Very slow script performance under Mojave

[Jostify]

Hi

When testing two of my Indesign scripting solutions that up till now have been running on old Mac Minis with Mac OS Sierra, on brand new Mac Minis with Mac OS Mojave, it turns out script performance is much slower on the new machine when targeting invisible documents.

I can conclude that the complicated operations these scripts performed takes almost twice the time on the new machines with Mojave! Well, that is if the script is opening documents opened in invisible mode (that is, without showing the window). When running the same scripts with visible documents the result is more reasonable: the new machine is around 20-30 percent faster.

These scripts is run as two different standalone Applescript applications. One processes xml-structured text, the other is duplicating and moving around page items. They normally do so with documents invisible. This normally makes processing about twice as fast – but now, in Mojave, it does’t seem to make any big difference if the window is shown or not.

So this seems to be a problem with Indesign scripting in conjunction with macOS Mojave. The new machine is certainly much faster than the old one – including running other applescripts – but clearly not with these script operations targeting invisible Indesign documents.

So my questions are, of course: How come? And more importantly: wiill Adobe fix it?

Facts about the comparison:

• I have made the tests with both InDesign CC 2017 and InDesign CC 2019 (no notable difference in performance between this versions om either OS).

• The old machine here is a Mac Mini 2014 dual core 3 GHz i7 (SSD and 16 GB1600 MHz DDR3), running Mac OS 10.12.6.

• The new one is Mac mini 2018 six core 3 GHz i5 (SSD, 8 GB 2667 MHz DDR4), running Mac OS 10.14.4.

[Laubender]

Hi Jostify ,

seeing the specs of your new machine, don't you think it's a bit underpowered with RAM size?

Regards,
Uwe

[Jostify]

Thanks for your input, @Uwe. But RAM is not the issue here.

The point is that Indesign performance is so much lower than expected with the document windows invisible under Mojave. I will post a comparison here in a minute. (For sure, RAM is lower than it should be in real production, but it was enough for thee isolated tests. Physical RAM was not consumed, and in any case low RAM cannot explain the issue here)

[Jostify]

As I explained in my answer to Laubender​, Uwe, RAM is not the issue here.

The point here is the performance difference between processing an document in visible window versus invisible window on the same machine. The "invisible mode" usually takes less then half the time – but that is not the case at all with Mojave.

Below are some testresults to illustrate my point.

Test facts:

• Computer 1: Macbook pro 2013, quad core 2 Ghz i7 (SSD, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3), running Mac OS 10.13.6 High Sierra

• Computer 2: Mac mini 2018, six core 3 GHz i5 (SSD, 8 GB 2667 MHz DDR4), running Mac OS 10.14.4 Mojave

• Indesign version: 14.0.1.209 (CC 2019)

• Test description: Running a standalone applescript applet – that manipulates text content, step by step to make it fit in textframes in a document by processing its xml-structure according to predefined rules – with invisible document window compared to visible document window.

Test results (timescale in minutes:seconds):

Computer 1 (High Sierra):

Visible window:  9:38

Invisible window: 4:38 (48 % of the time compared to visible window)

Computer 2 (Mojave):

Visible windows:  7:17

Invisible window: 6:09 (84,5 % of the time compared to visible window)

So, with the window visible the performance result with Mojave is fully reasonable (it's faster than the older machine). But with the window invisible, on the same machine, the process is only slightly faster. It's even strikingly slower than on the older machine running High Sierra.

This does not only apply to the very process tested above. Another script solution we use, that works with copying and moving page objects in a document (not processing xml at all), is affected in the same way.

In the test above the older OS was represented by High Sierra. But the relationship between performance time in visible versus invisible mode are the same on different machines running MacOS 10.9, 10.10, 10.11, 10.12 and 10.13: ”Invisible mode” cuts the process time to less than half. The very much smaller difference between these "modes! in Mojave is striking.

This is very bad news to our company, that relies heavily on this kind of performance dependent processing and we need to invest in new client machines. So I would really appreciate if Adobe could comment on this.

[Laubender]

Jostify  wrote

…So I would really appreciate if Adobe could comment on this.

Hm. Then I would do a bug report here:

Adobe InDesign Feedback

Come back with the URL of your report so that others could vote as well.

Thanks,
Uwe

[Jostify]

Thanks, Uwe. I'll do that!

[Jostify]

Here is my bug report at Adobe: Script performance with invisible documents on Mojave – Adobe InDesign Feedback

Please vote for it if you also find this issue urgent.