[OS X TeX] Problem with cocoAspell in Tiger

[Bruno Voisin]

Today I've attempted for the first time to use cocoAspell seriously,  
on OS X 10.4.1. The selected dictionary was UK English with -ize  
terminations and Continental accents, and HTML and TeX filtering on.

Alas: as I was entering text in a TeXShop editing window, the fans of  
my PowerBook started spinning continuously, and I realized in  
Activity Monitor that cocoAspell was using between 80 and 90 % of the  
CPU. Quitting TeXShop normally didn't work: the editing window closed  
OK, but then the preview window didn't and the pointer turned into  
the multicolor spinning icon, and the app froze and I had to force- 
quit. I terminated cocoAspell afterwards in Activity Monitor. But  
then in Mail every keystroke in an editing window repeated the same  
behaviour, and I finally had to select the OS X English dictionary  
instead.

More generally I must say I'm really unimpressed by Tiger and I  
fairly regret having installed it:

- Now that I have started reading and writing email in Tiger, I can  
no longer transfer my mailboxes to another Mac still in Jaguar or  
Tiger, should I need to work on that Mac for a few days (as will  
happen in a couple of weeks when my PowerBook will be back to  
AppleCare for AirPort card diagnostic and replacement). Or that will  
mean some conversion process that I don't have time to perform.

- There are just too many freezes (the multicolor spinning icon  
again) too often and for no reason; actually, that's generally no  
real freezes but some background process taking lots of time to  
complete (up to 5 or 10 minutes say, on a 1GHz 1MB PowerBook). Also,  
some editing operations are often taking lots of time for no reason;  
for example, pasting a small piece of plain text (two or three words)  
in a Mail editing window (I've set up plain text as the default) can  
take up to 30 seconds. I suppose this is all linked with SpotLight.

- Similarly display of the content of the TeXShop preview window is  
often very slow. That happens especially with XeTeX output, and at  
specific places: for example when reaching an equation in Lucida  
inside an Optima text flow.

- And bugs bugs bugs all over the place. Like plain text messages or  
fragments being displayed or pasted suddenly as RTF in Mail. Or the  
vertical scrollbar being displayed incorrectly on some occasions in  
Safari (two of this long blue thing -- don't know how it's called in  
English, maybe cursor -- displayed together and partly overlapping  
each other)  . Or the vertical scrollbar becoming unresponsive on  
other occasions. And that's just the few examples that come  
immediately to mind.

Rant mode off for now,

Bruno Voisin
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