[GraemeJ]

I just tried that file and it loaded instantly. I also don't see any problems with the Quality rendering option.  If I switch to "Speed", it renders without chords as you showed in your second screenshot.  If you switch to quality and you still don't see chords, that means that the quality PDF rendering library is corrupted, and it's falling back to the "speed" option.  It doesn't sound like this is the case though. Can you try updating to v1.5.3 and see if this fixes anything?  Also, just to verify, were you running v1.5.0 before you updated to v1.5.2?

Turns out the problem with the Speed option and those PDFs not rendering correctly was introduced in v1.5.1. I messed up some of the fonts stuff in the PDF library. Once I reverted this, everything showed up correctly again. I'll include the fixes in the next update.

1 - I can switch back and forth between the two render modes and get the reported problem.  It's not falling back to one mode or the other.

2 - I updated to 1.53, makes no difference.

3 - I was running 1.50 before.

4 - Looks like you have already nailed the root cause of the problem.

I shall be interested to see if whatever changes you are about to make will also solve the slow loading problem that I have been seeing since 1.52.  Currently, I wouldn't like to be running MSP in a live show.