Windows Dev Build Feb 26 08 - improvements and problems...
Hi,
Just writing with some experiences of the latest Dev build for windows.
1. It seems to be rendering a bit faster lately. Probably due to Bob's hard work with dll's and the latest Cairo. Thanks!
2. PDF output seems to be doing gradients and transparency quite well (as vector art not raster), which is great :-D, but still not blurs :-((. Again probably due to Cairo improvements. Getting close!
3. The windows dialogues have kicked in I notice. Trying to view a thumbnail causes a crash on my system. I also miss the GTK ability to store your own folder shortcuts on the side. Have to find some windows program to do that!
4. With the windows dialogues (or perhaps related to Alexandre's changes - see http://www.nabble.com/Regarding-WMF%2C-PS-based-AI%2C-SK-and-FIG-files-suppo... here ) the saving sequence seems to be messed up.
4a. If I select save as PDF via Cairo, it goes for the selection immediately below, which is PS. If I select EMF, it saves it as POV. Whatever I want, I have to go for the one above, but you can't now re-select Inkscape SVG. Always one step below, unless I just hit save, which does whatever was last without problem.
4b There's a weird loop going on when saving, which I think is related to the bug above. See my comment at step 4 below. 1. Save something as an Inkscape SVG (default). 2. Save as PDF or whatever else. 3. Save again as Inkscape SVG and try to close Inkscape. 4. Inkscape complains 'The file "{filename.svg}" was saved in a format that may cause data loss! Do you want to save the file as an Inkscape SVG?' options - Close Without Saving, Cancel, Save as SVG. (I think this is caused because now when you select Save As -> Inkscape SVG, you're actually choosing Plain SVG (the one below), which Inkscape thinks will cause data loss). 5. Click ' Save as SVG' 6. Back to step 3 and infinite loop - must select 'Close Without Saving' to escape the loop.
Obviously some good steps forward have been made, but a few minor problems have crept in.
I hope this is helpful.
Rygle.
rygle wrote:
If I select save as PDF via Cairo, it goes for the selection immediately below, which is PS. If I select EMF, it saves it as POV. Whatever I want, I have to go for the one above, but you can't now re-select Inkscape SVG. Always one step below, unless I just hit save, which does whatever was last without problem.
I've just realised this has been reported as bug 195581. Sorry!
Hopefully fixing 4a will fix 4b here, but I'll comment in the bug report.
Yeah - thanks for your comments about the file dialogs. Clearly I missed a couple of things. I'm currently in the process of investigating both the crash bug, and the off-by-one filter bug. Problem is I'm more busy this week than normal, but I'll get it fixed ASAP!
Sorry for the inconvenience Joel
On Wed, 2008-02-27 at 19:51 -0800, rygle wrote:
rygle wrote:
If I select save as PDF via Cairo, it goes for the selection immediately below, which is PS. If I select EMF, it saves it as POV. Whatever I want, I have to go for the one above, but you can't now re-select Inkscape SVG. Always one step below, unless I just hit save, which does whatever was last without problem.
I've just realised this has been reported as bug 195581. Sorry!
Hopefully fixing 4a will fix 4b here, but I'll comment in the bug report.
Hey Joel,
No need for apologies - I appreciate all your efforts! If it's that big a hassle for people, they can just go back to the stable 0.45.1, or the dev build from the day before this bug crept in. Aren't dev builds meant to be a bit of hit and miss? About inconvenience - it didn't cause me any inconvenience at all, but gave a windows user a chance to feel like a useful contributor, as Bryce might say. B-)
BTW, the discussion under the bug report seemed to be helpful, so hopefully this isn't too hard!
Cheers,
Rygle
Joel Holdsworth wrote:
Sorry for the inconvenience Joel
That's very gracious! I've just committed what I believe to be a fix for the off-by-one bug. So check that out when you get the chance.
I still need to do some research on the random crashes bug. I believe it to be some kind of buffer overrun, but I'm having difficulty tracking it down. It doesn't help that I haven't really learned how to use gdb on the command line to detect this sort of thing. But I'll figure it out eventually.
Thanks for your help Joel
On Thu, 2008-02-28 at 05:49 -0800, rygle wrote:
Hey Joel,
No need for apologies - I appreciate all your efforts! If it's that big a hassle for people, they can just go back to the stable 0.45.1, or the dev build from the day before this bug crept in. Aren't dev builds meant to be a bit of hit and miss? About inconvenience - it didn't cause me any inconvenience at all, but gave a windows user a chance to feel like a useful contributor, as Bryce might say. B-)
BTW, the discussion under the bug report seemed to be helpful, so hopefully this isn't too hard!
Cheers,
Rygle
Joel Holdsworth wrote:
Sorry for the inconvenience Joel
On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 04:48:17PM +0000, Joel Holdsworth wrote:
I still need to do some research on the random crashes bug. I believe it to be some kind of buffer overrun, but I'm having difficulty tracking it down. It doesn't help that I haven't really learned how to use gdb on the command line to detect this sort of thing. But I'll figure it out eventually.
I was playing with gdb and the new Win32 dialogs and I did notice a crash once or twice. From what I remember it was problem with the heap. If I get that one again I will try to post more details.
Regards, -- Marcin Floryan http://marcin.floryan.pl/ [GPG Key ID: 0D5581C5]
On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 12:21:42AM +0100, Marcin Floryan wrote:
I still need to do some research on the random crashes bug. I believe it to be some kind of buffer overrun, but I'm having difficulty tracking it down. It doesn't help that I haven't really learned how to use gdb on the command line to detect this sort of thing. But I'll figure it out eventually.
I just found the followin, if it helps at all:
warning: HEAP[inkscape.exe]: warning: Heap block at 128F4D00 modified at 128F4D94 past requested size of 8c
Program received signal SIGTRAP, Trace/breakpoint trap. 0x7c901231 in ntdll!DbgUiConnectToDbg () from C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntdll.dll (gdb) list 408 N_("OBJECT-ID")}, 409 410 POPT_AUTOHELP POPT_TABLEEND 411 }; 412 413 static bool needToRecodeParams = true; 414 gchar* blankParam = ""; 415 416 int 417 main(int argc, char **argv) (gdb) bt #0 0x7c901231 in ntdll!DbgUiConnectToDbg () from C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntdll.dll #1 0x7c96c943 in ntdll!RtlpNtMakeTemporaryKey () from C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntdll.dll #2 0x0022e240 in ?? () #3 0x7c95db9c in ntdll!RtlZeroHeap () from C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntdll.dll #4 0x128f4d00 in ?? () #5 0x128f4d00 in ?? () #6 0x003f0000 in ?? () #7 0x128f4d00 in ?? () #8 0x0022e254 in ?? () #9 0x7c96cd11 in ntdll!RtlpNtMakeTemporaryKey () from C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntdll.dll #10 0x00000000 in ?? ()
and then:
(gdb) continue Continuing. warning: HEAP[inkscape.exe]: warning: Invalid Address specified to RtlFreeHeap( 003F0000, 128F4D08 )
Program received signal SIGTRAP, Trace/breakpoint trap. 0x7c901231 in ntdll!DbgUiConnectToDbg () from C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntdll.dll
There was no crash this time, but I had problems here before.
Hope it helps,
Regards, -- Marcin Floryan http://marcin.floryan.pl/ [GPG Key ID: 0D5581C5]
rygle wrote:
I also miss the GTK ability to store your own folder shortcuts on the side.
I miss that too, is there a way I can reverse it on my system? I don't care much for win native dialog, folder shortcuts are a big time saver for me. Can folder shortcuts be implemented in the Win native dialog?
I think the answer is yes and no.
Firstly - if you want, you can globally customize the links shown in all file dialogs on your system by tweaking the registry in this sort of way: http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/misc/misc/system/article.php/c13407/.
Second - it wouldn't be difficult to add a compile-time, or a run-time switch to select between which file dialogs are shown. I switches are a pretty bad idea though. We have to commit to one or the other. This is a design decision: we can't pile yet another choice on for the overwhelmed user every time a hard design dilemma comes along.
Third, yes it is theoretically possible to add support for custom links like the GTK dialog had. It would be fiddly, but the whole dialog is hooked already - this would just involve more hook-work. We discussed this already on this list, and came to the conclusion that that feature is not necessary for the Windows users, because Windows users don't expect it, and adding extra features to the standard dialog undermines the very reason native dialogs were implemented in the first place: to improve consistency!
So my suggestion would be this: Put windows shortcuts in your home folder. Wouldn't that do the job? - in a neat windowsy sort of way?
What do you think? Joel
(The old bug 167364 means the "home" folder is the parent directory to "My Documents" - which is incorrect. But I'm working on that problem.)
On Thu, 2008-02-28 at 12:46 +0100, Mihaela wrote:
rygle wrote:
I also miss the GTK ability to store your own folder shortcuts on the side.
I miss that too, is there a way I can reverse it on my system? I don't care much for win native dialog, folder shortcuts are a big time saver for me. Can folder shortcuts be implemented in the Win native dialog?
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2008/2/28, Joel Holdsworth <joel@...1709...>:
I think the answer is yes and no.
Firstly - if you want, you can globally customize the links shown in all file dialogs on your system by tweaking the registry in this sort of way: http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/misc/misc/system/article.php/c13407/.
actually, *if* you use the new vista style dialog then you can have such a favorite links thing.. Unfortunately, this is afaik only available on vista. (random googled example: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/vista/VGFileDialogs.aspx)
and just for the record. +1 for the change to native dialogs from me.
/Simon
actually, *if* you use the new vista style dialog then you can have such a favorite links thing.. Unfortunately, this is afaik only available on vista. (random googled example: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/vista/VGFileDialogs.aspx)
Yes I've had my eye on that article for a while now. The Vista dialogs are pretty nifty, and they have a lot of useful new features, so that you don't have to do all the convoluted tricks I've had to do to get all the features you want.
The main problem that stops me beginning work on this immediately is the SVG preview. To render a preview, the Vista dialog requires you to write an explorer COM thumbnail provider. On the plus side this sort of thing would give us SVG thumbnails throughout all of Windows. But the problem is that at the moment the renderer cannot be loaded as a library. So the only way to render thumbnails, and the preview pane would be to load up the whole of inkscape (- at 70Mb RAM!), and having that going on in the background while you're browsing round with explorer would be excruciating in Windows.
The only (rather yucky) alternative would be the RSVG library, but this depends on Croco for CSS support. Inkscape has Croco - but it's been modified to integrate with Inkscape's XML DOM.
So to recap: If you want Vista style dialogs with the mandatory preview pane, we either have to modularise inkscape (which sounds very hard), or add RSVG and a *second* version Croco-unmodified, which would bloat the whole package by about 750kb.
At this stage it doesn't really sound promising. Besides, as of 5 months ago, this old MS fanboy has finally given up faith is Microsoft, and moved over to Ubuntu - which I love. So in a sense it feels a bit odd adding features that encourage people on to Vista, because really I want MS to go away, and everybody to join me on Linux. I'm being silly - it doesn't really work that way - I'll add support for it if it becomes practical.
Joel
On Thu, 2008-02-28 at 20:27 +0200, Simon Dahlbacka wrote:
2008/2/28, Joel Holdsworth <joel@...1709...>: I think the answer is yes and no.
Firstly - if you want, you can globally customize the links shown in all file dialogs on your system by tweaking the registry in this sort of way: http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/misc/misc/system/article.php/c13407/.actually, *if* you use the new vista style dialog then you can have such a favorite links thing.. Unfortunately, this is afaik only available on vista. (random googled example: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/vista/VGFileDialogs.aspx)
and just for the record. +1 for the change to native dialogs from me.
/Simon
Joel Holdsworth wrote:
At this stage it doesn't really sound promising. Besides, as of 5 months ago, this old MS fanboy has finally given up faith is Microsoft, and moved over to Ubuntu - which I love. So in a sense it feels a bit odd adding features that encourage people on to Vista, because really I want MS to go away, and everybody to join me on Linux. I'm being silly - it doesn't really work that way - I'll add support for it if it becomes practical.
Nooo! We need more devs on Windows! I like the native file dialog a lot, thanks! Although there is an annoyance: it does not automatically put the filename (minus '.svg') in the filename entrybox when doing 'save as' or 'save a copy'. Could you make it so?
Thanks again, Johan
Joel Holdsworth wrote:
you can globally customize the links shown in all file dialogs on your system by tweaking the registry in this sort of way: http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/misc/misc/system/article.php/c13407/.
I also found something at Snapfiles. Haven't tried it yet, but it looks promising. http://www.snapfiles.com/get/PlacesBarTweaker.html http://www.snapfiles.com/get/PlacesBarTweaker.html
Rygle.
Joel Holdsworth wrote:
We discussed this already on this list, and came to the conclusion that that feature is not necessary for the Windows users, because Windows users don't expect it, and adding extra features to the standard dialog undermines the very reason native dialogs were implemented in the first place: to improve consistency!
So my suggestion would be this: Put windows shortcuts in your home folder. Wouldn't that do the job? - in a neat windowsy sort of way?
What do you think? Joel
Thank you for the suggestion! Yes placing shortcuts in MyDocuments does help, and it makes sense to think about OS consistency.
At this stage it doesn't really sound promising. Besides, as of 5 months ago, this old MS fanboy has finally given up faith is Microsoft, and moved over to Ubuntu - which I love. So in a sense it feels a bit odd adding features that encourage people on to Vista, because really I want MS to go away, and everybody to join me on Linux. I'm being silly - it doesn't really work that way - I'll add support for it if it becomes practical.
I used to have Ubuntu64 on this machine along with WinXP (on AMD64 3000) until the routine win C: reformat after which Ubuntu was inaccessible. I guess boot partitions got corrupted? When I tried to install Ubuntu again it crashed during installation. Any idea what I might do to get Ubuntu back?
On Sat, Mar 01, 2008 at 07:49:34PM +0100, Mihaela wrote:
At this stage it doesn't really sound promising. Besides, as of 5 months ago, this old MS fanboy has finally given up faith is Microsoft, and moved over to Ubuntu - which I love. So in a sense it feels a bit odd adding features that encourage people on to Vista, because really I want MS to go away, and everybody to join me on Linux. I'm being silly - it doesn't really work that way - I'll add support for it if it becomes practical.
I used to have Ubuntu64 on this machine along with WinXP (on AMD64 3000) until the routine win C: reformat after which Ubuntu was inaccessible. I guess boot partitions got corrupted? When I tried to install Ubuntu again it crashed during installation. Any idea what I might do to get Ubuntu back?
Try using a Live CD, and then see if you can mount the old drive. If so, then you could probably rebuild the boot partition. Or might be simpler to copy off the files you want to keep, and then reinstall.
Can't say wrt the crash during installation without more details, but if you try it again and it crashes, maybe ask on answers.ubuntu.com, or try a different version of Ubuntu. The 32-bit version tends to be more heavily tested than the 64-bit version, so if worse comes to worst that could be another option.
Bryce
participants (7)
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Bryce Harrington -
Joel Holdsworth -
Marcin Floryan -
Mihaela -
rygle -
Simon Dahlbacka