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vkbo / novelWriter

novelWriter is an open source plain text editor designed for writing novels. It supports a minimal markdown-like syntax for formatting text. It is written with Python 3 (3.9+) and Qt 5 (5.15) for cross-platform support.
https://novelwriter.io
GNU General Public License v3.0
2.1k stars 111 forks source link

Intermittent flickering #2019

Open lverona opened 1 month ago

lverona commented 1 month ago

Dear Veronica!

Using novelWriter on Linux, Xubuntu (XFCE). From time to time the app with flash.

The effect seems to be purely visual, the functionality of the app is in no way disrupted. Flashing will occur both when I'm writing and when the app is idle.

At the same time, it doesn't happen all the time. Sometimes it will begin happening frequently, sometimes it won't happen at all. I wasn't able to correlate it to anything else on the laptop, but I don't have anything crazy running anyway, just your normal browser or a music player or whatnot.

lverona commented 1 month ago

Oh, a quick addition: the flashing is not too disruptive. I'm fine if it's not fixed. But I wasn't able to find anyone else reporting it, so wanted to let you know that this is happening, at least for some people.

vkbo commented 1 month ago

This would be on the Qt library level then, and probably an issue between Qt and the graphics driver if I am to judge by some of the results I found when searching.

In either case, novelWriter does not control any of the rendering processes here, so there is nothing I can do on my end, that I'm aware of.

Do you have any other Qt based apps you can test with?

lverona commented 1 month ago

I'll take a look, I might have some. But haven't seen such flashing with other apps.

vkbo commented 1 month ago

novelWriter still runs on Qt5, and there are known issues with Qt5 and Wayland. I'm upgrading to Qt6 soon, but I'm waiting as long as possible as many still active distro LTS releases are stuck on Qt5.

While searching for Qt and flickering, I've come across several mentions of nvidia drivers. What graphics card are you using?

lverona commented 1 month ago

Ah, I should've said "flickering" and not flashing, definitely a more accurate term.

Right now at work, will come back to you with details later in the day 🙏

lverona commented 1 month ago

I am on Lenovo X1 Carbon. The lspci -nnk | grep VGA -A1 command gives me:

VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:9a49] (rev 01) Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:22d5]

Specs say "Intel® Iris® Xe Graphics".

I tried searching for other Qt apps, but I as far as I am aware, it's the only one.

I am using it now, by the way, and there is no flickering whatsoever. So weird.

vkbo commented 1 month ago

The issues reports I saw elsewhere also said it was coming and going. I don't think I can do anything to fix it on my end other than hoping upgrading to Qt6 will resolve it.