Experimental B7 Stability-Fix Release

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Is available at:

http://www.pleco.com/beta/pd2b7-stabilityfixtest.zip

This includes both Palm OS and Windows Mobile application binaries - just copy the appropriate one over to your system (replacing the current application). On WM make sure to exit Pleco completely first by choosing the Quit command from the menu.

The main goal of this is to attempt to take care of a lot of the crashing problems that are still plaguing Palm users, though it also includes a number of bug-fixes on the Windows Mobile side.

The biggest change is that we've fixed a nasty memory leak in the database-caching code which we've determined was responsible for most of the crashes people were reporting on Palm when switching applications / running other applications in the background / looking up words in Instant Access. It was particularly acute on the Tungsten E2 due to its unusually small database cache memory; E2 users should install all databases other than the application / handwriting recognizer file to an SD card, since this actually reduces the cache memory requirement significantly, and should make certain not to store their flashcard databases as PDBs (they wouldn't be by default, but only if you moved them there using PlecoMover or changing the corresponding setting in Search Paths), since storing them that way considerably increases the strain on the database cache.

The other big change is that we've altered the way that flashcard sessions are started in a way that should significantly reduce the strain it puts on people's systems; particularly noticeable if starting a session with lots and lots of categories included, this should no longer cause crashes on Palm and should let some sessions start considerably faster on Windows Mobile. Since it is a significant change, though, we want to make sure it doesn't have any unintended side effects, hence the "experimental" nature of this release. So please make sure to let us know if you encounter any strange behavior / sessions not starting correctly / etc in flashcards.

We've also fixed a number of other annoying bugs (like saved flashcard sessions not being deleted correctly on WM), so it's worth trying out for everyone, though given those experimental flashcard changes those of you who aren't very technical should probably wait a bit to make sure there aren't any serious problems first.

This is not intended to fix all of the bugs reported in B7, it's just an interim release to make sure we're on the right track with those stability fixes, so there's no need to re-report any bugs from B7 that are still around - just let us know if you encounter any new bugs (or, if you've had issues with frequent crashes before, whether those issues have gotten better / worse / stayed the same in this release).

(the "status" poll lets you change your response, by the way, so if any of you feel that this release is significantly more finished-seeming than the previous one you can feel free to update your answer :) )
 

ipsi

状元
Couple of notes:

Yay! DB Cache is indeed much better. I've still got no idea if the cache ResetDoctor reports is the DB Cache or not (I imagine it is), but it's no longer reporting a noticable drop after each open/close of Pleco (whereas before it was).

Audio on IA - No crashing! :)

Still get a crash looking up 今风尘碌碌 in Blazer, but I'm not sure if this was supposed to address that problem or not.

Also, I can't change my poll vote on the "How close is Beta 7?" thread. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place, or maybe it's admin-only?

EDIT: Also, major improvement to flashcard startup speed. I wasn't expecting anything noticeable (I only have about 2,000, and current session has about 400), but yeah. I'd say that's distinctly noticeable.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Glad to hear DBCache is behaving itself. Has the pTunes situation improved any? The poll is configured to allow users to change their votes, if you check another box and click submit again does that give you an error message?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Found/fixed the Blazer crash, turned out to be a non-DBCache-related global variable issue (one that actually should have caused almost any IA lookup with more than one matching result to crash, so I'm surprised the system has worked as well as it has). For anybody having lots of IA crashes on Palm who wants to work around the problem in the meantime, disable search result sorting in the Results section of Preferences and that should keep you from running into that error.
 

ipsi

状元
That was quick :). I think once that's sorted, all my problems with 2.0 will have disappeared, and it'll basically be usable for me.

It seems slightly more responsive for me now with pTunes running in the background. Whatever optimisations you've done to the flashcards, they now start much faster with pTunes streaming audio (32k high-compression AAC files). It also feels more responsive, but that could just be my imagination.

EDIT: I can't check another box for the poll... I see an [x] next the one I chose, but there's no way to change it. No checkboxes or radio buttons or anything.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Glad to hear it. Strange about the survey... I guess we'll have to put up another poll for Beta 8, then.
 

sych

榜眼
Is there any requirement to export / re-import databases with this release, or is it a drop-in replacement?
 

grabolus

举人
my treo runs more stable with this fix. before i had strange freezez when opening opera for example.

A new bug: flashcard session, use the down key on the treo to select 'correct' , then i always get a reset, in one case a warm reset was neccessary.

bye
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Glad to hear it. We'll take a look at this, might relate to ipsi's bug with up/down buttons not working correctly.
 
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