Cursor jumping around in text - Flare 8

[straygoat]

Hi All

I'm working on a topic and all of a sudden, the cursor seems to jump back to the start of a word in a sentence instead of carrying on as normal. For example, if I'm typing 'Proceed to Step 6' it might come out like 'tep 6 Proceed to S'. I've tried shutting Flare down and restarting, but to no avail. I've had erratic behaviour because of cache issues before, so I suspect that there is a cache that needs emptying somewhere?

Any ideas? Thanks

Oh, it isn't something simple like Insert or End being accidentally pressed on the keyboard - the typing is 100% normal in any other application.

[trent the thief]

I haven't run into that one.

I think the standard fix might apply, though: Re-install .NET

[whunter]

This happens to me regularly (not so regular that it impacts my work, but enough to comment on it) and I have never been able to figure out what is going on. It feels like I accidentally mash some keystroke that causes something to happen in Flare, but it's not anything that shows up in the source HTML. But it's definitely centered upon one particular point in the text -- once it happens, it is impossible to stop the "jumping" behavior until I backspace and delete whatever happened at that point. I can then continue typing normally.

[trent the thief]

Keep in mind that Flare's editor won't display non-ASCII characters. There must be something there that Flare's GUI editor doesn't handle well and won't display. The next time that happens, save the file, and then open it in a binary editor like "Hex Editor Neo"
(http://www.hhdsoftware.com/free-hex-editor) and examine the content in the target area. Neo will show everything in the file.

[LTinker68]

I've had something similar happen when I'm typing "notes", where I have a div inside another div that has an image, background image, rounded corners, etc. It was fine as I was typing, but if I tried to use the mouse to move the cursor to re-edit the text, it kept jumping away from where I wanted the cursor to be. It only seemed to be a problem with the first couple of lines of text in the box; beyond that point, I could place the cursor and I'd be fine. I discovered the only way to edit the content (other than opening the topic in the Internal Text Editor) was to place my cursor on the third row and then use the left arrow key to move back character by character, which is exceedingly annoying. I reported the problem to MadCap and they couldn't recreate it and they asked me for a sample project, but I haven't had time to go back and create a sample project, since I can't send them the real one.

So are you in a similar situation, where you maybe have a div in a div with an image, or is it a normal paragraph that you're working in?

[whunter]

Nah, it's a normal paragraph. Or a list item. Has happened to me in lots of places with no divs or images in sight. I do think it's some mashed keystroke thing, sometimes my fingers get ahead of my brain.

[straygoat]

My problem occurred in a paragraph within a bullet list, so <ul><li>list item <p>text where Flare went mental</p></li></ul>. I had to save the file, re-open it, delete the line in the HTML code, and then retype it and everything went back to normal. Very weird.

[i-tietz]

Yes, Flare has far more problems with losing the focus than any other software I use (FM, Office, Lotus, graphics software). I type a few words, save (CTRL + s) and have to click into the topic again and even into the right position, because I cannot go on typing otherwise. Flare loses focus very often. Also navigating inside the text with CTRL + arrow keys sometimes results in very strange jumps, e.g.: it seems that big parts of sentences are untouchable by that way of navigating. I can only get the cursor into those parts by positioning the cursor with the mouse.
And: I use Flare 7 ... (uninstalled Flare 8 after 2 weeks of "working" with it). To me that sounds like navigation and focus problems are increasing with each version.

BUT: Apart from Flare, the other source is undoubtedly the .NET technology. That's when problems started.

[siskamoens]

Aah, I'm glad that I came across this topic! I was beginning to think it was me

I'm having the exact same problems as you do, both the cursor jumping to the start of the line while typing (in a normal paragraph) and Flare losing focus all the time.
And I still haven't found what's causing it. It's not the auto-save that occurs every x minutes, it's not another program popping something up (such as a new e-mail alert)...

Did any of you find out what the cause was? If not, I'm going to log this as a bug with Flare so they can start looking into it.

[Judith]

I sometimes get this problem in Flare 9, and one of my SMEs experiences it with Contributor. It seems to happen regularly if a list or table crosses a page boundary. Refreshing the page by pressing F5 usually fixes it.