Why does TextPad Open Large Files So Slowly?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Apr 09, 2003 1:46 pm

Running TextPad under WinME - big computer, lots of memory, and have nothing but defaults in TextPad, yet it takes several minutes to load a file larger than 5Mb. Any help?

Karen · Post by **Karen** » Sat Apr 12, 2003 12:26 am

This happens to me, too. Any help folks? I'm running WindowsXP with256k ram.

zridling · Post by **zridling** » Mon Apr 14, 2003 2:50 am

I'm running XP and have the same problem. Any help with a fix, anyone?

zridling · Post by **zridling** » Thu Apr 24, 2003 4:52 am

Guess nobody has an answer to this. Thank goodness UltraEdit is better than TextPad and I hate saying that, but it's damned true. I'll come back to TP when it grows up. :cry:

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Apr 24, 2003 5:10 am

hmm, I just loaded a 63,5 MB file, did a ctrl-end to line 500.000,
in less than 3 or 4 seconds.
Try playing around with Configure->Preferences->File,
look out for anything with "Lock" in it and even "Ignore".
Using version 462, WinXP, file was on local disk.

Jens Hollmann · Post by **Jens Hollmann** » Thu Apr 24, 2003 6:43 am

I just created a log-file with 81 MByte and opened it in TextPad. Well OK. 23 seconds. But I don't have much RAM left at the moment (using 233 of 256 MByte) so there definitely is some swapping involved.

So if large files give you problems it must have something to do with your environment (virus scanner, file locking etc.)

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Thu Apr 24, 2003 11:49 pm

Nope, I've got the same problem. Running WinXP-SP1a on a 2.4Ghz machine with 1Gb of memory. If I change the screen font to a proportional font (Verdana) and select word wrap, it takes almost 20 min. to open a 5-6Mb file. I should try Ultraedit, since this is a big problem I can't afford to have with my work.

Post by **bbadmin** » Sat Apr 26, 2003 1:30 pm

As a benchmark, it takes TextPad 4.6.2 16 seconds to open a 120MB file, containing 1.6million lines, on the hard drive of this system:

Dell 8100, 1.4MHz, 1GB RAM, XP Pro

Reasons why it might take much longer:

1. Your active virus checker is interfering. This is the most likely cause. Turn it off, and if that helps, complain to whoever wrote it. TextPad is designed to work with Windows, not against AV software.

2. Word-wrapping is enabled and a proportionally spaced font is selected. Please see Known Problems for more information. http://www.textpad.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=11

3. You have insufficient RAM, so page swapping is required. Other than buying more RAM, you can only free it up by closing down other applications.

4. Your hard drive needs to be defragmented.

5. There are bad sectors on your hard drive. Check with ScanDisk in surface scan mode.

6. There is a problem in your network, causing high latency. Check with your network administrator.

7. There is something peculiar about the data in a particular file, or type of file. If only some files are slow to open, zip one and attach it to a bug report.

Keith MacDonald
Helios Software Solutions

DanielMartin · Post by **DanielMartin** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 5:04 am

I've read the variety of posts on this subject in the forum because I share this experience in TextPad. And I have NONE of those problems and large text-only files open very slowly on my 2.5Ghz, 120Gb HD, 1Gb RAM stand-alone system. The items you list would obviously slow down the operation of any app on any system.

I think this is one issue that is holding back TextPad vis-a-vis Ultraedit. I'm one that uses TextPad on everything but the larger (>1Mb) files because of this. Once Helios fixes this, I'm deleting Ultraedit from my HD for good. Thanks for the reply, Keith.

Post by **bbadmin** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 9:21 am

Another reason, due to word wrapping with proportionally spaced fonts, was reported in this thread:
http://www.textpad.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3711
This has now been added to my earlier posting, and to the Known Problems forum.

Keith MacDonald
Helios Software Solutions

anpham · Post by **anpham** » Mon May 05, 2003 5:50 pm

I personally think these slow Textpad posts come from the same person and is trying to hurt Textpad sales or users. I installed UE on my computer because of reading posts on this message board about how much faster UE was than Textpad but when I used it I noticed it was the exact reverse. The fact that I read other posts who say the same thing about the Textpad speed leads me to believe that this isn't a common problem at all or even machine specfic. I installed UE thinking I finally had something that was going to replace Textpad, but after using UE for awhile I decided to go back to Textpad. Speed was never a concern for me before since I normally don't handle large files but when I decided to distribute my file extensions out to certain files, I ended up giving them all to Textpad.

Corrinne · Post by **Corrinne** » Mon May 05, 2003 11:43 pm

How can someone posting to a forum hurt sales? Seems a little paranoid and republican in the sense that a fault becomes a virtue. Even the Helios people admit in the Known Problems section (see http://www.textpad.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3788) that TextPad is functionally limited by the Windows MDI and does not process large files well.

Like most, I run TextPad under XP and it doesn't match either UltraEdit or Crimson Editor as far as opening and processing large files. That's a FACT. The goal in the forum is to recognize that and encourage Helios to fix it.

A better question is: If these other programs can do it, why can't TextPad? Dammit, let's make TextPad better! Isn't that the goal?

anpham · Post by **anpham** » Tue May 06, 2003 5:03 am

The Helios post deals with word wrapped text files and they just mention it as being slower. I'm sure UE or any other editor would load word wrapped text files slower. This may be worth mentioning because it could be a common question that many people ask but are unable to figure out on their own.

I don't use word wrap nor have I tested Textpad/UE with word wrap on to see who comes out as the champion. Maybe UE handles word wrapped files better than Textpad, but on my computer, the defaults indicate that Textpad is faster. Personally I don't care about how long a file takes to download because mine are all under 1mb. I just decided to test out the speed of Textpad due to reading posts on this message board and decided to post my results.

Why do I think this could be a blatant post to hurt sales? When I say sales I'm refering to what a reader of this forum may end up doing because of what they read, even if very few people actually come to the forum. I used Textpad for 4 years and this week was the first time I ever clicked on the forum link. But even as a devoted Textpad user I saw what people said about it versus UltraEdit and immediately went to their site and downloaded the program looking for a better editor. What I did find was a good editor but not what I was looking for. Obviously a person is entitled to purchase a product which they deem as the one best suited for their needs. However, advertising or misleading customers on the other persons home turf isn't right. I'm not saying these posts came from a rival company but just looking at the way the posts were generated is somewhat fishy.

Let's play detective. The initial post happened with a Guest user on April 9. Anonymous, no one knows where it came from, no registration date. Another Guest account without registration posts another complaint, could be the same person, you never can tell. Finally a third complaint comes in from a registered user, however this person just registered his account April 8. One day before this initial post. Could this third person have created this account on April 8, signed out, opened this Guest post on April 9, replied to it himself, replied again as another guest with a name (two Guests in a row isn't believable), signed back in, complained again, and then wrote a very fishy post in:

Guess nobody has an answer to this. Thank goodness UltraEdit is better than TextPad and I hate saying that, but it's damned true. I'll come back to TP when it grows up.

Just seeing that fourth post makes it seem rather deliberate. It sounds rather personal. I mean you could register two accounts and post separately but both account creation dates would be too close together (April 8, April 9) and that would seem fishy as well. A well thought out plan would involve registering an account one month in advance, registering again, etc. but who wants to wait a whole month just to flame a product? However this really isnt necessary because most people aren't going to look at it that closely. More than likely this post did its job.

This forum doesn't get many users because it's a text editor forum. What's there to talk about really? It's not like they release a new version every week. Even if they did it still defaults back to this being just a text editor. However, someone waltzing on through could see the bad topics started about the program and decide not to download the program and try it out. A 2mb program does take 15 mins or so to download so it can act as a deterrent. I know for sure it doesn't help. Sales come from a percentage of the downloads, so more sales equals more registrations.

Textpad does do it, and so do a lot of other programs as well. If you look closely at the timestamps and tone of the posts, they don't come off as being completely innocent. These posts could be from three different people, the percentage of that is probably greater than 50%. But you can't rule out the fact that it could be an attempt to deter users from even trying out Textpad.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue May 06, 2003 8:08 am

Are you from Helios? If not, your own suspicions and persistent posts are quite lengthy and personal here. I'm not sure it belongs in this forum. What you might want to do is get back to the subject of the topic at hand and if open speech offends you so much, ask the forum administrator to kill this thread.

And if we're counting, I've used TextPad since version 1.1, a long, long time ago, so what difference does that make?

mike · Post by **mike** » Tue May 06, 2003 8:15 am

And if he's not from Helios, his rants are quite strange. Just stay on topic and never ever feed the troll.