6 replies to this topic

[drcheese]

I have noticed that Apple Mail keystroke recognition is out of sequence and slows down when an application called Things is running. For example, here is a sentence typed into Mail without Things running:

To be or not to be, that is the question

Here is the same sentence again with Things running:

To e obr not to eb ,tht as ithe questoni

I have added Things as an application in the Spell Catcher preferences and deselected as many options as I can so that Spell Catcher doesn't check for spelling in Things.

Any suggestions to fix this problem?

David.

[Evan Gross]

drcheese, on 08 May 2011 - 06:41 PM, said:

I have noticed that Apple Mail keystroke recognition is out of sequence and slows down when an application called Things is running. For example, here is a sentence typed into Mail without Things running:

To be or not to be, that is the question

Here is the same sentence again with Things running:

To e obr not to eb ,tht as ithe questoni

I have added Things as an application in the Spell Catcher preferences and deselected as many options as I can so that Spell Catcher doesn't check for spelling in Things.

Any suggestions to fix this problem?

David.

Tell me more about "Things", what it does, where to find a demo, how to reproduce this - whatever you think I need to know. I can't give any suggestions until I see this with my own eyes.

Also tell me what version of Mac OS X you're using, what version of Spell Catcher X, what version of Things.

[Evan Gross]

drcheese, on 08 May 2011 - 06:41 PM, said:

I have noticed that Apple Mail keystroke recognition is out of sequence and slows down when an application called Things is running. For example, here is a sentence typed into Mail without Things running:

To be or not to be, that is the question

Here is the same sentence again with Things running:

To e obr not to eb ,tht as ithe questoni

I have added Things as an application in the Spell Catcher preferences and deselected as many options as I can so that Spell Catcher doesn't check for spelling in Things.

Any suggestions to fix this problem?

David.

Well, I installed Things, running in trial mode. Can't seem to reproduce this - at least out-of-the-box.

Can you give me steps to reproduce? And more specifics about how you have Things configured?

Are any other apps besides Mail affected? Is text entry within Things itself fine? And if you Quit Things, Mail returns to normal?

[drcheese]

Things version 1.4.6, and I guess you now know what it does as you've downloaded it. Things just has to be open to slow down and confuse keyboard recognition in Mail. Quitting Things immediately fixes the problem.

If I select something other than Spell Catcher in the Input Menu, the problem goes away, but immediately comes back again if I re-select Spell Catcher. Of course, Things has to be open for the problem to arise.

No other apps are affected (as far as I know), just Mail. Other apps such as TextEdit, Safari, MS Word, Mellel, PowerPoint, Pages, and Keynote work just fine. I gave up testing other apps as they all appear to work, except Mail.

Mac OS X 10.6.7, MacBook Pro (2010 model). Spell Catcher 10.3.7.

Your last question was about Things configuration. The only preference setting I can see that might affect this are the HotKey shortcuts. I turned these off and the problem still occurs. The only other settings are iCal update (turned off), Devices (sync turned on for my iPad and iPhone), and Updates (turned on). What other settings do you have in mind?

David.

Edit: This problem doesn't occur on my desktop iMac G5 running 10.5.8 and the same versions of Things and Spell Catcher. Just noticed this tonight.

Edited by drcheese, 09 May 2011 - 12:59 AM.

[Evan Gross]

drcheese, on 08 May 2011 - 11:52 PM, said:

Things version 1.4.6, and I guess you now know what it does as you've downloaded it. Things just has to be open to slow down and confuse keyboard recognition in Mail. Quitting Things immediately fixes the problem.

If I select something other than Spell Catcher in the Input Menu, the problem goes away, but immediately comes back again if I re-select Spell Catcher. Of course, Things has to be open for the problem to arise.

No other apps are affected (as far as I know), just Mail. Other apps such as TextEdit, Safari, MS Word, Mellel, PowerPoint, Pages, and Keynote work just fine. I gave up testing other apps as they all appear to work, except Mail.

Mac OS X 10.6.7, MacBook Pro (2010 model). Spell Catcher 10.3.7.

Well, with pretty much the same hardware/software as yours, I can't reproduce the problem. One potentially big difference is that I'm testing with the latest build of Spell Catcher X 10.4. Still, I certainly don't recall changing or fixing anything that caused this sort of problem.

Quote

Your last question was about Things configuration. The only preference setting I can see that might affect this are the HotKey shortcuts. I turned these off and the problem still occurs. The only other settings are iCal update (turned off), Devices (sync turned on for my iPad and iPhone), and Updates (turned on). What other settings do you have in mind?

David.

Edit: This problem doesn't occur on my desktop iMac G5 running 10.5.8 and the same versions of Things and Spell Catcher. Just noticed this tonight.

Things seems to be able to "grab" selected text from other applications (like Mail) by using AppleScripts. Unless it does this continuously, I doubt it would be the cause.

Any chance you can see if disabling device sync makes any difference? If not, reproduce the problem, open the Activity Monitor utility, sort by CPU usage, and tell me what process is consuming the most time. We'll go from there if need be.

[drcheese]

Approx. CPU usage when typing in Mail is: Spell Catcher 4%, Mail 7%, Things 25-45%. Things is normally around zero % when I'm typing in anything other than Mail, or in Mail with Spell Catcher de-selected in the Input Menu.

I'll uninstall and reinstall Things, then report back.

Edit: I didn't bother with reinstalling Things. My suspicion was that a Mail add-on, called MailTags (version 2.6.1 from www.indev.ca) was the cause of the problem, and I was right. I'll bring this up with the MailTag developers. I should have guessed this earlier on as I don't have MailTags installed on my other Mac. The problem can be fixed by de-selected the Things box in the MailTags preference file within Mail under the tab called Projects.

David.

Edited by drcheese, 09 May 2011 - 09:23 PM.

[Evan Gross]

drcheese, on 09 May 2011 - 08:19 PM, said:

Approx. CPU usage when typing in Mail is: Spell Catcher 4%, Mail 7%, Things 25-45%. Things is normally around zero % when I'm typing in anything other than Mail, or in Mail with Spell Catcher de-selected in the Input Menu.

I'll uninstall and reinstall Things, then report back.

Edit: I didn't bother with reinstalling Things. My suspicion was that a Mail add-on, called MailTags (version 2.6.1 from www.indev.ca) was the cause of the problem, and I was right. I'll bring this up with the MailTag developers. I should have guessed this earlier on as I don't have MailTags installed on my other Mac. The problem can be fixed by de-selected the Things box in the MailTags preference file within Mail under the tab called Projects.

David.

Good detective work! My next question was going to be whether you used any Mail plugins, the answer is obviously "yes".

Be interested to know what the MailTags folks say about this. Feel free to post a follow-up here.