Flare interface behaviour / delay

[Jeong]

Does it seem to anyone else that there is a significant delay between what the interface is showing you and what seems to be actually active in Flare? It's like there's race conditions going on in the background all the time, and it's not just the preview window, except that's where it's most noticeable (make a change in a topic, save it, hit CTRL+W to get the preview window, observe the outdated screen for a while (no way to speed it up) and wait for whatever is going on underneath to do its thing, then the change is displayed when Flare is good and ready.

If that behaviour was limited to just the preview, that would not be an issue, but it seems fundamental to the way Flare operates.

The concern for me is that I when I perform an action, I'm not sure what state Flare thinks its in and I get really weird results sometimes, particularly if I am working quickly. Just now, I've created a copy of a topic (copy / paste in Content Explorer). A new topic is created called "Copy of <filename>". No problems there. Now, I go to change the filename, and I get a popup telling me that this file is linked from two ToCs. How on earth? That file didn't exist a moment ago, and I just created it from a copy/paste, and it's referenced by 2 ToCs? (When I view the ToCs in question, it's linking to "<filename>", not "Copy of <filename>".

Too many weird things with Flare... anyone else experiencing this? Has it gotten worse or better over the years? (I'm like 1 month into being a Flare user).

[NorthEast]

The preview will take a few seconds because Flare has to build it - which is normal and expected.


You're right that something is happening in the background - Flare is building and updating the "Analyzer" database when you change stuff in your project.
The Analyzer database stores lots of info about your project; such as links between files, what files have conditions, etc.

Sometimes you'll see a progress bar or a delay when you do certain tasks, e.g. checking for links in a file when you want to delete it.
That happens because Flare needs to check the Analyzer database, but is waiting for it to be updated.

The copied file having links is a bug - report it to MadCap.
At a guess, it's probably related to the Analyzer database. I'd like to bet that if you wait 30 seconds (for Analyzer to be updated) and try it again, then you won't see the message.

[Jeong]

Thanks Dave. I've been submitting the bugs I see. These forum posts are additional.
- appreciate your input.

[ChoccieMuffin]

Just checking - you're not trying to run Flare across a network are you? Because there are all these internal links all over the place, any time you make any changes Flare has to change lots of things, and networks sometimes don't cope too well with that volume of change. So keep your Flare and the files you're working on on your local drive, that might reduce the quantity of yucky stuff you're experiencing.

[Jeong]

Hi Choccie - No, everything's on the local (SSD) drive. I'm using git for source control and pushing to remote git hosting at Microsoft DevOps, but that hasn't been problematic for me.

Over the weekend, I think I've found the thing that is most contributing to the odd behaviours I've been seeing. I used to keep the PDF preview window open for most of the time I was working. I stopped doing that and since then I've not noticed so many issues.

[ChoccieMuffin]

Hi Choccie - No, everything's on the local (SSD) drive. I'm using git for source control and pushing to remote git hosting at Microsoft DevOps, but that hasn't been problematic for me.

Over the weekend, I think I've found the thing that is most contributing to the odd behaviours I've been seeing. I used to keep the PDF preview window open for most of the time I was working. I stopped doing that and since then I've not noticed so many issues.

Ah yes, that'd do it. If you have that open all the time, Flare is constantly trying to rebuild the page (with every keystroke perhaps, or maybe with every save) so that uses up lots of your computer's oomph. Glad you've found a solution.