"Unrefreshed" screen is making me cross-eyed :(

[Hyland]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel Hi there,

I started working in Word about a year ago. From the start, several times a day my document will appear to duplicate lines of text. When I move my cursor over one of the lines to delete it, it "corrects" itself back into one line only. (Sometimes.)

For instance, it looks like this:

Solid Gold Dog Dish
Solid Gold Dog Dish

It also does things with my text that are difficult to describe, but along the same lines as the sample above, only over bigger areas and it makes my eyes cross to look at it.

I can "manually" correct it (refresh the window) by grabbing the lower right corner, dragging it up and to the upper left corner, and then back down. But that gets old, ya know?

Originally I thought it was because I was on an older computer, but a few months ago I upgraded to a MacBook Pro... and it still does this.

Has anyone else experienced this and/or know how to solve it?

I saw an earlier answer from Bob that might have been addressing this, so I'll add that it does this even if:

I've only been running Word for a few minutes.
I only have the one file open.
I'm not running any other apps.

ABOUT MY OS
10.6.2
4 GB RAM
I don't use Spaces.

ABOUT MY USE OF WORD
version 12.2.3
I don't use Master Pages.
I don't use Track Changes; I'd rather be boiled in oil.
I DO work at 200% magnification.
My docs do this funky thing in Draft, Print and Web views.

ABOUT THE DOCS
Saved as .doc (I work with people running 2004.)
Some files are as small as 37k.
Text onlly, all styled with Style Sheets (Paragraph & Character)
No odd typefaces.
No images, clip art, tables, columns, shading, borders, outline text, etc.

Thanks for checking this out!

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Hyland:

Yes, everyone gets that. It's the "lazy redraw" glitch. Every
computer/CPU/Graphics Card and document will produce different flavours of
it.

It's a bug, and so far, we know of no cure for it.

Sorry

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel
Hi there,

I started working in Word about a year ago. From the start, several times a
day my document will appear to duplicate lines of text. When I move my cursor
over one of the lines to delete it, it "corrects" itself back into one line
only. (Sometimes.)

For instance, it looks like this:

Solid Gold Dog Dish
Solid Gold Dog Dish

It also does things with my text that are difficult to describe, but along the
same lines as the sample above, only over bigger areas and it makes my eyes
cross to look at it.

I can "manually" correct it (refresh the window) by grabbing the lower right
corner, dragging it up and to the upper left corner, and then back down. But
that gets old, ya know?

Originally I thought it was because I was on an older computer, but a few
months ago I upgraded to a MacBook Pro... and it still does this.

Has anyone else experienced this and/or know how to solve it?

I saw an earlier answer from Bob that might have been addressing this, so I'll
add that it does this even if:

I've only been running Word for a few minutes.
I only have the one file open.
I'm not running any other apps.

ABOUT MY OS
10.6.2
4 GB RAM
I don't use Spaces.

ABOUT MY USE OF WORD
version 12.2.3
I don't use Master Pages.
I don't use Track Changes; I'd rather be boiled in oil.
I DO work at 200% magnification.
My docs do this funky thing in Draft, Print and Web views.

ABOUT THE DOCS
Saved as .doc (I work with people running 2004.)
Some files are as small as 37k.
Text onlly, all styled with Style Sheets (Paragraph & Character)
No odd typefaces.
No images, clip art, tables, columns, shading, borders, outline text, etc.

Thanks for checking this out!

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Hyland]

Thanks, John.

WOW! *Everyone's* Word does this?!?!? Wow.

Now that I've invested many hours into becoming (somewhat) of a power user of Word, (to my surprise) I don't dislike the app as much as I feared I would.

But this "lazy redraw" thing is something that people just accept? Wow... I'm shocked that an app developer (even MS) would consider this acceptable. It makes me sad, actually.

Thanks for the "name" of it, though... maybe someone somewhere out there has figured out a workaround.

Funny... my Excel doesn't do this. (These are the only 2 MS apps I use)

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Hyland:

Microsoft Word, all flavours, on all platforms, have been doing this since
at least 1986.

It's a power-saving measure: Word only re-calculates the screen when the
pagination engine tells it it needs to. And the pagination engine only runs
when the layout engine tells it it needs to.

These two engines are the "core" of the Word application. They are what
does all the work.

A Word document is logically a long empty column, into which we pour text,
character by character. As each character is added, Word needs to compute
the beginning and end of each character between it and the top left corner
of the document (top right corner if you are working with right-to-left text
and vertical text). Once Word knows the exact size and shape of the
rectangle displaced by each character, it can then compute exactly where the
top left corner of each character should land on the page, and move it
there.

That activity occupies a LOT of computing power. If you leave the
pagination and layout engines blasting away continuously, the power demands
and heat output of the computer would be extreme. Laptops would last less
than an hour on a battery.

You don't get this in Excel because its text is all laid out in rows and
columns: it doesn't have to think to work out where to display it. But
create a large spreadsheet full of floating point operations and you will
see "recalculation" slow down. A lot. Same mechanism.

Word and Excel run their heavyweight power-hungry tasks only when they need
to.

But what about the other applications you are using at the time? If we
allow Word or Excel to suddenly gobble 100% of the computer's capacity and
keep it for several seconds, the user can't do anything at all except
"wait". Then you would hear some complaints! If you use Outlook 2007 on a
slow IMAP connection as I do at work, you will know what I mean

So internally, Word's architecture is that of an "Idle Loop" processor. This
is a cunning (some would say 'brilliant') idea for making multi-user
multi-program systems responsive. Each program will only "do" work when the
CPU enters its idle loop, the instruction it executes while waiting for
work.

A CPU can't "stop" when it has nothing to do, otherwise it would never
discover that there is work to be done. So it sits in a tight loop
repetitively asking "You got anything ready for me to do?" until some other
part of the system says "Yes."

Well-behaved applications (and Word is one of those, despite what you may
think...) parcel their work up into packages, stick a label saying "only
when you're not busy!" on it, and lodge the packages in the CPU Wait Queue.
They get executed when the CPU has nothing else to do. Recalculating the
document and redrawing the screen is one of those packages.

This technique makes the system really nice to use: anything coming from the
keyboard or network bypasses the wait, goes directly to the CPU and the
system appears instantly responsive to the user.

And most of the time, the user never notices that the idle-loop applications
are pausing for a millisecond or so before beginning work (trust me, you
won't notice a pause of only a thousandth of a second...). During which
time, the CPU can complete 280,000,000 other things...

On a typical laptop, the CPU spends 80 per cent of its time in the idle loop
doing "nothing". On a MacPro, it can be more than 95%.

So the design is very efficient. Effectively, Word does its work for free,
using CPU time that would otherwise be simply wasted.

But there are times, when you are working rapidly on a large and complex
document, when Word won't get enough time. And then you will see the lazy
redraw mechanism leave "artefacts" on the screen.

If it worries you, the cure is in your hands: buy a more powerful machine,
fit more memory, run fewer applications, don't run greedy "real-time"
applications such as iTunes or Video while you are working, create simpler
shorter documents.

Or just mutter to yourself, hit Command + s, and take a break yourself. The
break will be good for you!

Cheers

Thanks, John.

WOW! *Everyone's* Word does this?!?!? Wow.

Now that I've invested many hours into becoming (somewhat) of a power user of
Word, (to my surprise) I don't dislike the app as much as I feared I would.

But this "lazy redraw" thing is something that people just accept? Wow... I'm
shocked that an app developer (even MS) would consider this acceptable. It
makes me sad, actually.

Thanks for the "name" of it, though... maybe someone somewhere out there has
figured out a workaround.

Funny... my Excel doesn't do this. (These are the only 2 MS apps I use)

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]