Building Firebird with XFT and GTK2 enabled

Discussion about official Mozilla Firefox builds
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David James
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Post by David James »

©dn wrote:that looks like what I had from trying to dep compile thunderbird with gtk2 after building with gtk1, you'll need to make clean and rebuild everything

Thanks Chris. That worked. Now everything is all light-coloured again, so I'll have to go set a dark theme in Gnome I guess.

The downside of these builds is that the fonts of the application itself (eg toolbars, sidebar, etc.) are enormous.
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Post by StoneTable »

I'm doing the same thing, building Firebird w/GTK2 + XFT and putting it up in a .deb. We've noticed that the nightly builds have been a bit unstable the last week or so. Firebird would fire up, and crash within a minute or two. The last good nightly I built was on May 8th.

I ran it through gdb tonight to see if I could at least find where it was crashing:
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
[Switching to Thread 16384 (LWP 7084)]
0x40ffb9ea in NSGetModule ()
from /opt/phoenix/lib/mozilla-1.4b/components/libimglib2.so
(gdb) bt
#0 0x40ffb9ea in NSGetModule ()
from /opt/phoenix/lib/mozilla-1.4b/components/libimglib2.so
#1 0x00018894 in ?? ()


So, I used the libimglib2.so built on 5/8 with a current crashing build and it is now stable. I'm making the assumption now that the instability lies with libimglib2.so (since that seems to have fixed my build), and passing it along. I'm still making my way around bugzilla to see about submitting this (or at least verifying it is a problem)
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Post by David James »

I just can't seem to win. I could not find any nice dark Gnome2 themes. I found a few so-so ones, and I used one of them. Firebird looks, well, so-so with that theme. But when I return to KDE, no more so-so theme - instead, back to the Gnome2 default theme (by contrast, Konq3 in Gnome keeps the KDE theme that I set).

Other than that, these oversized fonts are starting to tick me off. No more GTK2+XFT builds for me, just XFT-enabled from now on.

On a somewhat related sidenote, I really cannot understand the appeal of Gnome. Everytime I start up an app I have to click somewhere to establish the top-left position of the window otherwise it just follows the mouse around all day. The "desktop" also moves around like every other app window. Customizing is a PITA; can't change colours at all and there is no single interface for changing settings. The Gnome filepicker is annoyingly simplistic (as is Moz's for that matter, though at least Moz's will show hidden files/dirs). Etc, etc. Every few months I upgrade my Gnome install and give it another chance and every time I'm disappointed. I'm not saying KDE is perfect, but at least I can detect improvements from version to version.
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topic change :-)

Post by asa »

David James wrote:On a somewhat related sidenote, I really cannot understand the appeal of Gnome. Everytime I start up an app I have to click somewhere to establish the top-left position of the window otherwise it just follows the mouse around all day. The "desktop" also moves around like every other app window. Customizing is a PITA; can't change colours at all and there is no single interface for changing settings. The Gnome filepicker is annoyingly simplistic (as is Moz's for that matter, though at least Moz's will show hidden files/dirs). Etc, etc. Every few months I upgrade my Gnome install and give it another chance and every time I'm disappointed. I'm not saying KDE is perfect, but at least I can detect improvements from version to version.


What Gnome are you using? I'm using Red Hat Linux 9 with whatever gnome they ship (maybe 2.2?) and it's really quite spiffy and functional. I don't think a single one of your complaints is anything I've experienced ever on gnome.

--Asa
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Post by mestolo »

soory for thew wrong link:


http://www.napolihak.it/pagine/down/fil ... slack9.tgz

it's built on slack9 but i think it will work on mdk9 too.
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Post by Cajun_Man »

mestolo wrote:soory for thew wrong link:


http://www.napolihak.it/pagine/down/fil ... slack9.tgz

it's built on slack9 but i think it will work on mdk9 too.
Does this need to be installed? Or how to run it on a SuSE 8.2 distro? Doing a tar zxvf on this gives me dirs that are not in the normal Firebird .tar.gz.

I'm unfamiliar with Slack 9 so I don't know what to try to have it installed. Or if it will even work.

I was just curious as to see if something would work on your version that isn't working in mine.

I just last night (5-15-03) downloaded the mozilla source from ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/latest and went to compile my own Phoenix (Firebird) with both xft and gtk2. Well I get firebird with the gtk2 and can use the xft TrueType fonts fine. And my Java plugin works. But the Shockwave Flash plugin (both version 5 and 6) isn't working. Shockwave Flash is listed in the about:plugins, it shows it there and there is a YES on the entries. But any site I go to with Shockwave Flash animation I get a blank area where the shockwave is supposed to go.

I tried doing another compile with just xft and no gtk2, same result, it shows up in the plugin list, but any site with Shockwave and nothing. I was hoping to try your version which is a earlier build to see if I got the same results but have no idea how to get it where I can run it.

A few months ago I built a xft version of Phoenix, and it has no problems with SHockwave. This was back when after the compile it would call it phoenix-bin. I still have the Mozilla-Source.tar.bz2 from when I did it, but I guess when I applied the CVS -d checkout mozilla/browser mozilla/toolkit it must tell it to make a MozillaFirebird-bin and I'm still making a Firebird 0.6 build instead of a Phoenix build that I made from that source before Firebird came out. Well I'm not explaining that part very well. Lets just say that with this source that I used back then I get a Phoenix.tar.gz out of it, and if I use that source now, I get a Firebird.tar.gz out of it. So I'm guessing the CVS command I used must update the source to be like the one I downloaded last night.

I don't know if I could try again only not apply the cvs command, would that work?
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Re: topic change :-)

Post by David James »

asa wrote:What Gnome are you using? I'm using Red Hat Linux 9 with whatever gnome they ship (maybe 2.2?) and it's really quite spiffy and functional. I don't think a single one of your complaints is anything I've experienced ever on gnome.


Right now I can't even start Gnome up; there's some sort of post-install configuration issue (the joys of using Debian Sid)... it is 2.2 though.

Here's a screenshot of one of the problems using KDE with GTK2+XFT.
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Post by ©dn »

my [menubar] fonts got smaller when I built with gtk2 [ Mdk 9.x ]
Last edited by ©dn on May 18th, 2003, 4:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by chrookee »

©dn wrote:my fonts got smaller when I built with gtk2 [ Mdk 9 ]


you can control the size of the fonts for a screen using the fonts page of firebird but remember you have to set a minimum size of the fonts and also you need to pick up a "proportional" size that you want.

cheers,

c

PS: I can send a screen shot of gtk2 + xft to anyone who wants to see it. I dont have a site to put the image.
Linux + Firebird + gtk2 + XFT is neat.
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Re: topic change :-)

Post by chrookee »

David James wrote:
asa wrote:What Gnome are you using? I'm using Red Hat Linux 9 with whatever gnome they ship (maybe 2.2?) and it's really quite spiffy and functional. I don't think a single one of your complaints is anything I've experienced ever on gnome.


Right now I can't even start Gnome up; there's some sort of post-install configuration issue (the joys of using Debian Sid)... it is 2.2 though.

Here's a screenshot of one of the problems using KDE with GTK2+XFT.


If you are using Gnome 2.2 then there is a "desktop preferences" menu in gnome that allows you to change a bunch of configurations like themes, fonts etc. You might want to give that a try.

cheers,

c
Linux + Firebird + gtk2 + XFT is neat.
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Re: topic change :-)

Post by David James »

chrookee wrote:
David James wrote:
asa wrote:What Gnome are you using? I'm using Red Hat Linux 9 with whatever gnome they ship (maybe 2.2?) and it's really quite spiffy and functional. I don't think a single one of your complaints is anything I've experienced ever on gnome.


Right now I can't even start Gnome up; there's some sort of post-install configuration issue (the joys of using Debian Sid)... it is 2.2 though.

Here's a screenshot of one of the problems using KDE with GTK2+XFT.


If you are using Gnome 2.2 then there is a "desktop preferences" menu in gnome that allows you to change a bunch of configurations like themes, fonts etc. You might want to give that a try.


I got Gnome fixed, but it still sucks as far as I'm concerned. FB-gtk2 and TB-gtk2 simply do not take up the specified Gnome theme and fonts when they're used under KDE3. If I run the Gnome Control Centre from KDE I can get those settings applied but it rewrites my background image in KDE and basically just causes me grief (for example, the KDE short cut Alt+F2 to launch an application ceases to work). By contrast, in Gnome KDE apps continue to use the KDE theme that I set in KDE. If that weren't bad enough, ever since I upgraded to GTK2 all my GTK1.2-based apps -- except for some peculiar reason Firebird -- have incredibly ugly fonts. That includes Thunderbird, Gftp and the Gimp unfortunately.

This is what an xft-enabled (but no gtk2) Firebird build looks like in KDE3.

David James wrote:On a somewhat related sidenote, I really cannot understand the appeal of Gnome. Everytime I start up an app I have to click somewhere to establish the top-left position of the window otherwise it just follows the mouse around all day. The "desktop" also moves around like every other app window. Customizing is a PITA; can't change colours at all and there is no single interface for changing settings.

I can't prove my fist claim because I can't take a screenshot whilst the app is in this "limbo" waiting for a mouse click. I'd have to take a photograph but it is incredibly annoying. However, this is how it looks the moment after the mouse click. I cannot for the life of me understand how such an idiotic way of doing things was even conceived, let alone implemented. The second, I can prove. This is a screenshot that clearly shows the desktop to be a window like any other. Again, why anyone thought this was a good idea I do not know. The third is the way Gnome's settings are controlled. Each item opens up a new pop-up with one or two preferences each. Want to change a whole pile? You have to go through the menu *every* time. There is also no control for system colours, so I can't even get KDE and Gnome to use the same colours for the same things. Compare that to KDE3's control panel. It's a tree with just one level of expansion (unlike Mozilla's). You can change dozens of settings in one operation. This is all very unfortunate because some of the best Linux apps out there are gtk-based: gftp, gimp, galeon, etc. It's just that the Gnome desktop environment is markedly inferior to KDE and Windows.

Like I said, I really can't understand the appeal of Gnome and I definitely cannot understand Mozilla's infatuation with it to the point that it actually hinders use in KDE when you try to get non-ugly scrollbars/dropdowns (see my pic of oversized fonts when using GTK2 builds in KDE).
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Re: topic change :-)

Post by sweeze »

David James wrote:
chrookee wrote:
David James wrote:
asa wrote:What Gnome are you using? I'm using Red Hat Linux 9 with whatever gnome they ship (maybe 2.2?) and it's really quite spiffy and functional. I don't think a single one of your complaints is anything I've experienced ever on gnome.


Right now I can't even start Gnome up; there's some sort of post-install configuration issue (the joys of using Debian Sid)... it is 2.2 though.

Here's a screenshot of one of the problems using KDE with GTK2+XFT.


If you are using Gnome 2.2 then there is a "desktop preferences" menu in gnome that allows you to change a bunch of configurations like themes, fonts etc. You might want to give that a try.


I got Gnome fixed, but it still sucks as far as I'm concerned. FB-gtk2 and TB-gtk2 simply do not take up the specified Gnome theme and fonts when they're used under KDE3. If I run the Gnome Control Centre from KDE I can get those settings applied but it rewrites my background image in KDE and basically just causes me grief (for example, the KDE short cut Alt+F2 to launch an application ceases to work). By contrast, in Gnome KDE apps continue to use the KDE theme that I set in KDE. If that weren't bad enough, ever since I upgraded to GTK2 all my GTK1.2-based apps -- except for some peculiar reason Firebird -- have incredibly ugly fonts. That includes Thunderbird, Gftp and the Gimp unfortunately.

This is what an xft-enabled (but no gtk2) Firebird build looks like in KDE3.

David James wrote:On a somewhat related sidenote, I really cannot understand the appeal of Gnome. Everytime I start up an app I have to click somewhere to establish the top-left position of the window otherwise it just follows the mouse around all day. The "desktop" also moves around like every other app window. Customizing is a PITA; can't change colours at all and there is no single interface for changing settings.

I can't prove my fist claim because I can't take a screenshot whilst the app is in this "limbo" waiting for a mouse click. I'd have to take a photograph but it is incredibly annoying. However, this is how it looks the moment after the mouse click. I cannot for the life of me understand how such an idiotic way of doing things was even conceived, let alone implemented. The second, I can prove. This is a screenshot that clearly shows the desktop to be a window like any other. Again, why anyone thought this was a good idea I do not know. The third is the way Gnome's settings are controlled. Each item opens up a new pop-up with one or two preferences each. Want to change a whole pile? You have to go through the menu *every* time. There is also no control for system colours, so I can't even get KDE and Gnome to use the same colours for the same things. Compare that to KDE3's control panel. It's a tree with just one level of expansion (unlike Mozilla's). You can change dozens of settings in one operation. This is all very unfortunate because some of the best Linux apps out there are gtk-based: gftp, gimp, galeon, etc. It's just that the Gnome desktop environment is markedly inferior to KDE and Windows.

Like I said, I really can't understand the appeal of Gnome and I definitely cannot understand Mozilla's infatuation with it to the point that it actually hinders use in KDE when you try to get non-ugly scrollbars/dropdowns (see my pic of oversized fonts when using GTK2 builds in KDE).



gnome/gtk2 apps use gnome-settings-daemon to set fonts/themes/etc. either run gnome-settings-daemon in your xsession, or you can set up a .gtkrc-2.0 (something like that... google for it) to set up fonts/themes/etc.
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My .02$

Post by Necos »

As far as the whole GNOME vs. KDE vs. Windows desktop environment comparison goes: drop it. GNOME is a very functional desktop environment. I started out using Redhat 4.x with GNOME and it worked just fine (and it has only gotten better). KDE is also very nice, even though I don't like it's lack of speed (unless you have a lot of ram, it runs about as fast as a turtle with a 400lb guy on it). Windows, is well... Windows. I don't really need to say much else about that.

There are a ton of window managers available that will run in conjunction with GNOME or KDE (pick your poison). And, even then, who needs a desktop environment anyway? Blackbox, Fluxbox, Enlightment, Openbox, WindowMaker, and AfterStep (and more) are perfectly good window managers even without the whole "desktop environment." Personally, I use Openbox because I like Xft-enabled everything (even if it's on an app-by-app basis), and seeing my window manager use AA fonts on all of its own widgets makes me happy.

Here <a href="http://home.attbi.com/~tessai/screen/phoenix.jpg"> is a screenshot</a> of me running Phoenix after the namechange on my laptop with Openbox. It has Xft fonts enabled everywhere (isn't it cool?!). I have neither GNOME or KDE installed (I hate them both equally for being so bloated), but I do have the gnome-1.4 and gnome-2.0 libraries installed since most apps use gnome/glib/gtk for their widget toolkits.

Personally, I think the reason why gnome/gtk is a desired widget toolkit over qt (opera does use qt/kde libraries if you want something that matches KDE) is because it looks better (of course, that's my opinion) and because it's well documented (tons of data available on the gtk and gnome websites). Ironically enough, GTK is the Gimp ToolKit (not to sound insulting), so it's no wonder that the GIMP would use it for it's widgets.

I guess GNOME and KDE are great for office environments where you're looking for some ease-of-use. On the other hand, I think most users would agree that using GNOME or KDE can sometimes be "flogging the dead horse." Both are great window manager/desktop environment combos, but they're both damn slow. Most of the people I know using Linux dropped both of them for something much faster (the common WMs being Fluxbox, Openbox, and Enlightenment). You can still use GNOME/KDE themes and such with Enlightenment, Fluxbox, and the like, so maybe trying something new would be worth a shot.
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(OT) Window Manager

Post by pao »

David James wrote:Everytime I start up an app I have to click somewhere to establish the top-left position of the window otherwise it just follows the mouse around all day.


That one's not GNOME, that's twm's fault. For whatever reason, the window manager that GNOME is loading is twm, which is not a particularly good choice. You can change it somewhere in the Control Center (I'd look it up but I'm in Windows at the moment). Apt-get install metacity and select that as your window manager (if you don't already have it) and that annoying behavior will be gone (other managers can work, but metacity is the most compatible with GNOME 2 as far as I know).
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Re: topic change :-)

Post by David James »

sweeze wrote:gnome/gtk2 apps use gnome-settings-daemon to set fonts/themes/etc. either run gnome-settings-daemon in your xsession,

I *strongly* recommend *against* doing that. If you run gnome-settings-daemon from within KDE it simply f*cks up KDE royally.
or you can set up a .gtkrc-2.0 (something like that... google for it) to set up fonts/themes/etc.

This however does work from what I'm seeing. It'll take some time to create/configure a theme in Gnome to get it to look right in KDE, but it looks to be possible. What I don't understand is why telling KDE to impose its colours/fonts on non-KDE apps doesn't work with Mozilla-based apps.
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