Problems after updating to macOS Sierra 10.12.4

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Hi guys,

i have observed that, after updating to macOS Sierra 10.12.4, inline equations have stopped to work. There's no problem with normal equations.

Anybody else with this problem?

Regards,

Diego

My master manual has my entire tree structure/outline is visible on the left side along with references to media. Currently, NONE of my written content is visible. Manuscripts is acting as if the document is completely empty. Exporting a PDF results in a blank document exported. Kind of freaking out a little.

@dcalarcon, @nicholas-gizzi both issues are indeed macOS 10.12.4 induced. Please bear with me, I will work out a fix asap. If you can share a document that is failing to open, that would be very helpful for me to confirm I have indeed addressed the problem.

@mz2 Sent you a link through the chat feature.

I may be experiencing something similar but this time my paper is not showing even though the paragraph sections are still there. There is only a blank page. Even when I export the paper, I get a blank page that only shows the paper title. I tried going back in time to when it was working but only some sections returned, not everything. They also only show when clicking the sections button and not when the system is showing all sections. Not sure what happened. I wonder if the introduction of the new file system on macs has caused this issue or it was the way that your source files are placed in the disk.

Ohhh it seems that also my problem with hidden manuscript is realated to the macos update. My manuscript file keeps a contents but not shows it. I sent to You the affected file. I believe the team can handle that issue. Please. Whole manuscript was ready to submit

Same problem here with entire tree structure/outline visible but unavailable to edit or export. ..will send you example documents in question via chat

Same problem here. I can view my text using ⌘-2 "View, Selected Sections" but the full view is definitely broken.

I am not able to export, locks up and does nothing.

I notice that other documents I am working on do not have this problem. I'm reasonably sure this document was open when the upgrade occurred but the others were closed.

@EtherealMind I did it the same .

@EtherealMind the issue is purely with Apple has introduced some unexpected changes (bugs, really) in a part of an OS provided framework that Manuscripts relies on when it's presenting the content. This OS issue trips up Manuscripts with some documents when it's presenting the content. I am testing an update which resolves this, please bear with us and the update will be with you during tomorrow in the beta channel.

@mz2 The question I really have is "Is my content still there?". If so, I'm more than happy to wait. My assumption is that it is since manuscripts shows a word count in each section as if it is there. Could you please confirm?

I am evaluating manuscript for a new book I am planning to start this summer, and while I find the concept really interesting, (i.e a latex based editor with a very nice guy on top), still the implementation lacks in quality and consistency, for example I am still not able to have the help file appear, I simply get an document that tells me it contains text and figures (as shown the outline) but does not render any of it on screen, This is really disturbing as it could mean that I might loose access to a document. Also moving paragraphs and adding subsections is really difficult.
On the other hand working with equations is a joy.

@Marwan-Darwish To move the paragraphs you can use the outline, but with subsection difficulties I agree. Anyway in my opinion the Manuscripts philosophy is great, but the realisation still should be improved. For now I am getting back to the pure Latex for manuscript preparation. Manuscripts app is still unusable with the bugs. Can not be, that when working on a paper, suddenly you just blocked your manuscript after macos update. That is unacceptable for a serious app. Especially when you have some deadline for submitting.

@nicholas.gizzi According to what they answered to me on Twitter, yes, your content is still there. They are hoping to release a beta package today that could potentially fix this issue.

@Andy-B, @nicholas.gizzi, @Marwan-Darwish indeed, the issue is purely with presentation (macOS 10.12.4 throws a new unexpected wrench in the content loading process). I'm very sorry it's taking us multiple days to ship this, it's just so core to the app that I need to be absolutely sure I don't introduce new issues (and that I indeed make the error reporting at this part of the app launch / document loading more robust so you won't get similar scare of "is the content there" again).

Hi @mz2,
I think it would be terrific if in the future you could test Manuscripts with new beta versions of macOS which are available quite sometime before release to developers like you to prevent situations like this one.
Thanks for you efforts in quickly resolving this!

@hubob I'm sure the current version of Manuscripts was released well before the 10.12.4 betas.

@keirwilliams absolutely, which is why a new version just to ensure compatibility with the OS would have been great

@mz2 Whats happening here. I've been unable to work for 4 days now and I'm pretty much done waiting.

I don't really care why the problem is. I can switch back to Scrivener which has never lost or corrupted my data in six years.

WHATS HAPPENING!

The update is now available here as well as the usual route as an update from the app (currently available to beta users, but assuming this checks out for beta users we will make the update urgently available to all users): https://rink.hockeyapp.net/apps/280aaebd99e1f12edc41b48d909db0c4/app_versions/201

@hubob we indeed routinely test Manuscripts with beta versions of macOS, but we simply did not catch this one as it makes itself visible in a document specific way, because the release notes for the beta versions suggested absolutely no changes to the OS provided components we rely on, and because we were very close to the release of Manuscripts 1.3 which as we've noted on the newsletter will introduce new collaborative annotation functionality. It took a moment for us to readjust our release plans in a form that is safe and unlikely to introduce new issues despite the scale of sudden changes we needed to make.

@EtherealMind I understand your frustration and I very much share it. What happened is that macOS effectively removed a very specific way of removing text from a document that's backed by the WebKit text editing system, and we needed to build a replacement for it (WebKit is embedded inside Safari, Mail, many other applications – but that component was not in many other applications using that specific facility, therefore we were affected in a form that would manifest with some document states that required this feature). This operating system change completely took us by surprise because it was not captured in the OS version specific tests we ran (to be expanded based on what we learned here), and because these changes were to my knowledge entirely undocumented.

How macOS updates have become a thing where entirely undocumented changes that affect 3rd party applications in minor version updates happen, I really don't understand (incidentally there are rather scary changes in iOS 10.3 affecting the filesystem as well that I am glad I am not building functionality against at the moment), especially as macOS 10.12.4 is in large parts a bugfix update that fixes some PDF related functionality that has adversely affected many 3rd party applications!

Goes perhaps without saying but and if you continue to be affected by any issue that causes glitches for you in macOS 10.12.4 still, please let us know asap via support@manuscriptsapp.com, attaching an example document even if you have done so in the past. We are now ready to make very fast action beta releases, it simply took us a while to replace the functionality that macOS took away.

You may also wonder "why did Manuscripts break but this other app X which does similar things was not affected" – different apps use different sets of functionality provided by the OS out of the literally thousands (tens of thousands) of application programming interfaces that Apple provides for us 3rd party developers, and you only observe really the times when something like this goes through everyone's testing out in the open. We were unlucky and unprepared this time, and as noted above we have certainly taken the lessons here on extending the OS prerelease testing we complete, and assuming basal level undocumented changes to macOS happen now at any time without warning.

@mz2 Thank you for taking the time to work on this. As most of us may feel, it was just unfortunate that it wasn't caught during the betas. However, I feel this can also be a good learning lesson for upcoming changes in MacOS. I doubt they will change quite as much as it did now because of the new file system. You did your best to get it fixed.

Thanks again.