish behavior in Map view only when I first installed TBx7. However, I noted that it was not occurring in all of my files. I spent a couple of hours on some trial and error diagnostics and isolated the problem to content within the files. My bad, so to speak. I had developed a (bad) habit of cutting and pasting some email content that included YouTube Videos that my correspondent had cut and pasted into my email. Who knows what weird code came along with those pastes, but I methodically went to each of these text boxes, eliminated the cut and pasted videos and inserted a true link that I built myself to replace the troublesome cut and paste. Once I purged the last problem file, TBx7 began to function properly. I realize that every person might have a different set of circumstances to respond to, but in my case the problem wasn’t TBx7, rather, it was the contents of my file. I haven’t had a single problem since I dealt with my issue.

I think that was a problem in Tinderbox 7.0.0, since corrected in 7.0.1 .

I also think we’ve identified the issue that makes Tinderbox sluggish for some of the other users mentioned above.

Got it.

The problem lay in an otherwise innocuous change in rounding behavior of rectangles which caused performance problems with some graphics hardware, but not with other hardware.

We never did replicate the issue here; resolving the problem required remote testing of a large number of experimental builds in order to isolate the (very unlikely-looking) problem. Thanks to users on three continents for assistance with this.

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I am one of those users who has experienced this problem with the most recent version of Tbx 7. Please advise as to next steps. In the interim I am reverting to 6.4.