Large font sizes crashes/freezes program

[S2454378]

If you write some text with the Text tool and resize it to a very large
number, it often crashes or becomes unresponsive for some period of time.
Sometimes the program prevents the user from resizing to a number larger
than 144, but other times it doesn’t. This can result in a total loss of
work when you are just experimenting with font size.

[Buliabyak-users (buliabyak-users)]

Originator: NO

we really need reproducible 1-2-3 steps to crash it

as well as your version of inkscape, and please try a devel build if
possible

[Ozmikepittman (ozmikepittman)]

Originator: NO

I have a problem very similar to this, with a repeatable scenario.

This works predictably on Windows in either Inkscape 0.45.1 or Inkscape
0.46 Dev Nov 1, 2007. Currently using GTK 2.10.13, but this was upgraded
after the crash was already happening in a previous version, as I suspected
that might be related.

Here's the steps;

1. Start Inkscape with a fresh document. Click on the text tool and type
some text; eg: "just testing" (no quotes necessary)
2. Set the fill to nothing, stroke to black, and stroke style to dashes
(the tenth dash type was what I experimented with, but I think it's all
dash types)
3. Click on the text with the select tool and muck around with resizing.
4. After a few moments the program locks up. Click on the window anywhere
and Windows displays "(Not Responding)" in the title bar.

Notes:
a. I didn't seem to have the problem at all until I set the text to dashed
stroke.
b. If I converted the text to a path, it had absolutely no problem at
all.
c. It also seems to happen more quickly if you select the text and then
duplicate (Ctrl-D) and then resize. Seems to like dash stroked text even
less when it is over other text.
d. In case you suspect the font, this occurred predictably with both the
free cafecoco font - (http://www.lollibomb.com/download/win/cafecoco.zip)
and also the commercial Goudy Stout, so I don't think we can blame this on
fonts.

[Tom Davidson (tjd-mit)]

Given the messed-up state of the font toolbar size selection entry box ( bug 168917 ), this is much easier to reproducibly trigger using the 'Text and Font' dialog box. You don't even have to create any text, since the sample text in the dialog box triggers the problem:

1) New document
2) Ctrl-Shift-T
3) Enter a large # for the font size.
As get past about 10,000, it slows down:

5: instant update
55: instant update
555: instant update
5555: 1s delay
55555: 8s delay, CPU pinned to 100%
555555: CPU -> 100%, after about 30s, memory usage starts to creep up. When it finally hits the memory ceiling (I have 3GB, so this takes a while), Inkscape segfaults.

[Tom Davidson (tjd-mit)]

Sorry meant to say: this is confirmed on SVN rev 16978 from Jan 7

[bbyak (buliabyak)]

what if i just set an upper limit of 10000 on the font size? don't think it will be too limiting in practice

[Tom Davidson (tjd-mit)]

Sure: 10000 px = 3.5 m. That certainly would be better than being able to
crash inkscape by accidentally mashing on the numpad...

One idea would be to only limit what font sizes can be set from the Inkscape
UI. That way if really needed big fonts, they could edit the XML, and
inkscape would still try to render it...

On Jan 27, 2008 4:27 PM, bbyak <email address hidden> wrote:

> what if i just set an upper limit of 10000 on the font size? don't think
> it will be too limiting in practice
>
> --
> Large font sizes crashes/freezes program
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/169057
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of Inkscape
> Bug Team, which is the bug contact for Inkscape.
>

[bbyak (buliabyak)]

fixed in rev 17206