Pluma freezes constantly

Support & Help Requests
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#1

Note I use Ubuntu Budgie 20.10, not Mate, but Pluma has been my favourite text editor, I love it, tried others but I know I want Pluma and nothing else.

Since a few months, perhaps since I updated to 20.10 (but can't be certain), Pluma just freezes up to 10-15 seconds while I am typing. It happens with 1 file open or multiple tabs, while switching between tabs or just while typing. It is extremely annoying.
It does not happen with any other program, it is really only pluma. I can open the same files in another editor and it does not freeze.

Hope this is a known issue.. because I am clueless how to debug this.

#2

@zilexa, welcome to the forum. It's good to have you here.

How large files are we talking about? More importantly, how long are the lines you type on? In my experience, even on relatively new hardware I can stall Pluma up after typing 2500 characters on one line without line breaks; every time Pluma (actually its underlying library, GtkSourceView) draws a new character or even redraws the text cursor, the library redraws the entire line of text and sometimes the entire page and a half extra. It's stupid I know, it's a long-standing issue, but I haven't gotten around to helping to fix it yet.

Either way, that's not necessarily the cause of the trouble. I ask you to install GEdit and tell us if the problem appears also in GEdit. If so, then it's a GtkSourceView problem. If not, it's either a Pluma problem, or it could be that GtkSourceView 4 solved the problem (confusingly, until a few weeks ago, Pluma used the long-unmaintained GtkSourceView 3, while GEdit used GtkSourceView 4).

Finally, run whatever your System Monitor / Task Manager program might be under Budgie and see if when Pluma stalls up, the CPU usage goes through the roof, or if it stays relatively flat.

Thanks in advance for the extra information.

#3

Actually it doesn't matter if the file has 5 lines, 50 or 500. The behaviour is the same. Funny I just notices when it freezes, you can still move the window of Pluma with the mouse.

As soon as you move the window, you can type again! Also, it seems to happen mostly a few seconds after a file has been opened or few seconds after an open Pluma window has gotten focus, right when you want to start typing.