Black Screen, Flare Hangs

[kmacdowe]

Flare goes black; sometimes it recovers, sometimes it doesn't. Have you experienced this?

For years, multiple releases, and environments, I have experienced this.
It isn't release or environment dependent.
Am I alone?
TIA for any sympathy or suggestions for a fix.

[NorthEast]

Yep - I've had the black screen issue for many years - I'm thinking at least 2015/2016.

Whilst it does usually respond after a few seconds/minutes, the black screen is displayed in front of other Windows, meaning I can't use that monitor until it goes away.

It generally just gets worse the longer that I use Flare, so when it starts to happen I close down all instances of Flare and restart.

I reported it to MadCap years ago, but I'm not sure if it was ever confirmed as a bug as I don't think they could reproduce.

[trent the thief]

I think it's a RAM issue. I've seen it, but only when I have several Flares, several Words, and a dozen other apps running and then tell Flare build a large project.

[NorthEast]

I've checked CPU/RAM/disk usage when it happens, and it can occur when the PC is running well within its limits.

For me, it's usually a cumulative problem that builds up over time - once it starts happening, it seems to steadily get more frequent in that session. So I'm thinking it's a code issue in Flare or something that it interacts with like source control.

I spent a while trying to pinpoint the issue for tech support back in the day, but I couldn't figure out what factors would reliably reproduce the problem.

[kmacdowe]

I turned off my special mouse settings two days ago and I have not experienced the problem since then. I'll post in a few days if that was the solution.
By "special mouse settings" I mean anything other than the default settings for a Windows 10 mouse; no extra large, no different color, etc.
I did that because years ago that created a problem in another app. Stay tuned.

[trent the thief]

Which mouse are you using? It might have some updated drivers, or maybe it doesn't need the drivers even if it shipped with them.

[kmacdowe]

Actually it is a touchpad on an Adesso-tru-form-4500-2-4ghz-wireless-ergonomic-touchpad-keyboard. It uses standard Windows drivers.
Since I posted this topic it seems the black screen problem has diminished but not gone away completely. Unsatisfactory answer I know.
I am still casually monitoring it.

[lburn]

I reported this problem also. I've been having it for years. I was avoiding Flare upgrades because it seemed to make it worse.
I finally got a new machine and installed Flare 20R3 r2. Same issue, so I began restarting Flare several times a day (thanks to the tip in this thread) and that seemed to help.
Flare Support just advised that having multiple windows open can be a problem - the Formatting viewer and Link viewer can be an issue because they are resource intensive.

[kmacdowe]

Iburn, thanks for sharing. This black screen hang problem seems to be a common, long term, perplexing problem. I agree:

multiple windows open can be a problem - the Formatting viewer and Link viewer can be an issue because they are resource intensive

I've learned to minimize the number of windows as much as possible; when I do use them, I close them as soon as possible after using them.
Restarting and closing windows helps but it is a bummer one must do that just to get Flare to work properly.

Support often asks what hardware you have. More power might help for a while but I don't think that is the main culprit. This problem has persisted for years, on different machines and different software versions.

For the record, this is my current machine:
"HP EliteBook 840 G6",
"Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8365U CPU @ 1.60GHz, 1896 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)", and
"Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 16.0 GB".

I wonder if any MadCap employees follow these forums. You'd think there

[ChoccieMuffin]

You might find MadCap staff pop into the forums but they don't actively monitor them - they're really for users to talk to each other rather than for MadCap to keep an eye on things. When adding bugs, I do often include a link to any threads that have been talking about the problem, but for this particular problem there would be hundreds!

The Preview window is another one that I don't keep open, as it also slows things down. I only open that one when I actively need to see a preview.

[kmacdowe]

" hundreds! " LOL, good to know I am not alone. I understand those processes can be extremely resource intensive.

I wish MadCap could put in a splash screen or something that would warn users instead of letting them happily skip into the black hole (Flare Freeze? that is catchy). A long time ago Windows had a similar problem. They fixed it for the most part; there is a way. Fixing it would improve the customer experience quite a bit. It might even persuade some DITA holdouts to come over (read bigger cu$tomer base). Cheers.

[NorthEast]

I wish MadCap would just spend a year fixing this and the other quite major bugs and performance issues in their software.

It would be far more beneficial than some of the new features they've been releasing lately - both 2023 releases are particularly underwhelming.

Anyway, I guess if everyone reports (re-reports) the issue, they might pay more attention and diagnose the problem.

[scap]

I wish MadCap would just spend a year fixing this and the other quite major bugs and performance issues in their software.

It would be far more beneficial than some of the new features they've been releasing lately - both 2023 releases are particularly underwhelming.

Agreed. The AI and themes updates seem to be strongly Sales & Marketing driven rather than aimed at users.

[trent the thief]

I got a PromptStorm email today mentioning the Phind.com coding AI.

I played with it a bit before work and found it much easier to use and better at providing code than OpenAI's code assistant in chatgpt. I was able to generate the majority of a Flare plugin to direct highlighted text into OobaGooba'a API for processing and receive results to paste back in-place.

You can converse with both and make suggestions. Chatgpt's version has a 32k context, but needs more prompting to keep it generating code rather than giving suggestions to add functions yourself. Phind just churned away without the extra prompting. It is more current, world-wise, as well. I didn't need to provide a framework or pointers to MS's flare dll or anything else regarding flare or it's operation. Phind already knew about it which shows the benefit of an more open model. I said what I wanted done, told it the app was Flare and it gave back plugin code and a list of required reference libs.

I don't think MC will be able to keep Central's AI plugin current the way things are progressing in AI. I like the idea of have the AI there, but not that it's hitting OpenAI's LLM and not a model I maintain/train locally. Central's probably not the right platform, either. I seriously doubt that the most of us really use Central as more than a tool to get reviews and do builds, with our _real_ work being done in Flare.

If I can get my plugin running with a local model, I'll share it and make a version that plays with OpenAI for those of us subscribing to them.