Panorama X getting tired when working hard?

I’ve taken a look at the database you (@isza) sent me. The forms all contain static PICT images that display in Panorama 6 but do not display in Panorama X.

Looking at the very “pixel-y” style of the images, I would guess that they were created at least 20 years ago, perhaps more than 25 years ago, presumably on some long disappeared image editing program.

Apple’s old PICT image format was very complicated, and different programs would sometimes generate images that were incompatible with each other even back in the MacOS 6/7/8/9 days.

As far as both Panorama 6 and X are concerned, PICT images are a black box. Panorama relies on Apple’s code to display the images, and when converting from Panorama 6 to X Panorama relies on Apple’s code to convert the images to the modern image format used by OS X. It appears that most of your images don’t convert. Running under the debugger, I can see that some of these images convert incorrectly, in some cases the result is a negative height or width image.

In general, there is pretty much nothing I can do about this. If Apple can’t read the image, I sure won’t be able to. (You may be thinking “how can these images work with Panorama 6?” Apple kind of has two operating systems crammed into the Mac, Carbon and Cocoa. These two systems have different code for displaying images. The Carbon version can apparently handle these old images, the Cocoa version apparently can’t.)

I wonder if the corrupt images created in this conversion could be the cause of the “getting tired” symptoms you have seen. Maybe Apple’s code is going nuts trying to display corrupted images.

One thing I can do is check the converted image for nonsense, at a minimum I can check to make sure the height and width are > 0. So that should filter out some corrupted images from getting into Panorama X, but I’m not sure if it will catch all of them. I’ve filed a bug report for this.

Perhaps a good idea might be to remove these images on the Panorama 6 side, before you import into Panorama X. Then you can add new images after doing the conversion. (It seems like maybe you are doing something along these lines already.) Perhaps for a more modern look you can create new buttons using the Font Awesome wizard.

Hi Jim,

thanks for checking. I didn’t know the technical background you explain
here but I did suspect the Pano 6 forms as the culprit. Besides, their
conversion into Pano X is pretty useless.
So, meanwhile, I have accepted the idea that I shall have to make the
needed forms anew from scratch in Pano X and started to discard the Pano
6 forms.
With this Pano X now works again vigorously - no more symptoms of
tiredness - the beach balls are gone and everything is fine but for the
work to make again what I have already done many years ago. But I am not
complaining, once I’ve mastered Pano X they will look nicer in the new
version. I’ll take your advice about the buttons using the Font Awesome
wizard.