Moving Images: very slow then VERY fast!?

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dezcat

When I try to move an image in Scribus, initially, the motion is extremely slow...then (for some reason) it gets very very fast - I often overshoot the spot I intend to put the image.

Is there some way to control this behavior so that images move as fast as you move your cursor?

Thank you!
writer, artist

GarryP

This isn't normal behaviour for Scribus but since you're using an experimental version it will be difficult to diagnose this issue.
If the problem is with Scribus then it's possible that by the time someone manages to replicate the problem it could already have been fixed by someone else.

Since you seem to be having a few weird issues with Scribus at the moment I would say that you might be better downgrading to 1.4.6 - the current stable version - rather than using developmental software. If you really need the extra features of 1.5.x then maybe downgrade to 1.5.3 instead of the nightly builds. (IMPORTANT: You will not be able to edit 1.5.x SLAs with 1.4.6.)

All that said though, this sounds more like it could be a temporary issue with your machine rather than Scribus.
Some questions to ask are:
* How often does the problem occur? Every time you move an image frame or just sometimes?
* When does the problem occur? Is it always in the morning, or afternoon, or around lunchtime, etc?
* Have you checked what other processes are running at the times when it occurs? Are backups or something else happening?
* How big is the document you are editing? Do you have a reasonable amount of free memory?
* Do other applications also slow down or is it just Scribus?

Answering these questions - and a few others - might help you to track down what's happening.

dezcat

QuoteAll that said though, this sounds more like it could be a temporary issue with your machine rather than Scribus.
Some questions to ask are:
* How often does the problem occur? Every time you move an image frame or just sometimes?
* When does the problem occur? Is it always in the morning, or afternoon, or around lunchtime, etc?
* Have you checked what other processes are running at the times when it occurs? Are backups or something else happening?
* How big is the document you are editing? Do you have a reasonable amount of free memory?
* Do other applications also slow down or is it just Scribus?

Thank you..answers to the above, in order:

*The problem occurs every time I want to move anything. The object in question lags behind the mouse cursor. When I try to move an image inside its frame, IOW, double click the image so that I am interacting with the image itself, that's when it gets unusably slow: I'll try to drag the image to where I want and the image will move so slowly as to be like in slow motion. and it won't stop for several minutes, until it's executed the move I tried to make. I've never seen any software do this.  I've been a graphic designer for a long time.

* doesn't matter the time of day.

*other processes running are minimal. Firefox, thunderbird, rhythmbox. Ultimately I'll have gimp and inkscape running too, but as yet, I don't have those going at the same time.

*my document is small; I've only begun building it. 5 pages or  so, and they're barely populated with images. The images are appx 5mb each.

* no other application behaves this way, only scribus

Thank you!
writer, artist

GarryP

Thanks for answering those questions. It doesn't seem like you're stressing your machine.

I've tried to replicate the problem but can't. Nothing I try - dozens of large images, different scales, multiple image effects, changing preview settings, etc. - makes any difference. (I have a fairly high-spec' machine so getting it near any 'limit' would be a tedious exercise and I don't think that's the problem anyway.)

If the problem occurs during all drag functions but is much worse when moving an image within its frame - as I think you are saying - then I'm currently at a loss.

The nearest I have seen to this is on my old Mac when Scribus had been running for hours and the memory was being filled up by either the Undo stack or a memory leak. Everything on the machine ran slower than normal but Scribus seemed to be under the most pressure and simple functions could take 10-15 seconds to complete. Restarting Scribus fixed this for a while and then the problem started up again but it doesn't sound like that's what's happening here.

I can only think that it's something to do with the particular build of Scribus that you're using. As it's experimental software, there's no easy way to tell. The list of things that could be the root of the problem is so large that it would be difficult for anyone who doesn't know the source code intimately to sort out.

I'll confess that, unfortunately, I'm stumped at the moment but maybe someone else has some suggestions. The problem could be something very simple that I'm just not seeing.