WP43 News

[Over_score]

Alternately, maybe the site owners can disable pdf file render/preview?

I found nothing like that
A workaround could be to having bigger files!

[Walter]

Would you consider uploading new versions of the WP43S manuals to gitlab in .zip format (i.e. put the .pdf file into a zip)?

In order to download the manuals from the site, gitlab insists on downloading and rendering the complete pdf file in it's browser/viewer before enabling the download button, and for manuals this large, it takes many minutes and virtually locks-up the browser (I've tried both Firefox and Edge/Chromium) until it's done.

We suffer from the same gitlab 'feature' - we can't update and replace files before the rendering's finished. Thus, if we had found something to circumvent this, we'd applied it. Alas we didn't so far.

@Jaco: Three kids are a challenge obviously, especially with two bearing so close names

[akaTB]

@Jaco: Three kids are a challenge obviously, especially with two bearing so close names

It's the father who named them...

[Walter]

@Jaco: Three kids are a challenge obviously, especially with two bearing so close names

It's the father who named them...

I knew it's all my fault - but now they are called this way ...

[rprosperi]

We suffer from the same gitlab 'feature' - we can't update and replace files before the rendering's finished. Thus, if we had found something to circumvent this, we'd applied it. Alas we didn't so far.

Well, at least I'm relieved to find out that it's not just me...

I don't know much at all about gitlab, WP43S is my only exposure to it, but I would assume if you zipped the .pdf files then you would not have the problem uploading and we wouldn't downloading, right? Or does gitlab not allow .zip files, or (even worse) does it read the contents of a .zip and extract them to make it 'easier' for folks to preview it?

Although your manuals are indeed complex, they are not tremendously huge, and I would not expect that these files would choke gitlab to the point of making it nearly unusable. Perhaps the rich, complex content is a challenge for the rendering/preview tools gitlab uses, which may have assumed most folks would use simple documents or code listings?

[rprosperi]

Alternately, maybe the site owners can disable pdf file render/preview?

I found nothing like that
A workaround could be to having bigger files!

Thanks Over_score. It's revealing. It means they are aware of the problem, and basically bail out at some cut-off point (10MB) rather than solve the problem properly by letting you choose to download without a preview. Shows limited vision for what I'd otherwise expect to be a bunch of smart folks.

[dlachieze]

In order to download the manuals from the site, gitlab insists on downloading and rendering the complete pdf file in it's browser/viewer before enabling the download button, and for manuals this large, it takes many minutes and virtually locks-up the browser (I've tried both Firefox and Edge/Chromium) until it's done.

I've tried to download the latest manuals and while gitlab is loading and waiting for rendering the document, the download button is active under Firefox for me and I was able to download the two manuals without having to wait for the rendering to be completed.

Not ideal but much faster than just waiting for the rendering to be done.

download.png (18.35 KiB) Viewed 4598 times

[H2X]

Code: Select all

git clone https://gitlab.com/Over_score/wp43s.git

is also an option. You'd get all of the code, which you may not need. And you have to install git, but I find git useful for much more than code - it's a really nice way to keep versions of other files as well.

[rprosperi]

I've tried to download the latest manuals and while gitlab is loading and waiting for rendering the document, the download button is active under Firefox for me and I was able to download the two manuals without having to wait for the rendering to be completed.

Not ideal but much faster than just waiting for the rendering to be done.

Interesting Didier, thanks for testing and this post. It definitely was NOT available to me until the render was complete (using 100% of available system RAM, slowing the system to a crawl, freezing the mouse cursor for 20-30 secs at a time, close to a full lock-up). I even rebooted and started the full procedure from scratch, same result. As noted, after starting the render, FF noticed the process was taking "a long time" so it offered to either let it continue or abort; if I choose abort, I can then click on download and it works OK.

Are you using FF on Windows? Win-10? I'm still using Win-7 on that machine, but I would not expect this to make a difference.

In any case, it seems using .zip files avoids all these issues.

Installing git is not an option for me, certainly overkill for this relatively small issue, but thanks for suggesting another solution.

[Nigel (UK)]

Here's another approach that works for me. I go into the Draft Documentation folder and there's a little download icon, just to the left of the Clone button. Clicking this gives me the option to download the directory contents as a zip file.

I can't see how to download individual files this way, but this is possibly better than having to preview each file first.

Nigel (UK)