Problem with Bookends

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swilcox
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Joined: 2006-05-21 15:51:39

Problem with Bookends

Post by swilcox »

I am having what seems to be a new problem with Bookends and NWP. It's complicated.

I have an existing document with many references. I can scan the document and create a bibliography. I can unseen it as well. I added a paragraph of text with two new references. When I scan, the scan seems to hang partially throug: a dialog with the NWP icon says "Processing in Bookends." If I delete that paragraph and references contained within it, I can scan successfully again. If I remove the bookends reference markers leaving only the citation text (like this: [FIGURE OUT BOOKENDS PROBLEM Awh and Jonides, 2001, #82460], the scan works again. So it seems like the problem is the citations in that paragraph, right?

But ... if I create a new, empty NWP document, add ONE citation, and attempt to scan the document, it fails in the same way (hangs partially through the scan). In other words, at this point I cannot create a new document that will work with Bookends AT ALL.

If I now go back to the original large document, add a new citation, it also scans correctly, adding the new reference to the bibliography.

I have none of these problems with Word. Original document with new paragraph and new citations scans fine. New documents (even with the same new paragraph text, new citations, etc.) scan fine. Oddly the problem is only with NWP.

I am on an M1 Mac mini. Latest versions of Bookends and NWP.
swilcox
Posts: 36
Joined: 2006-05-21 15:51:39

Re: Problem with Bookends

Post by swilcox »

Maybe a shorter explanation is this: I can add citations to the NWP document I already started weeks ago (with an exception, below). But I CANNOT start any new NWP documents and have them work with Bookends, not even a single reference.

FWIW, this document was probably started prior to my purchase of the M1 mini. And I probably have not started any other documents since that purchase. So maybe this problem is new to the M1, but the problem does NOT apply to documents started on an Intel MacBook Pro (my previous Mac).
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martin
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Re: Problem with Bookends

Post by martin »

I'm sorry you're having trouble swilcox. Have you contacted Sonny Software about this problem yet? Have they given you any advice?

You said that you see the progress message "Processing in Bookends" displayed in Nisus Writer. That means the "Preparing document data" phase has finished, Nisus Writer has dispatched the necessary data, and Nisus is just waiting for Bookends to reply. Am I correct in assuming that you can click the Cancel button in Nisus Writer to abort the operation and stop waiting? That implies there's a problem with communication between the two apps (which is partly handled by macOS), or with Bookends itself.

When this problem occurs, what happens when you switch to the Bookends app? Does it show you any status? Is the app responsive?
swilcox
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Joined: 2006-05-21 15:51:39

Re: Problem with Bookends

Post by swilcox »

Yes, I can click the Cancel button to abort the operation. I have both NWP and Bookends window on screen. After canceling, Bookends is fully responsive. It never displays a status (in fact, it never gets to the point where Bookends would typically let me confirm the bibliography style, etc.).

I have not contacted Jon or Sonny Software, since Bookends is working without issue in both Word and Mellel. It is now only NWP that has the problem. And as I say, this problem was not there before -- except, because of my work schedule and the recent addition of the M1 mini, I don't know exactly what "before" is.

I just opened a new, blank document in NWP, inserted a citation (using Cmd-Y, these other commands are working fine between NWP and Bookends, so that communication is not affected), and tried a scan. Again, it says "Preparing ..." (dialog flashes by too fast for me to read), then "Processing in Bookends" and the hang.
swilcox
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Joined: 2006-05-21 15:51:39

Re: Problem with Bookends

Post by swilcox »

I have now posted this issue on the Bookends forum as well. I'll report back anything that I learn there.
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martin
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Re: Problem with Bookends

Post by martin »

Since both Bookends and Nisus Writer remain responsive to you, I might guess that this is perhaps a problem with inter-app communications as facilitated by macOS. Though it doesn't make too much sense for that to be affected by one particular citation or another.

Please let us know if you learn anything from the Bookends side of things. Otherwise I might ask that you collect an Activity Monitor "spindump" while the problem is underway. Here's what you can do:

1. Trigger the problem, where you're waiting endlessly for the scan to complete.
2. Launch Activity Monitor.
3. Click the gear icon in the toolbar and choose "Spindump" from the contextual menu.

spindump.png
spindump.png (88.87 KiB) Viewed 9893 times

That will generate a big report of all activity on your Mac. You can save it as a text file and email it to us at:
Image
swilcox
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Re: Problem with Bookends

Post by swilcox »

i just now sent it. Thanks!
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Sherman
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martin
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Re: Problem with Bookends

Post by martin »

Sherman communicated with us privately about his troubles and we learned two things:

1. Resetting Nisus Writer's sandbox helped alleviate some (but not all) of the problems in using Bookends to scan Nisus documents. This fixed issues where some scans would do basically nothing, with Nisus Writer and Bookends both sitting idle waiting for each other. It appears scan requests were sometimes simply dropped or swallowed by the system's AppleEvent communication channel.

2. As reported in this Zotero forum topic, it appears apps running on Apple Silicon can have trouble with AppleEvents. The problem appears to be triggered in certain situations when one app is running natively on Apple Silicon, but the other app is translated using Rosetta. This is exactly the situation with Nisus Writer and Bookends, as Nisus Writer runs natively on Apple Silicon but Bookends does not. The solution is to force Nisus Writer to run using Rosetta.

Hopefully this information helps anyone who might experience similar scanning issues on new Macs with Apple Silicon.

Thanks to Sherman for all his help and troubleshooting!
swilcox
Posts: 36
Joined: 2006-05-21 15:51:39

Re: Problem with Bookends

Post by swilcox »

Thank you, Martin, for your incredibly helpful tech support. Nisus is such a wonderful tool to use. Your superb tech support is the cherry on top.I also wanted to make it perfectly clear that the problem is with macOS, not Nisus (or Bookends either). Maybe this will get fixed in 11.2.
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