Memory hungry Zotero

cfeuerherdt

I have been monitoring the memory used by Zotero and am amazed. (Using OOo 2.3.1 and latest version of Zotero 1.0.3). Watching firefox in the Windows Task Manager this is what I have noticed;

- Click the insert citation - 5Mb to big up the selection dialogue
- Editing the citation (on some occasions) - 3Mb
- Clicking OK to insert the citation - 10Mb

Over 15Mb of memory to insert a single citation. The memory consumed by OOo does not change (wouldn't expect it to either). The problem is that once the memory is consumed by Zotero (firefox) it is not released again. Once firefox has consumed 300Mb I restart it so I can work at a half decent speed again.

If any improvement can be done with memory management it would improve the application 100 times IMHO.

Craig

dstillman

Are you saying that the memory usage goes up by that much each time you insert a citation, or the first time?

I suspect you mean the first time, in which case it's not 15 MB to insert a single citation—it's 15 MB to cache part of your Zotero library in memory, which Zotero does to improve performance. (Zotero doesn't load any item data until the first time the items list is displayed, either in the Zotero pane or the citation window, in order to keep its inactive footprint down.) We have some open tickets to implement purging of cached data from memory, but they're not high priorities, since the footprint shouldn't really be that large.

I suspect Firefox going up to 300 MB is simply due to loading web pages and tabs in the browser.

cfeuerherdt

Dan,

I am positive it is increasing by 10-15MB each time I insert a citation, I have the task manager open and can watch the memory go up every time. I make sure that I do not load any web pages while I am inserting citations and therefore that is not the issue.

By way of example;
I open firefox, it has consumed 60MB of memory.
Inserting citations;
1 -> 91MB
2 -> 105MB
3 -> 118MB
4 -> 133MB
5 -> 149MB
6 -> 163MB
7 -> 177MB
8 -> 197MB (I edited the citation). This citation also bought up the 'busy script' dialogue.

Using Zotero under Windows XP.

Craig

cfeuerherdt

This is a copy and paste from another thread with a few additions. I am wanting to know whether other Zotero users experience the same issues with Firefox and OOo under Windows XP.

I have been monitoring the processes in the task manager and specifically firefox. By way of example;
I open firefox, it has consumed 60MB of memory. Inserting citations from OOo results in the following memory increase;
1 citation -> 91MB
2 -> 105MB
3 -> 118MB
4 -> 133MB
5 -> 149MB
6 -> 163MB
7 -> 177MB
8 -> 197MB (I edited the citation). This citation also bought up the 'busy script' dialogue.

The other thing that I also notice when I first attempt to insert a citation into OOo is that MSWord also starts in the task manager. Yes I do have the Zotero word plugin installed, but why is WINWORD.EXE started?

Can anyone else confirm these large chunks of memory being consumed by Firefox?

I restart firefox when it gets to about 300Mb of memory - a real pain in the proverbial, considering that is only 15 or so citations!!!

Craig

dstillman

[Moved post back to this thread. Please don't start new threads unnecessarily.]

dstillman

I can't reproduce this memory usage, but if Word is starting when you try to insert a citation in OOo, something is definitely wrong on your system. I'd recommend removing all traces of both plugins and reinstalling the OOo one from scratch, and perhaps reinstalling OOo if that doesn't work. I'm afraid I don't really have any suggestions beyond that.

Also, how many items do you have in Zotero? (Select all in the Zotero pane and look on the right.)

cfeuerherdt

I have 605 items in the whole Zotero library.
The collection that I am using for my thesis has 153.

I have had a go at re-installing the OOo extension and ran into the same problem as described in this thread. I removed the Zotero OOo extension, restarted OOo, installed the Zotero OOo extension (double clikc on Zotero.oxt) and restarted OOo again. The error message relating to an incompatable version of the word plugin displays.

I then changed the name of Zotero.oxt to Zotero1.oxt and installed in and then Zotero worked fine in OOo. I then tried inserting citations into a blank OOo document and it was quick (after the first one) and there was no memory increase with firefox. Back into my 264 page thesis and adding a citation chews 8+Mb of memory every time. So the conclusion is that Zotero doesn't like long OOo documents and therefore is not appropriate for thesis or books etc.

I am more than happy to provide a copy of my thesis for you to replicate the issue. Splitting the thesis into separate sections (one per chapter) may be a work around, however it is not feasible because Zotero looses the reference to the citations when they are copied and pasted. Suggestions...?

Craig