On Oct 31, 2006, at 1:08 PM, Asger Ottar Alstrup wrote:
Bennett Helm wrote:
I think this comment involves a misunderstanding of how dire the
situation currently is on Mac. Even on a window with 6 lines of
text 30 characters long there is noticeable lag in typing.
Moreover, LyX on Mac will not start from the GUI; there's no
cursor; menus are messed up (and the Preferences dialog is
inaccessible); etc. LyX-1.5 is *completely* unusable on Mac.
Then we have to
1) find someone who can fix these problems one by one,
2) or accept that Mac is not a supported platform in the test-release.
In terms of option 1, I suggest to make a list of problems with
descriptions of how to reproduce them and track that they get fixed
one by one:
- Speed. I bet the only way to fix this is to draw less. Either by
reimplementing the "single par" mechanism (which it seems is not
even enough), or have a caching painter front to enable partial
redraw of just the bits that have changed from last refresh. This
is a big and somewhat complicated change, and I think your only bet
is to convince Abdel to do this. The good thing about it is that it
will help all other platforms, including remote X use, which must
be complicated fucked up right now.
- LyX will not start from the GUI. What does this mean?
See the thread here:
<http://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-devel@lists.lyx.org/msg103984.html>
I also have crashes on quit, but no time to investigate.
- There's no cursor. Should be workable. Try to change the size of
the cursor widget to find out if it is misplaced. Try to change the
z-order to see if it is hidden behind the pixmap. Try other things
to find it.
If I'm going to do anything, I need more explicit instructions (not
to mention more time!).
- Menus are messed up (preferences is inaccessible). Does anybody
know anything about this?
Jean-Marc probably knows what to do for most of it -- at least he
(mostly) solved it for 1.4 on Qt3. (Menu items don't appear where
they should according to Mac conventions, etc.) But this isn't a
priority now.
I suggest that you keep track of this list, update and resend it
from time to time, and in this way, we'll monitor the situation. If
the list does not shrink, the logical consequence is that Mac will
not be supported until someone can work on it concentrated.
Part of what I don't know is what problems are Mac specific and what
are not. Is the invisible cursor a problem for others? Do others not
have keyboard shortcuts appearing in menus? Can others not use the
arrows or letters to navigate between buttons on dialogs? What is the
general state of things? When should things like this be reported? My
time is *extremely* tight right now, and I cannot report everything I
encounter.
Speed is the overwhelmingly important issue on Mac. Once that's
solved, it will make sense for me to start investigating other issues.
Bennett
