Inkscape hangs on Export Bitmap or Print

[Andrew Sandford]

Running Win32 version of Inkscape 0.48.2 on Vista (same happens on Win 7)

With the attached file Inkscpae goes off into a not responding state forever it seems when I try to print or Export Bitmap. This happens before the Export Bitmap selection window appears.

Somewhile ago I could both print and Export a Bitmap with this file but this problem has occured more frequently as the file complexity increased.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Not reproduced with Inkscape 0.48.2 on Mac OS X 10.5.8 (i386)

When exporting the page to bitmap, inkscape initially pauses (and uses a lot of system resources), but after about 20 sec, it resumes and the file is exported to bitmap in a breeze.

Possibly duplicate of
 Bug #394228 “inkscape crashes with bad alloc on conversion from svg to png”
 <https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/394228>

The issue - AFAIU - is related to
 Bug #168914 in Inkscape: “Inkscape requires large-config support in libgc”
 <https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/168914> (see comments 11 and 17)

@Alvin - could you test with a recent development build on Windows?

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

- confirmed on Windows, with slightly different behaviour
- on Windows 7, Inkscape 0.48.2, the program hangs when attempting to load the dialog box for Export Bitmap. The dialog box does not load and the program uses about 50% of CPU time and after 2 minutes it says it is "Not Responding"
- on Windows XP, bzr rev 10670, the file will not load. Inkscape hangs and becomes non-responsive after about 2 minutes

[su_v (suv-lp)]

> the program hangs when attempting to load the dialog box for Export Bitmap

Did you have anything selected when opening the dialog? there are huge clipped paths which extend far beyond the clipped area of the page - possibly the hang is actually a delay when calculating the more precise bbox of the clipped object?
Could you test opening the 'Export bitmap' dialog with nothing selected on-canvas?

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

just writing to confirm that nothing was selected.

[Andrew Sandford (andrew-sandford)]

I have tried this various ways. Including opening the file afresh and then clicking Export Bitmap without selecting anything. The Export Bitmap dialogue never comes up (even after 2 hours). When I started to have this problem, sometimes the Export Bitmap dialogue would come up, but if I tried to change between drawing/selection, the same hang up would occur.

I can try one of the non-released versions if there is a Windows install available. The link on the Inkscape download site does not appear to work.

[su_v (suv-lp)]

> just writing to confirm that nothing was selected.

Did you have 'Drawing' selected in the 'Export bitmap' dialog, instead of 'Page'?

IMHO the issue with this file is related to
Bug #719993 “RENDERING_BBOX calculation blocks Inkscape if export dialog is kept open”
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/719993>

Inside a two-level clipped group of the layer 'New Road Map', there are huge stroked paths extending far beyond any area of interest of the currently drawn map. They are so huge, that - after releasing both clips on the parent groups - they cannot even be fully rendered at Inkscape's max zoom level of 1%.

After reducing the paths in that group (deleting those clearly outside the area of interest, and reducing the size of the solid-colored rectangle (fill:#f0eee8), the file opens with reasonable in a current build of trunk (r10672), and only takes a moderate time in Inkscape 0.48.2 to switch between 'Page' and 'Drawing' area for export in the bitmap export dialog.

Beyond that the file has an excessive number of clips - it would be far more efficient to either clip each layer, or group all objects on a layer and then clip the group instead of each of its members individually.

Could you test the attached file on Windows? Note that it might still take a minute or two until the more precise bounding box calculation mode has finished (this affects the export bitmap dialog in stable 0.48.2, and loading the file itself in current trunk).

See also: issue 2 in
<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.inkscape.devel/37154/focus=37156>

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Attaching a second version to test on Windows - this one has many of the individual clips released and replaced by clipping a single group of all objects (per layer) - in addition to the changes described in the prior comment.

In Inkscape 0.48.2, this second modified version of 'mapversion7.svg' is more responsive when opening the 'Export Bitmap' dialog, even if the dialog initially uses 'Drawing' as export area.

AFAICT this setting ('Page' or 'Drawing' as initial area when nothing is selected on-canvas) gets remembered between Inkscape sessions (or at least between calls of the export dialog within the same session), which explains why my initial export went without noticeable issues:
- for 'Page' as export area, there are no time-consuming calculations of the visual bounding box required
- for 'Drawing' or 'Selection' expensive calculations are needed to ensure that all strokes are fully included in the exported bitmap, and no sharp miters get cut off

[su_v (suv-lp)]

> I can try one of the non-released versions if there is a Windows
> install available. The link on the Inkscape download site does
> not appear to work.

Unfortunately, the site 'inkscape.modevia.com' is gone. Until we have a new solution to host development builds for Windows (and Mac OS X), UweSch offered to host the most recent builds on his personal site (the link is also on the official download page at inkscape.org):
<http://www.oss-marketplace.com/index.php/downloads-mainmenu-63/Inkscape/Entwicklerversionen/>

Based on the nature of the issue I doubt you'll get better or faster responses with a current development build (on either platform), since the problem with the visual bounding box calculation currently affects Inkscape itself and is no longer limited to the export bitmap dialog (this will be addressed before the next stable version (0.49) gets released):
<http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.inkscape.devel/37456>

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

the file mapversion7-test2 works well as far as I can tell, on Windows 7, Inkscape 0.48.2. There was a bit of a delay in opening the dialog box, but then both the Page option and the drawing option worked equally well.

[Andrew Sandford (andrew-sandford)]

I tried both versions of the revised files. The first one took about 15 minutes to option the dialogue and a similar time when switching between Page and Drawing selection once the Export Bitmap dialogue opened. Similar times were seen when printing to a PDF print driver.

The second one only took <30 sec to switch, so it seems you are on to the problem.

During these wait periods one of my CPUs was running 100% (I have 4GB of memory BTW). My PC is about 3 years old so not the fastest.

Thanks for you help.

[Buzz (buzz-piersol)]

This bug affects me too 0.48.1 Win 7. Attached is a file. The dialogue box did not come up when I selected one of my diagrams and went to Export (no problems with many files before).

Also, I was able to pull up the export dialogue box with a simple box, but when I reselected one of my bigger diagrams it froze up. Attached is my file.

[David Warren (davideugenewarren)]

I'm encountering the same problem (1-2 minute hang after selecting "Export") using Inkscape 0.48.4 r9939 running on Windows 7. The Export dialog box does eventually appear, and the export itself looks fine.

[Peter Waller (peter.waller)]

I'm encountering this issue with Inkscape 0.48.4 on Linux x86_64 Gentoo.

I attach a stack trace (no line numbers, sorry). It seems to be in Shape::ConvertToShape no matter when I stop it. This stack trace was obtained by trying to export the energy_diagram.svg attached by a previous user. I encountered this bug with my own SVG. My own workaround has been to use "convert" from ImageMagick.

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

- reproduced on Windows 7, Inkscape 0.48.4, using the file energy_diagram.svg. The bitmap export dialog does not appear and Inkscape hangs indefinitely.

- not reproduced on Windows XP, Inkscape rev 12287. Using the options to export Page, and 300 dpi, I get the attached png file, with no delays.

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

just writing to indicate that I still cannot load the file mapversion7.svg from comment 1. Running Inkscape rev 12287 I get numerous messages saying:

WARNING: Requested update while update in progress, counter = 4
WARNING: Requested update while update in progress, counter = 4
WARNING: Requested update while update in progress, counter = 4

and the file fails to load.

[Alvin Penner (apenner)]

withdrawing my previous comment #16. This was based on some patched up code I was using with my own personal changes which caused a problem.
Using Inkscape rev 12287, Windows XP, the file mapversion7.svg from comment 1 loads properly and also exports to png normally using the Page option and 150 dpi.

As far as I can tell, this bug has been fixed in trunk.

[Martin Owens (doctormo)]

Testing all files here, they all can be exported correctly and without error using trunk. I'm marking as Fixed.