Successful Send/Receive but long wait for result window

Question

I’ve seen a number of times now where a Send/Receive happens successfully, and Paratext 8 opens the S/R result window (that shows who made what changes) but doesn’t put anything in that window for a good couple of minutes, blocking the rest of Paratext from doing anything during that time. Some users assumed that Paratext hung and have just been terminating the Paratext process with the task manager. This has happened on a variety of different computers (and definitely on Windows machines WITHOUT Windows 10), and most (if not all) using the latest version of Paratext 8 as of early to mid December. In all cases I know of, the computer wasn’t currently connected to the Internet, and they were doing S/R to a USB key. But I’m pretty sure there have been some times with no Internet connection that the S/R results window came up fairly quickly. So I’m wondering if some recent change to Paratext is just causing it to (occasionally? often?) take a very long time figuring out that it can’t connect to the Internet, to get some sort of information that it would like to put in the S/R result window. We can’t submit a problem report when the problem occurs because the computer isn’t connected to the Internet. Thanks for any help you can provide.

Answer 1

The results window does not make any attempt to contact the internet, so that shouldn’t be a factor.

There is a process that could take a long time on some projects, but Paratext shows a progress bar during that process so I assume that is not the case here.

Right after this problem happens, could you use Help > Report a problem so we can hopefully track down what is happening?

Comments

anon291708:

The results window does not make any attempt to contact the internet, so that shouldn’t be a factor.

Well, I was wrong. After digging into this a little more (thanks for the problem reports), it appears that there is a case where the results window will contact the internet - if you have normal internet access enabled inside Paratext, but you have turned off automatic updates.

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anon291708:

it appears that there is a case where the results window will contact the internet - if you have normal internet access enabled inside Paratext, but you have turned off automatic updates.

This does appear to be the case. My information is second or third hand, but seems to indicate that if you make sure that BOTH the normal internet access and the automatic updates are turned off, this problem goes away.

anon291708:

Well, I was wrong.

I still have the greatest respect for you…

Answer 2

We’ve had the same problem too. Sometimes it takes an inordinate amount of time to display the results window. (And it cost us a lot of money, because the team assumed PT8 was still using the BGAN satellite connection the whole time they waited for the results to display; they kept doing this for quite awhile before we figured out why their account was draining.)

Yes, there is a progress bar. But the progress bar does not always display on top of the empty results window.
PT8 has a “window focus” problem (not sure what else to call it), whereby PT8 loses track of which window or pane is supposed to have focus and stay on top. And the progress bar, which apparently is NOT a part of the results window, does at times become flipped BEHIND the blank results window. No idea how this happens, but it is not uncommon. And since the results window is subordinate to the progress bar and can’t be moved until the process is complete, there is NO WAY to find the progress bar to see what’s happening (or kill it, if need be). To normal users it looks just like a hang.

A possibly related glitch sometimes occurs when using FieldWorks, if I insert a new sense into an existing entry, the whole screen flips over to showing PT8 and brings to focus a Notes window I have open! Yeah, weird. Like neither program really knows which dialog/window/pane has the focus, or they are not telling Windows 10 correctly.

Can be frustrating if I start typing and find I’m typing in the wrong window (because the focus has shifted). UNDO doesn’t always work in that situation either.

Again, no idea why all this happens, but we’ve seen it a lot too.

My 2 cents:

1. the progress bar needs to be on top, always,
2. ideally, the results window could be made to populate much faster, making the progress bar pointless,
3. it’d be nice if the program-wide focus problem could be found and fixed too. (NOTE: I say PT8, but it might be a Windows bug.)

Comments

I have seen similar focus problems in PT8 Linux as well. I haven’t used PT8 and FLEx together much so I can’t speak to that particular issue.

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We also have a user here with the same problem. The results window appears behind the blank results window, and it takes significantly longer than it should. In the end, the user is often force closing Paratext after some time. They still seem to receive changes. PT 8.0.100.47