Strange display problem with gtk-win32 and VC++
For the past few years I've been migrating my Windows apps to GTK+ which I now tend to use in preference to Microsoft's MFC. However, I've always been conscious of the fact that the official gnome binaries are (apparently) built using the 'C' runtime that equates to VC6. VC6 has been obsolete for nearly a decade and is utterly useless for building modern-day apps. As it happens, I'm building with VC8 but I'm worried about the potential problems of mixing VC6 and VC8 runtimes in the same application. Fortunately, the more recent releases of GTK+ come with Visual Studio projects supplied as part of the sources. So I decided to try and build libgtk-win32 and its dependencies, using VC8. To test my build, I used a very simple "Hello World" app. In fact it's the Hello World example from Andrew Krause's book 'Foundations of GTK+ Development'. It launches a very simple window whose title is "Hello World!". The window has a gtk label which is supposed to display the text "Welcome to GTK+". If I build the app and link it to the official gnome binaries, it works perfectly well. However, if I rebuild those binaries (using the various Visual Studio projects supplied with gtk / glib etc) the app doesn't work. The window and title display correctly but the label (which is supposed to say "Welcome to GTK+") just displays a sequence of 15 squares. The number of squares is always related to the label. So if I shorten the label text to 10 characters, I get 10 squares etc. I'm not sure if this mailing list supports file attachments but if there's a way to attach a file, I have a small screenshot available which illustrates the problem. Anyway, has anyone here ever seen this kind of thing before? Or can anyone suggest a particular place where I should start looking for the problem? John ___ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
Re: Strange display problem with gtk-win32 and VC++
On 11/6/2010 1:03 PM, John Emmas wrote: If I build the app and link it to the official gnome binaries, it works perfectly well. However, if I rebuild those binaries (using the various Visual Studio projects supplied with gtk / glib etc) the app doesn't work. The window and title display correctly but the label (which is supposed to say "Welcome to GTK+") just displays a sequence of 15 squares. The number of squares is always related to the label. So if I shorten the label text to 10 characters, I get 10 squares etc. I'm not sure if this mailing list supports file attachments but if there's a way to attach a file, I have a small screenshot available which illustrates the problem. If it works with the official GTK binaries (which is what I assume you meant when you said "gnome binaries"), I would just stick with those. You don't want to be in the business of supplying GTK binaries. That's a difficult, time-consuming task; just look at all the conversations about the Windows GTK libraries involving Tor - no one ever wants to volunteer to help. Since the number of squares equals the number of characters in the label you are trying to display, the problem appears to be one of font rendering. Other than that meager observation, I can't really help. -- Guy Rouillier ___ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
Re: Strange display problem with gtk-win32 and VC++
>no one ever wants to volunteer to help. Actually, that is not true. For instance, the ms-windows theme engine is now effectively maintained once again and compiles and maybe even works in gtk+ master. And for bulding the GTK+ stack for Windows (32- and 64-bit), I very much plan to stop doing it myself "manually" eventually, and instead just make use of the great work done by my colleague Fridrich Štrba who has set up cross-compilation of a lot of stuff (including the GTK+ stack) in the openSUSE Build Service (OBS). The Windows binaries etc in OBS are very usable already, the only slight problem is that they are found inside "noarch" RPM archives. (But at least 7zip handles RPM archives fine, I am told. For instance, the GIMP installer uses GTK+ stack binaries from OBS. Also, there is a person actively submitting patches for the Visual Studio project files. (So if you are trying to use those with a current GLib or GTK+, please check bugzilla for ones that actually work...) I definitely would like him to get a GNOME git account so that he can do that directly. So if somebody reading this can make that happen quicker, please do... (Especially as I have been very lazy in applying those patches...) --tml ___ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
Re: Strange display problem with gtk-win32 and VC++
On 7 Nov 2010, at 00:15, Guy Rouillier wrote: > > Since the number of squares equals the number of characters in the label you > are trying to display, the problem appears to be one of font rendering. > Thanks Guy. I think I've been easing towards that conclusion myself but it's good that someone else is thinking along the same lines. > > If it works with the official GTK binaries (which is what I assume you meant > when you said "gnome binaries"), I would just stick with those. You don't > want to be in the business of supplying GTK binaries. That's a difficult, > time-consuming task; just look at all the conversations about the Windows GTK > libraries involving Tor - no one ever wants to volunteer to help. > Well I probably would. I can appreciate where you're coming from Guy, but there are bigger ramifications to consider. What I DON'T want to be doing is to distribute an application made with a mishmash of incompatible compilers and different 'C' runtimes. If my information is correct, the distributed GTK binaries were built with MinGW and gcc. I won't be using either of those so it's important that I find out what's wrong. The libraries appear to build perfectly with VC++ but subsequently they don't work (or at least, they don't "appear to" work) once they're built. Strange as it may seem, the very reason I embarked upon building everything with VC++ was that I was already seeing this problem when using the official GTK binaries. The difference then was that it was only an occasional problem whereas now I seem to have it permanently. However, that could be helpful in tracking it down! It might well be something as simple as a path problem. In fact the more I think about it, the more likely that seems. On 7 Nov 2010, at 07:31, Tor Lillqvist wrote: > > Also, there is a person actively submitting patches for the Visual > Studio project files. (So if you are trying to use those with a > current GLib or GTK+, please check bugzilla for ones that actually > work...) > Thanks Tor, I'll do that. I'd be happy to help in testing the Visual Studio builds since I definitely have a vested interest in seeing them work reliably! To be honest, I can't quite believe that something so obvious would have been missed, so I'm inclined to think there's some kind of configuration issue at my end. In case you've ever bought Andrew Krause's book (Foundations of GTK+ Development) I've simply built listing 2-2 on page 23. There can't be more than 30 lines of code. I've changed the label text slightly but that's essentially what I'm using to test with. Going back to my "path" theory is there possibly a config file somewhere where I need to set up my Windows paths or something like that? GTK+ normally handles that kind of thing very intelligently (which is why I didn't think to check) but maybe I've just got a simple configuration problem here. If not, I'd be happy to liaise with your colleagues to find out why this isn't working. I feel sure it'll be something blindingly obvious that I've forgotten to set up. John ___ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
Re: Strange display problem with gtk-win32 and VC++
On Sun, 7 Nov 2010, Tor Lillqvist wrote: no one ever wants to volunteer to help. Actually, that is not true. For instance, the ms-windows theme engine is now effectively maintained once again and compiles and maybe even works in gtk+ master. And for bulding the GTK+ stack for Windows (32- and 64-bit), I very much plan to stop doing it myself "manually" eventually, and instead just make use of the great work done by my colleague Fridrich ÿÿtrba who has set up cross-compilation of a lot of stuff (including the GTK+ stack) in the openSUSE Build Service (OBS). The Windows binaries etc in OBS are very usable already, the only slight problem is that they are found inside "noarch" RPM archives. (But at least 7zip handles RPM archives fine, I am told. For instance, the GIMP installer uses GTK+ stack binaries from OBS. What annoyes me is that plenty of people are doing that, and there is no central repository for dependencies. On 32bits, there is more or less gnuwin32, but you propose also your packages on the gtk site and i'm sure kde guys are doing that too. I fear that it will be the same for 64bits packages. I know 4 places where there are packages built with the mingw-w64 compiler and there might be more. What about joining forces and make one unique official repository for packages on Windows ? Vincent Torri___ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
Re: Strange display problem with gtk-win32 and VC++
> What about joining forces and make one unique official repository for > packages on Windows ? You mean, like there is one unique official Linux distribution? --tml ___ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
Re: Strange display problem with gtk-win32 and VC++
On Sun, 7 Nov 2010, Tor Lillqvist wrote: What about joining forces and make one unique official repository for packages on Windows ? You mean, like there is one unique official Linux distribution? nice comment Vincent Torri ___ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
Re: Strange display problem with gtk-win32 and VC++
On 7 Nov 2010, at 07:31, Tor Lillqvist wrote: > > if you are trying to use those with a current GLib or GTK+, > please check bugzilla for ones that actually work > I found this info on bugzilla:- https://bugzilla.gnome.org/browse.cgi?product=gtk%2B but it wasn't very obvious which releases are considered as stable. However, I remembered later that libgtk didn't even include VC++ build projects until around version 2.22, so I doubt if it'd be possible to use anything much older than that. I couldn't go back to 2.16 say, which has often been described as the most stable version. I also checked my various config.h files to see if there was anything relating to fonts or font folders - but the only settings I found were HAVE_CAIRO and HAVE_CAIRO_WIN32. The latter tells cairo to use the Windows GDI for font rendering (I think). I'm not sure if either setting is relevant but in any case, both were #defined to 1. Doesn't seem as if I need to set up any paths anywhere but I'll continue looking. Although the label widget displays those garbage squares that I described, the window title actually displays correctly. Not sure if that's telling me anything. My guess at the moment is that there's no font being loaded for the label widget. Does that seem like a possible explanation? John ___ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
Re: Strange display problem with gtk-win32 and VC++
On 7 Nov 2010, at 11:39, John Emmas wrote: > > My guess at the moment is that there's no font being loaded > for the label widget. Does that seem like a possible explanation? > Oops, how silly of me! Just noticed some text in the console window saying "Pango-WARNING **: failed to choose a font, expect ugly output. engine-type='PangoRenderWin32', script='latin' I guess that narrows it down a bit..! ___ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
Re: Strange display problem with gtk-win32 and VC++
So try to set your desired font - edit or create (GTKDIR)\etc\gtk-2.0\gtkrc and add line like gtk-font-name = "Segoe UI" On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 2:19 PM, John Emmas wrote: > > On 7 Nov 2010, at 11:39, John Emmas wrote: > >> >> My guess at the moment is that there's no font being loaded >> for the label widget. Does that seem like a possible explanation? >> > > Oops, how silly of me! Just noticed some text in the console window saying > "Pango-WARNING **: failed to choose a font, expect ugly output. > engine-type='PangoRenderWin32', script='latin' > > I guess that narrows it down a bit..! > ___ > gtk-app-devel-list mailing list > gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list > -- Jaroslav Šmíd ___ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
Re: Strange display problem with gtk-win32 and VC++
On 7 Nov 2010, at 18:14, Jaroslav Šmíd wrote: > So try to set your desired font - edit or create > (GTKDIR)\etc\gtk-2.0\gtkrc and add line like > gtk-font-name = "Segoe UI" > Thanks for the tip. In fact it turned out to be due to the fact that an entry in my pango.modules file had spaces in its pathname (in fact, there was only one entry for my simple testing purposes). This was causing the file contents to be incorrectly hashed when the file was being processed. I don't quite understand why everything worked when I substituted the official GTK binaries but I'm guessing there might be some fallback mechanism which works when built with gcc but doesn't work in the VC++ build for some reason. Anyway, surrounding the path with quotation marks fixed the problem. Thanks. John ___ gtk-app-devel-list mailing list gtk-app-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-app-devel-list
