Inserting citations is very slow

francoisthibeault
I have restarted Zotero standalone, inserted a citation containing one reference, then added another citation with the same reference. The delay before the Quick Format Citation box appears is more than 5 sec, searching for the reference is a bit long (I have deactivated full text indexing), then pressing enter in order to get the citation inserted in OOo takes between 15 and 25 sec.
Debug ID is D1924956366.
For me, the time lag is a big problem. What can be done to speed up Zotero.
  • mronkko
    How many items does your library have? Are you using windows, mac, or linux?

    One thing that you might try is emptying the trash in your Zotero.
  • francoisthibeault
    OOo 3.3.0
    Ubuntu 11.10
    959 items (first level), I did not count the attached images, files, etc.

    I deleted all items in the trash. Still it took 27 sec to insert a citation with a reference that was already included in a previous citation.
  • francoisthibeault
    edited March 27, 2012
    I can't tell how many citations there are in my OOo file, but a glimpse at the OOo navigator leaves me guessing that there are about 600.

    I did not build the reference list (bibliography) yet, as I thought that this could help to free some cpu and memory everytime Zotero is updating the reference list for my file.
  • Simon
    What kind of hardware do you have? I think I may have an optimization that will speed this up a little bit, but probably not by more than a factor of two, which is still going to be slow. The fields are taking 10 seconds to retrieve, and I don't think I can speed that up. The best idea for now may be to split your document up into smaller parts. (You currently have 656 references, which is a lot.)
  • francoisthibeault
    edited March 28, 2012
    If you are familiar with the <sudo lshw> command on Linux, you can read the output here:
    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/352822/output-lshw
    To sum up:
    CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2 GHz 64 bits
    RAM: 4 x DIMM Synchronous 1333 MHz 2GiB 64 bits
  • francoisthibeault
    edited March 28, 2012
    Hi Simon,

    Using OOo, I have created a master document and divided my main file into subdocuments. Now, when I edit a subdocument within the master document, and I insert a new Zotero citation, it is much much more faster than before. However, the challenge of using a master document and many subdocuments in OOo must be dealt with. And I am wondering whether Zotero will be able to create a global bibliography (in the master document) for all my subdocuments. Can you tell me more about that? Thank you very much for your time.
  • francoisthibeault
    edited March 29, 2012
    Here's the answer to my question: in a master document which contains subdocuments (the subdocuments contain the Zotero references), one has to add a text section and generate the bibliography in this section. The bibliography itself cannot be a separate subdocument, because the subdocument is empty of any Zotero reference (all the references are in the other subdocuments).

    Separating the main document in subdocuments has definitively improve the speed at which Zotero creates new citations and edits old ones. When the time comes to generate the bibliography in the master document (not within a subdocument, but within a text section in the master document), the <refresh> option from the Zotero menu will rearrange the citation fields properly (for example, inserting letters a, b, c wherever there is are identical Author_Date citations that point to different references). Inserting the bibliography is straightforward.

    But I am still not sure whether I like the idea of a master document, since I have lost all my OOo crossreferences (references between subdocuments) in the process (the problem of crossreferences between subdocuments can be fixed manually, but that's another story). So, if you still have an idea about how to speed up Zotero when there are a lot of citations, please let me know.
  • francoisthibeault
    Simon,

    Quotation:
    "I think I may have an optimization that will speed this up a little bit, but probably not by more than a factor of two, which is still going to be slow. The fields are taking 10 seconds to retrieve, and I don't think I can speed that up."

    Can you please explain me the trick?
  • adamsmith
    francois - that would be a change in the code for the plugin, not something you can do.
  • francoisthibeault
    edited March 29, 2012
    Hi Adam,

    Do you see, in the near future, a possible change that would positively affect the speed at which Zotero handles documents which include a large number of references?

    I would have prefered not to split my document into a master document and subdocuments. Crossreferencing between subdocuments, in OOo, is not straigthforward. But that's not a Zotero issue, though.
  • adamsmith
    The answer is what Simon says - yes, there is a good chance to speed things up somewhat, but no, it's not going to get super-fast. That's what he means by "The fields are taking 10 seconds to retrieve, and I don't think I can speed that up." i.e. those 10secs are a lower bound.

    There are, obviously, better ways to work with large, demanding documents than WYSWYG processors like Word and LO - markdown, re-structured Text, LaTeX, all of which can be integrated with Zotero in one way or the other.
    At some point in the future - but not anytime very soon - Zotero may also get a better RTF scanning feature, which would allow you to just enter simple codes and then have Zotero fill in the references at the end.
  • francoisthibeault
    Thank you for your time. It will be interesting to see how Zotero will develop in the future, and how, hopefully, it will be able to deal with documents that contain "a lot" of references.

    How do we mark this discussion as closed?
  • qenghis
    I have a suggestion/request for this issue. The most painful delay for me is the "Loading Cited Items…" operation because it happens every time I type a character. As my document grows, the delay keeps getting longer.

    The "cited" suggestion is a nice feature when it runs efficiently, but I don't actually need it. Would it be possible to add a switch to turn it off?
  • francois_thibeault_UdS
    Please take a look at the following post:
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/30740/zotero-very-slow-in-long-document/#Comment_163635

    This discussion is cross posted.
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