ckeditor crashes(freezes) when copy-paste html code in source mode

[Eleanna]

Hello everybody!
We are building a multilingual site in ELXIS 4.5.
When we copy  html code from an object(article,category) of the old site and try to paste it to the source code of the new one as a translation,ckeditor freezes and we are not able to save the translation nor the whole article except from "cancel"(ακύρωση) in ELXIS Admin page.
Note that this problem occurs only for the translation language and not the default language.

We also noticed that it does not occur on PCs running Win 7, but it does happen on PCs running Win 8.1 and above.

The problem also occurs in both firefox and Chrome and Firefox is up to date!

Has anyone faced a similar problem ?

Any ideas-suggestions are mostly welcome.

Thank you in advance

[nikos]

If  the old site is an Elxis 200X.x version, instead to make copy paste article by article to the new one version 4.5 is much better to try the Elxis Converter tool for which information how to use it and what it converts, you can see here.

[Eleanna]

Thanks a lot Nikos, we've already successfully run elxis converter for the greek content!! As we mention above, the problem (freezing) occurs only on source code for the translations and not the content of the default language.

[datahell]

I think it is a matter of RAM, not operating system or browser (although some browsers make better use of memory than others). Close whatever you dont use and browser tabs you dont needs and re-try. When you copy formatted HTML text the editor runs special plugin to handle this action which is CPU consuming. If you cant find a solution turn both editors in HTML mode and copy-paste source html code.

Note: Elxis Converter SUPPORTS conversion of multilingual items. See Nikos help link.

Taken from Elxis Converter instructions: "Multilingual content items, autonomous pages and menu items are converted to Elxis 4.x translation items."

[Eleanna]

Thanks Datahell, we have tried closing every tab and keeping only the 2 necessary (admin page of the two sites), but with no result. The funny thing is that my pc, which runs win7 with 2 gb RAM has no prob, whereas another pc, running win10 with 4gb RAM has the problem! We tried in win8.1, again we had problem. We tried 2 other pcs with win10, problem. We tried another pc (not mine) running win7, no problem!!! It's funny, isn't it? I think that someone is laughing at us!!

By the way, we read your article before running the converter (to be exact, I had it printed - when I generally do not print), so that I am absolutely confident that I understand what I'm about to do and I had read the relevant topics and various problems others faced before attempting anything, so that I don't do the same mistakes. So I marked what had meaning for us and I quote:
"This option has effect only on sites with content in multiple languages.

If you select Yes, content for all languages will be mixed to the final output. For instance if you have in mainmenu a menu item named "Home" in English and an other menu item named "Αρχική" in Greek in the final result both "Home" and "Αρχική" will be shown for English and for Greek! The same will happen for categories, articles, etc. If you have content in more than 2 languages the mess will become even bigger. Choose this option only if you absolutely understand what it means and you want to do something custom.

Instead of selecting Yes, if you select No, then only content for the main, or all, language will be converted and at a later step you will be able to convert the rest content as translations of the content in the default language.

I cant analyze it more, it is a long discussion that derives from the different multilinguism philosophy of Elxis 200x.x and Elxis 4.x, but I think you got the idea."

Our multilingual content falls into that category... There is no connection between articles and translations. They are completely different articles belonging to completely different categories, published in 3 different languages.

Of course, that option was considered in the beginning and just to give you an idea of our frustration, even if you have your article in greek, english, french and for some reason you want to copy sth from the greek source code to the english and french, the greek source code button works, but for the english and the french it freezes!!! That means, that even if the converter did work and somehow managed to link our articles from 3 different languages to one article with 3 translations, we still couldn't copy paste from source code to source code. And in case anyone is wondering about the steps taken, we open the description tab, click source, ctrl+C a phrase, click the source, select english, click source, select phrase, ctrl+V, click source and....freeze!

[nikos]

Eleanna try to do it again on a last version Firefox (currently 52.0.1) without Add-ons and I suggest you on Windows 7 PC, which works without problem as you say, to upgrade RAM from 2 GB to 4 GB.

[Eleanna]

We do realize that we can not rollback win10 to win7, right?! Of course I don't intend to change my pc, which is working fine! The problem is my colleagues' pcs which are win 8.1 and win10 respectively!!! They have the problem (along with any other win10 pc we tried) and we have already checked if the firefox is up to date (btw no browser issue because we tried chrome and edge also), if there are any issues with the javascript (but ckeditor in general does work), gmelis (you know Gerasimos..!) suggested update the vga driver, we tried that also, no luck!! If it was not working on my pc, I swear, I would ask gmelis to help and to double check the apache or sth. But it does work on win7 (both mine and another pc)! This is the only difference in our pcs. I thought of the antivirus also, again, we have the same antivirus! No difference, but the OS. It really bugs me!!!
The last thing I could think of, is whether the ckeditor could take an update. What if there is an issue with win10, which is fixed with a later version of ckeditor? Could we update the version of ckeditor and if yes, how? As I checked, the version of our ckeditor in elxis 4.5 is 4.5.6 (I checked in the morning, I'm not so sure that I remember correctly) and now is 4.6.2?
Datahell, do you think that that could worth a try? Or is it irrelevant?

[datahell]

Ooops, we have a XY problem

I believe you are looking to the wrong direction. The operating system is not the problem. You copy-paste formatted text which is, from the begging, a bad idea. It is like those copying text from MS Word and paste it in Elxis (BTW there is a special editor plugin for that). My advise is to copy the html source code (turn editor in html mode). If you do it you will have 0 problems.

Tip: You can perform some testing. Copy - paste a few words. Does the editor freezes? If not, copy paste more. Then copy-paste a whole paragraph. Continue like this to find out when the editor freezes. If you find the spot check original texts html in that spot to see what it is there that makes ckeditor freezing (it could be even a non accessible source item, media items, javascript, invalid code,etc).

[Eleanna]

Datahell if only that was the problem!!!!!!!!
We do NOT copy paste formatted text. We copy paste ONLY html, from html code (Elxis 2009.3) to source code (Elxis 4.5). We NEVER, EVER, EVER copy text from word. It is an ABSOLUTE rule, no exceptions, even if the editor provides the button.
We have already tried the size! No matter if the phrase that we copy (with ctrl+C and ctrl+V, NO right click) is small (e.g. /media/images/categories in the src of an image) or big (a full text with paragraphs), as soon as you leave the source mode to return to WYSIWYG, the ckeditor freezes. At that exact moment. And only for the translation! NOT the default language. The source freezes when you exit source mode, NOT when you enter. And that happens on win 8.1 and win10, but not win7!!!
I already checked the forums for ckeditor, there was an issue at the exact point that I mention, but they said it is fixed since version 4.5.2.
Now, given the fact that it does not happen for the default language, the source toggle there is working fine, but the problem occurs only in the translation, what could it be?

[Eleanna]

By the way, I loved your post for the XY problem, actually I ran into it this morning, I printed it (!!! despite the fact that I rarely print) and posted it next to my desk!!! I've loved it!!
But here, that is not the case! I specifically described the actual problem (freezing) and the steps I took. I never even said that I pasted formatted text!! And I never asked for a different solution from the problem!!

[rentasite]

We do NOT copy paste formatted text. We copy paste ONLY html, from html code (Elxis 2009.3) to source code (Elxis 4.5).

HTML is formatted text also

[Eleanna]

Thanks for your reply rentasite... Very helpful to the problem... Datahell suggested "My advise is to copy the html source code (turn editor in html mode). If you do it you will have 0 problems." This is what we've done from the very beginning. No more comments on that...

And this is the problem:
"as soon as you leave the source mode to return to WYSIWYG, the ckeditor freezes. At that exact moment. And only for the translation! NOT the default language. The source freezes when you exit source mode, NOT when you enter. And that happens on win 8.1 and win10, but not win7!!!
I already checked the forums for ckeditor, there was an issue at the exact point that I mention, but they said it is fixed since version 4.5.2."
Please, please,  any suggestion to THAT?

P.S. link to ckeditor http://ckeditor.com/blog/CKEditor-4.5.2-Released , at the second paragraph, under browser specific you can find this: "Among the fixed issues were various “permission denied” errors or browser crashes when switching from source mode to WYSIWYG. The latter issue was actually debugged and fixed by Andrew Williams and Mark Smeed "
So, the problem did exist, they faced it (it's not in my imagination...).

[nikos]

... And that happens on win 8.1 and win10, but not win7!!!...

So use only Windows 7 and continue your work without to care about the rest windows versions.

[Eleanna]

Dear Nikos, I'm speechless... I really am.

Before posting to the forum, I tried everything you suggested, so that to be sure that I did what I could from my behalf. I did this because I respect your time and your efforts and because I think that nobody is obliged to help me. I set the problem, I described the steps I took and I presented the results of my search. If you think that I might be looking the wrong direction, you can point the right one. Since you do not point to any direction, I will continue trying to find the solution by myself.

Thank you all very much for your time anyway.

[Eleanna]

Hello everybody,

The problem was identified by entering debug code in ckeditor.js

During language switching, the editor object becomes detached from "this", whatever this may be (see Screenshot)

this.editor (a = this.editor) is assigned to the variable "a" and somewhere the control is lost and this results in uncatchable "a is not defined".

Although the this.editor is missing, the status = "detached" (green arrow) remains.

This can be fixed with a page refresh, as obviously something is left in memory.

Suggestion: Should there be a reassigning of the object editor to "this" during the language switching?

For the record, the CKEDITOR object remains active in the DOM.