Scribus Very Slow

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Farland

So I am working on a book.  It is up to about 200 pages and Scribus is killing me with the slowness.  Saving takes like 5 mins, and even scrolling to the next page takes like 30 secs.  It isn't my computer (plenty of RAM and power), and as far as linked text frames go, my chapters are separated; I am linking about 20-30 pages of text in each chapter.  Is there a way to get Scribus to speed up.  This is making my project take much longer than it should.

dragonfly

It will help to receive ideas if you clarify:

(1) PC you are using (Windows/Mac/Linux).
(2) Scribus version
(3) Are you writing your content directly into Scribus using native text editors or using external tools to pre-process content and import content?
(4) Large images embedded?
(5) Is Scribus still slow if you unlink textframes within any chapter?

Musing .. it would be a nice feature if Scribus could offer document statistics to diagnose why compilation is slow.

a.l.e

200 pages is a lot for scribus.

chains of 20 to 30 pages are also rather long.

without further details, i would suggest to split the document in 50 pages sections and try to keep the chains at 10 to 15 pages...

but without seeing the file or having more details it's hard to say....

dragonfly


Farland

Quote from: dragonfly on November 10, 2018, 08:08:17 PM
It will help to receive ideas if you clarify:

(1) PC you are using (Windows/Mac/Linux).
(2) Scribus version
(3) Are you writing your content directly into Scribus using native text editors or using external tools to pre-process content and import content?
(4) Large images embedded?
(5) Is Scribus still slow if you unlink textframes within any chapter?

Musing .. it would be a nice feature if Scribus could offer document statistics to diagnose why compilation is slow.

1. Windows 10,  Intel Core i7 (6th Gen) 6700HQ / 2.6 GHz, quad core, 16 GB RAM, SSD. Plenty of power.
2. 1.5.4
3. I write in MS Word and copy and paste into the story editor then format.
4. Tons of 300 dpi TIFF images in the file.  The images are stored on the SSD, which is the main drive.
5. I haven't tried.  The chapter I just started I am only linking about 5 pages and then restarting a new text chain.

dragonfly

It looks to me that you have enough horsepower in your PC.
I rarely use Windows (I am on Ubuntu) and I have not experienced your symptoms.
I can remember from my past Windows usage the utility Process Monitor from this family of tools:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

typically to monitor sluggish application processes.

Intuitively this is what I would try:

Re: your item 3, try different workflows. I read in this forum that story editor is not a favoured tool so why not try other import workflows: select textframe > File > Import > Get Text.

You might try LibreOffice as your external tool instead of Microsoft Word to create raw content to be imported.

The reference to "tons of tiffs" raises a flag.  Have you tried running in two modes:

(a) text import only
(b) text+images import

Also there is Windows > Preflight Verifier. Any problems show up there?

See tips about importing tiff images as given earlier ... and from other experienced users ...

http://forums.scribus.net/index.php?topic=1834.0

That is all I can think of.

dragonfly

P.S.  Further ideas ..

Is it possible that you installed the 32bit and not 64bit version of Scribus. Unlikely but just checking.

And also I would use Process Explorer (in addition to Process Monitor) to explore what is going on inside Scribus while it is running slowly as you report.

Here is an old tutorial.

https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Defrag-Tools/Defrag-Tools-2-Process-Explorer#comments

Farland

#7
No probs found by Preflight. Using 64 bit version with Ghostscript 9.22.

Thanks for the ideas.  Can you tell me more about this?


(a) text import only
(b) text+images import

Farland

I think I mostly figured out the issue.  My background layer consists of a 300 dpi image of a page.  When I set the background layer to not visible by unchecking the eye icon, things sped up immensely.

a.l.e


a.l.e

a bit more seriously:

- if you have lot of big images
- if you have long text chains
- if you have lot of pages
- if you use drop shadows
- and in a few other cases

scribus will be slow.

there are tricks for making it a bit less painful, but no solution for now.

everybody who deals seriously with scribus knows about it... but, currently the workforce for tackling it is simply not available.

i can image that during the second half of 2019 something will happen... but, as always in the scribus world:: it will happen when it's ready : - )

on the other side, if anybody knows somebody who has the skills and the time to work on optimizing the way scribus "uses the resources" patches are for sure very welcome!
... it's not an easy task, but there are a few low hanging fruits...

dragonfly

In the interim, before Scribus 1.6x, would it be sensible to create just one *.sla document per page (or per text chain), and then apply a python script to concatenate multiple *.sla files at the final printer ready stage? Look at ScribusGenerator.py script where multiple *.sla files are created. I can see that this might be a feasible option, particularly for resource limited desktops.

Jon Artaza

#12
Quote from: Farland on November 10, 2018, 05:02:45 PM
So I am working on a book.  It is up to about 200 pages and Scribus is killing me with the slowness.  Saving takes like 5 mins, and even scrolling to the next page takes like 30 secs.  It isn't my computer (plenty of RAM and power), and as far as linked text frames go, my chapters are separated; I am linking about 20-30 pages of text in each chapter.  Is there a way to get Scribus to speed up.  This is making my project take much longer than it should.

I'm in the same case with big amounts of text put it together. My solution is cut the text in short peaces (for example, for chapters, or each ten pages) and putting them in separate chaining text windows groups as you. I hope to explain myself (my english is very bad).  It's the only way I have found to minimize this problem (a long term problem in Scribus, of course. Very long term annoying problem!  :-\)

Off topic (or not) This is a big problem for standarized the use of scribus, indesign boys and girls laugh in our faces... Damned it!  ;D

a.l.e

what should i say?
you seem to have found a workaround.

if you think that indesign is better for you, buy a license and use it.
nobody has ever been forced to use scribus. if you use it, it's because it's the tool that best meets the numerous constraints and needs you have.

scribus is a good tool, but it's not the best tool for every case.
it's good enough tool for many tasks.
it's the best tool for other tasks.
and it's not good enough for various tasks.

we are working to make it better but the slowness with long chains of text will stay for some time...

Jon Artaza

Quote from: a.l.e on April 18, 2019, 03:53:41 PM
...
if you think that indesign is better for you, buy a license and use it.
nobody has ever been forced to use scribus. if you use it, it's because it's the tool that best meets the numerous constraints and needs you have.

scribus is a good tool, but it's not the best tool for every case.
...

Hey, I'm just kidding a bit with the problem ... I'm superfan! I have both 1.5 and 1.4 installed. I have worked with it on many projects.
Despite this, I think this problem is annoying to prepare novels, and I think there are many people who start in this "world" by editing their own.
This problem may frustrate them to use scribus.
I would like to have better skills in phyton to be useful with the project. :(
I'm sorry, if I would had been annoying! :-[