App completely dogging it.
  • LauraBelle64LauraBelle64
    I'm a writer using MarsEdit nearly exclusively for my writing, including what I send to my blog. For the past couple of months, it's been completely dogging it in heavily formatted pages to my blog, to the point where I can't even use it and am searching for another alternative. However, nothing seems to suit my needs as well as MarsEdit. Yet it completely freezes up with the spinning ball several times in a document, and I have to wait several minutes each time for it to come back.

    I've looked around in the Preferences, but can't find anything to solve this. Is there something like a cache that needs to be cleared out or something? I have a lot of files in Local Draft, because of all the writing I do outside of my blog. I just write them there and save them. Do I need to export them and save them somewhere else?
  • Daniel JalkutDaniel Jalkut
    Hi there - I'm sorry to hear that the performance of MarsEdit has been suffering on your Mac. I don't think a large number of local drafts should cause a slowdown, but I could be wrong. The best first step is probably to see if you can "sample" MarsEdit while it's behaving really slowly (ideally when the spinning ball is visible).

    Here are the steps to sample MarsEdit:

    1. Reproduce the hang.
    2. Open Activity Monitor from /Applications/Utilities
    3. Find MarsEdit in the list and double-click it to open details.
    4. Click the "Sample" button in the lower left corner of the details window.

    This will help me understand where the app is hanging up.

    Thanks!
    Daniel
  • LauraBelle64LauraBelle64
    I will do that. Thanks!
  • LauraBelle64LauraBelle64
    I'm currently on the spinning ball. Here's what the Activity Monitor is saying:


    Sampling process 16355 for 3 seconds with 1 millisecond of run time between samples
    Sampling completed, processing symbols...
    Analysis of sampling MarsEdit (pid 16355) every 1 millisecond
    Call graph:
    2505 Thread_231046 DispatchQueue_1: com.apple.main-thread (serial)
    2505 0x100001718
    2505 NSApplicationMain
    2505 -[NSApplication run]
    2505 -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:]
    2505 _DPSNextEvent
    2505 BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInMode
    2505 ReceiveNextEventCommon
    2505 RunCurrentEventLoopInMode
    2505 CFRunLoopRunSpecific
    2505 __CFRunLoopRun
    2505 WebCore::MainResourceLoader::handleDataLoadNow(WebCore::RunLoopTimer*)
    2505 WebCore::MainResourceLoader::didReceiveResponse(WebCore::ResourceResponse const&)
    2505 WebCore::MainResourceLoader::continueAfterContentPolicy(WebCore::PolicyAction)
    2505 WebCore::MainResourceLoader::continueAfterContentPolicy(WebCore::PolicyAction, WebCore::ResourceResponse const&)
    2505 WebCore::MainResourceLoader::didReceiveData(char const*, int, long long, bool)
    2505 WebCore::ResourceLoader::didReceiveData(char const*, int, long long, bool)
    2505 WebCore::DocumentLoader::commitLoad(char const*, int)
    2505 WebCore::DocumentLoader::commitIfReady()
    2505 WebCore::FrameLoader::commitProvisionalLoad(WTF::PassRefPtr)
    2505 WebCore::FrameLoader::transitionToCommitted(WTF::PassRefPtr)
    2505 WebFrameLoaderClient::transitionToCommittedForNewPage()
    2505 -[WebFrameView(WebInternal) _makeDocumentViewForDataSource:]
    2505 -[WebFrameView(WebInternal) _setDocumentView:]
    2505 -[NSScrollView setDocumentView:]
    2505 -[NSClipView setDocumentView:]
    2505 -[NSView removeFromSuperview]
    2505 -[NSView _setSuperview:]
    2505 -[NSView _removeSubview:]
    2505 -[NSView _invalidateFocus]
    2505 -[NSView _invalidateGStatesForTree]
    2505 CFArrayApplyFunction
    2505 -[NSView _invalidateGStatesForTree]
    2505 -[WebBaseNetscapePluginView renewGState]
    2505 -[WebHostedNetscapePluginView updateAndSetWindow]
    2505 WebKit::NetscapePluginInstanceProxy::resize(CGRect, CGRect)
    2505 WebKit::NetscapePluginInstanceProxy::processRequestsAndWaitForReply(unsigned int)
    2505 WebKit::NetscapePluginHostProxy::processRequests()
    2505 mach_msg
    2505 mach_msg_trap
    2505 Thread_231099 DispatchQueue_2: com.apple.libdispatch-manager (serial)
    2505 start_wqthread
    2505 _pthread_wqthread
    2505 _dispatch_worker_thread2
    2505 _dispatch_queue_invoke
    2505 _dispatch_mgr_invoke
    2504 kevent
    1 _dispatch_run_timers
    1 _dispatch_timer_list_update
    2505 Thread_232906
    2505 thread_start
    2505 _pthread_start
    2505 __NSThread__main__
    2505 +[NSURLConnection(NSURLConnectionReallyInternal) _resourceLoadLoop:]
    2505 CFRunLoopRunSpecific
    2505 __CFRunLoopRun
    2505 mach_msg
    2505 mach_msg_trap
    2505 Thread_233289: com.apple.CFSocket.private
    2505 thread_start
    2505 _pthread_start
    2505 __CFSocketManager
    2505 select$DARWIN_EXTSN
    2505 Thread_265092
    2505 thread_start
    2505 _pthread_start
    2505 thread_fun
    2505 CA::Render::Server::server_thread(void*)
    2505 mach_msg
    2505 mach_msg_trap
    2505 Thread_265354
    2505 thread_start
    2505 _pthread_start
    2505 startIOThread(void*)
    2505 CVDisplayLink::runIOThread()
    2505 _pthread_cond_wait
    2505 __semwait_signal
    2505 Thread_328528
    2505 start_wqthread
    2505 _pthread_wqthread
    2505 __workq_kernreturn
    2505 Thread_328529
    2505 start_wqthread
    2505 _pthread_wqthread
    2505 __workq_kernreturn

    Total number in stack (recursive counted multiple, when >=5):

    Sort by top of stack, same collapsed (when >= 5):
    mach_msg_trap 7515
    __workq_kernreturn 5010
    __semwait_signal 2505
    select$DARWIN_EXTSN 2505
    kevent 2504
    Sample analysis of process 16355 written to file /dev/stdout
  • Daniel JalkutDaniel Jalkut
    Thank you! This is very interesting as it suggests a hang/slowdown inside one of the browser plugins installed on your Mac. Do you have some special content in this post or in your preview template, such as Flash media?
  • LauraBelle64LauraBelle64
    I almost always have embedded videos, sometimes YouTube, sometimes not. I write a daily list of what's hot on TV that night, and I get media such as video from the networks and cable stations that I embed in the posts. I add the videos via html. I normally have one to four embedded videos in each post. On this particular post I embedded four videos, two that were hosted on the Syfy Channel site and two that are hosted on the TVLand site.
  • Daniel JalkutDaniel Jalkut
    Thanks for the info. I suspect the slowdowns you are seeing are related to the flash plugin, but I'm going to do some testing to see if I can reproduce this kind of problem. If you have a post where you're seeing the slowdown especially badly, could you do me a favor and send me the HTML source for the post in question:

    1. Select Post -> Edit HTML Text from the menu bar.
    2. Select all the text in the HTML text view.
    3. Copy text to clipboard.
    4. Paste in an email to support@red-sweater.com

    Hopefully if I'm working with the same content you are I'll be able to see the same slowdown and try to figure out whether there's anything I can do to help it. The slowdown might be in Flash itself, in which case my hands may be somewhat tied.
  • LauraBelle64LauraBelle64
    Thanks Daniel. Next time I experience the slowdown/freeze I'll do that. It makes sense that it could be the flash. When I was trying out other text editors trying to find something to suit my needs, there wasn't anything that allowed me to add in the videos. Nothing allowed me that same rich text format, while also letting me go back and forth between that and HTML view. So it would make sense that that could be what is slowing it down. There does seem to be other apps that sometime run at the same time that cause it to hang as well. I tried using DropBox for awhile, but it seemed to be slowing everything down so I dropped that and things got better, but now it just started happening again, which made me start looking for something else. But, there is nothing else. MarsEdit is truly the best there is for my needs. This is the second time I have used it. I left it one time to do my content within the Flock browser, but after your last major revision, I came back to MarsEdit.
  • Daniel JalkutDaniel Jalkut
    Glad to hear you are mostly happy with MarsEdit! I will continue to do what I can to improve the remaining rough edges in the app.
  • SnafuSnafu
    Dear Sir:

    I was wondering if you have discovered the reason behind the slowdowns that motivated this thread (I hope I am not hijacking it). I am using Marsedit 2.4.4 and I've found that, if I open a post to modify it, the app periodically produces long beachballs (a dozen seconds or so each), no matter whether the post is just a couple of lines of plain text or has lots of embedded videos (I disconnected all web content options in Preferences, anyway, and closing all previewing windows doesn't seem to help). It usually starts happening a few seconds after I have started typing.

    Creating a new post is problem-free, though.

    This problem started manifesting itself a year ago or so, and the beachballings seem to have become longer as the blog I edit has grown in entries.

    My Mac setup is a Mac Pro (2006) with OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. Following the advice you gave to LauraBelle64, I have sampled the app while it beachballs. As the results seem to be too long for the forum form, I have uploaded it to my Dropbox account here:

    https://dl.dropbox.com/u/11006201/Marsedit Activity Monitor sample.txt
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