[texworks] Feature suggestions, and possible bug report

[Philip Taylor]

Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
> On 2016-08-20 at 21:49:05 +0100, Philip Taylor wrote:
>
>  > This also appears to seriously impact other processes in the
>  > system.
>
> How are other processes impacted?
Everything stops !  It is not even possible to launch task manager using Ctrl+Alt+Del for several seconds.
> Don't know much about Windows' internals but I suppose that even on
> Windows processes are independent and thus a particular process can't
> have an impact on other ones.
That assumes that they aren't {both|all} using the same mutex; the behaviour that I am seeing suggests that in this case at least, they are.  Even associating the TeXworks process with only a single core (of a quad-core processor) does not help.
> If other processes are impacted, the most likely reason is that some
> of them share the same resources, for instance the hard drive.
Agreed (or mutex, see above)
> Maybe your system monitor ("Task Manager" in Windows parlance) can
> give you (and us) a hint.
Nothing useful,  I am afraid.  However, I am now in a position to confirm that this behaviour occurs IFF the dynamic files are held in a directory other than the source directory -- i.e., it is the "--output-directory=../dynamic-content/" that triggers the anomalous behaviour.  However, even if dynamic files /are/ held in the source directory, it still takes of the order of 18 elapsed seconds for the PDF to refresh at end of compilation.  The observable differences in behaviour between V4.5 and V6.1 are as follows :

1) If dynamic content is held in the source directory, in V4.5, the preview window closes shortly after compilation commences and refreshes when compilation is complete while in V6.1 the preview window remains open until the final page number has been output, then closes, then after about 12 seconds the compilation completes, and after a further six seconds the preview is re-displayed.

2) If dynamic content is held in other than the source directory, then in V4.5 things appear identical to the above, whereas in V6.1 compilation appears to "freeze" at about page 10 and nothing then happens until compilation completes, at which point the preview window is refreshed.

> [Signature.jpg]
> Nice, but don't you fear that your signature can be abused?  The
> internet is quite hostile nowadays.
Well, I don't "fear" it, since I am far less paranoid than many, but you are quite correct to point out that its use on a list is potentially ill-advised; I shall try to remember to remove it from list contributions in the future -- thank you.

An afterthought.  Although this does not differ between my V4.5 and my V6.1 usage, it may still be relevant :  the source directory forms a part of my Dropbox; the dynamic-data also forms such a part, but is marked "Do not synchronise" (for obvious reasons).

** Phil.