Word 2003 plugin extremely sluggish

lilmspiano
Hi there,
I have a library with ~200 citations and am working on documents with 50-60 citations. However, the word plugin gets extremely sluggish after the first 10 or so citations. Is this just an inherent problem or is there a way to address this?
Thanks!
  • Jon Olav Vik
    I have found that refreshing the bibliography (as also happens on inserting or editing a citation) is much faster when no citations (except the one you're working with) are visible in the Word window. You can zoom in or shrink the window to achieve this. (I'm using Word 2007.)

    The culprit seems to be that the Zotero plugin does not set Application.ScreenUpdating=False before refreshing the bibliography. (Unfortunately, I don't know how to give feedback directly to the developers.)

    Hope this helps,
    Jon Olav
  • ajlyon
    Unfortunately, I don't know how to give feedback directly to the developers.
    You just did, and there's also the zotero-dev Google group. Have you tried editing the integration plugin to set that option? Does it in fact improve performance?
  • Jon Olav Vik
    @ajlyon: Glad to hear that 8-)

    I did check out a copy of https://www.zotero.org/svn/integration/xpcom/WinWord/tags/3.0a4 and searched for "refresh" in the hope of finding the implementation of the "Zotero refresh" command. However, the only mentions of "refresh" or "screenupdating" were in build\zoteroWinWordIntegration\CApplication.h, which was a bit beyond me. On second look, I found install\Zotero.dot, but couldn't manage to find any macros in it. (Maybe there are; Word 2007 has me thoroughly confused.) My guess was only based on experience with my own macros.

    Best regards,
    Jon Olav
  • ajlyon
    I haven't worked with the plugin code at all. Dan? Simon? Can anyone follow up on Jon's suggestion.

    @lilmspiano: Can you try Jon's suggestion of shrinking the Word window so that only one or two citations is visible? Does Word start working more quickly?
  • Simon
    The majority of the plug-in code (save a few small stubs to interact with Firefox) is an XPCOM component written in C++ that accesses Word using OLE Automation. You can find it in the SVN repository.

    We can try the equivalent line of C++ and see if it makes things faster, but it shouldn't be necessary to run the "Refresh" command regularly. Updates should be handled automatically as you add new citations.
  • Jon Olav Vik
    We can try the equivalent line of C++ and see if it makes things faster, but it shouldn't be necessary to run the "Refresh" command regularly. Updates should be handled automatically as you add new citations.

    I'm talking about all refreshes, including the ones that happen automatically. When many inline citations are visible onscreen, and I insert or edit another, the screen flickers frantically for maybe 10-20 seconds before everything is updated. Looks exactly like leaving ScreenUpdating on by accident.

    I'm not sure it is essential to my problem, but the document I noticed this on had tracked changes. I disable tracking (Ctrl-Shift-E) before working with any Zotero references because all inline citations get "changed" when Zotero refreshes, but maybe the mere existence of tracked changes aggravates the problem. Also, I'm working on quite a big monitor, 1920x1200 in addition to the internal 1280x800 of my laptop.

    This replicates the problem for me (Win XP, Word 2007):

    • Start a blank Word document.
    • Insert a citation, choosing a numbered citation style.
    • Copy and paste the citation perhaps 100 times.
    • Insert another reference that goes before the first one.
    • Watch as the citation numbers get changed from (1) to (2), one by one.

    If screen updating were turned off during that last step, I think it might help.

  • Simon
    With numbered styles there can be a larger number of updates—I was thinking about author-date styles above. You can try the WinWord Integration Trunk XPI, which should now disable ScreenUpdating, although it's not incredibly well tested.
  • zolit
    I uninstalled the Word integration add-on for Firefox, then installed WinWord Integration Trunk XPI, then clicked Firefox > Tools > Add-ons > Zotero WinWord Integration > Options > Reinstall Word Components. However, screen updating does not seem to be turned off; I still see citations change one by one, and refreshing is as slow as ever. Am I missing something about installing the Trunk XPI?
  • ajlyon
    This is something that is still being worked out, so it may not have improved your situation yet.

    If there's more information that he needs to diagnose the causes, Simon will let you know what to provide. Otherwise, hold tight and post if you discover anything new on your end.
  • Simon
    There was a bug in the previous commit. I've checked and screen updating is now being turned off properly in the latest build, but I'm not sure it makes things much faster.
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