Definitely a sync issue. I did a session with 10 cards - 2 wrong and redone. (Progress shows 12 done.) Did something else and came back to do another 10 in the same list. Most of them were the ones I’d just done. Did 10 in another list, finished the session and the sync took about 15 mins to finish.
On reflection at least some of the issue may not even be related to sync problems. Just did two more lots of 10 in the same list and had about half reappear for the third or fourth time.
Looks like my skrittering may be on hold until words I get right stop reappearing.
@Apomixis@apreis what settings are you all on? Regular canvas, raw squigs, rawest squigs? Does changing graphic quality (on Study Settings) to Medium help at all?
Are you waiting for the app to sync before closing it? What settings did you have enabled when the syncs failed. These details are helpful for us trying to figure things out.
Sync taking 15-minutes certainly seems like something was failing during that initial session. @josh will be back at work tomorrow morning and I’m sure he’ll be checking the logs to see if we can dig into things. Thanks for the report and all the detailed info about the graphics quality on both devices. Super helpful!
For me:
iPad Pro Gen 1
iPadOS 14.6
Skritter 3.6.0 300508
(A fairly old device, but still works well with other apps and worked well with Skritter prior to the 3.6 Beta.)
iPhone XR
iOS 14.6
Skritter 3.6.0 300508
Canvas settings are Medium graphics quality, raw squigs. Graphics quality High was unusable, Medium is (subjectively) maybe 90% usable, but definitely degraded performance compared to the non-beta.
I’ve tried completely uninstalling and reinstalling the beta on both devices, but the weird syncing behavior (different Due Card counts) persists.
I’m not seeing the sync delays that @mikemills is (sync speed seems normal), but I am seeing a weird sync behavior that it seems to sync twice when it syncs, and that the Due Card count changes by +/-1 each time. So something is definitely suspicious with syncing and Due Card counts.
Also mildly irritating, despite using Skritter for a minimum of 20-30 min each day for months, my Streak count somehow reset from 288 yesterday to 1 today, despite having done a 30+ minute session this morning!
Super helpful info. If you haven’t send an email to team@skritter.com about some of the sync crazy yet, please do. It’ll help us keep a dialogue going. One thing I am curious about, is there any possibility that the apps were both open at the same time, even if one was running in the background?
No promises, but we might also be able to do something about keeping that streak alive. I just hit 266 today, and I’d hate to lose it as well. Making a note to talk with the rest of the team tomorrow.
I toggled through multiple settings on the beta to see if there was an improvement, but there were no changes in the rendering issue (mentioned in a prior post). I use rawest squigs and have attached my non-beta settings (which I had also manually set up on the beta since it doesn’t remember them all).
I always wait to allow the “spinning arrow” to finish before shutting down the app, so there were no sync problems that I saw, but when I went back to the production app, it was obvious that the beta’s review data was not used by my production app.
Production app settings…same ones I set up for beta
Quick morning update. I did some testing on my iPad this morning using rawest squigs and something funky is certainly going on. First 100 card session saved no problem. Second 100 cards also saved. My third batch of reviews (166 cards total) did not save to the server. I saw a white screen before the Review Report and also noticed some performance lag during the session.
I’m checking both the Progress screens and Goals (in-app) and that is where I’m seeing the items not saving.
Will continue to dig into this with Michael and Josh and see what we can uncover. At this point, I suspect the sync issue is somehow related to raw/rawest writing modes (and perhaps High quality graphics). Gonna have to run the gauntlet on a lot of different things. Given that I’ve cleared thousands of reviews on the snapping strokes on these builds, this is the only thing I can think of at the moment. Also seems to line up with the reports you all are mentioning in this thread.
If you’re willing to do some testing with snapping strokes, I’d say you should be good to carry on using the current build. If you’re a raw/rawest for life kinda person, then I would 100% hold off on using the beta until I can provide a better update. Good news is, I’m seeing similar issues, and now it’s just about figuring out the fix.
Not having sync problems though. No loss of cards or discrepancies in stats.
However visual lags are frequent between cards. In review, there is a shudder (animation delay) in the writing and tone cards, and in learn mode, a regular blank screen for a second or two between cards, long enough for me to snap a pic of it.
In review, occasionally suddenly getting a blank screen part-way through a list, then it reverts to the review results page, although the review is incomplete. Have to start over.
I had to turn graphics from high to medium to prevent the app from stalling then totally crashing after these blank screens in review.
However medium quality did not prevent all the other problems listed above.
Current IOS update, IPhone 8+, settings at raw squigs, fast animation, and 0.5 seconds between cards.
I’ve also reported all this via the Beta app mechanism.
Quick update. Raw/rawest squigs are all get cached locally right now, and it’s 99% the reason these things are happening—it’s taking up crazy amounts of memory and if the batch of cards gets too large (which is totally relative depending on device and total available memory) it’ll start failing.
Got a branch open now and will be working on a fix! Until we patch you can go to snapping strokes and it should speed thing up considerably and also not fail to submit reviews.
Improved performance of raw/rawest squigs canvas settings
We’re rolling this out as we speak. This update will address lag and sync issues for raw/rawest squigs modes. You should no longer see performance hits as you’re studying and the sync failures related to the canvas issue should be patched up.
Unlike this morning where I was not able to get through a 50 card writing session without the app failing to sync, this build was able to go the distance on everything I could throw at it.
Note: This update will temporarily disable goal alerts during study sessions. It is a regression based on the optimizations made, but it’s getting late and devs to get some rest!
Thanks guys. The sync issues seem to be fixed. Performance issues are still there - though not as bad as before. Certainly on medium graphics it’s quite usable.
@Apomixis I know you’re an iPad guy so I wanted to share something I learned today while messing around with Apple Pencil 2 settings. I turned off “Scribble” from the Apple Pencil options on the iPad and it significantly improved the ability to fly through prompts and taps in the app.
This isn’t directly related to the 3.6.0 release, but it is a night and day difference in the Apple Pencil experience on the new (and old) canvas.
We are looking to see if there is a way to disable Scribble in general in the app since lots of other devs are talking about it, but we’re not there yet.
@SkritterJake I’ve had to disable Scribble in my settings because of weird behaviors in both Skritter and Pleco. I turn Scribble back on if I need it (such as for a note-writing app), but it “plays badly” with a lot of writing input areas. If the writing area supports both tap gestures AND also allows writing on the same input area, Scribble can get “confused”. It seems that if the scribble gestures are on, and you tap on the dual-use writing area, scribble needs to think about whether or not you intended to tap or if you were trying to draw, and that results in a delay that’s quite noticeable.
Yup. It is a common thread we’re seeing on dev forums about Apple Pencil. I updated our Docs support on stylus settings to include the recommendation. Glad you’ve already found the fix! It really does make a huge difference. Testing on some HSK 1 writing cards today I was able to shave 10 seconds of study time of 10 writing cards by not having Scribble on.
In beta news, we’ve got some more canvas improvements in the works and once we’ve tested them out internally we’ll push a build. Would love for you to give things another go once we’re at that stage!
@SkritterJake 300510 is fantastic! No issues at all on my iPad at High graphics quality.
BTW: what does the Writing Canvas “Animation speed” setting do? If using Rawest Squigs, does this setting apply to anything? It doesn’t gray-out or hide, so I’m curious what it controls.
Good question and it does not do anything when a raw/rawest squig option is enabled. I’ll make sure that setting is hidden when either of those are enabled to avoid confusion. Thanks for pointing it out!
