Re: Building wxt terminal for OS X

[Joe K. <jko...@co...>]

on 10/10/06 3:33 AM, Timoth=E9e Lecomte at tim...@en... wrote:

> Joe Koski wrote:
>> on 10/9/06 2:07 PM, Timoth=E9e Lecomte at tim...@en... wrote:
>>=20
>>  =20
>>> Joe Koski wrote:
>>>    =20
>>>> on 10/8/06 2:54 PM, Timoth=E9e Lecomte at tim...@en... wrote:
>>>>=20
>>>>  =20
>>>>      =20
>>>>> Hi Joe !
>>>>>=20
>>>>> I'm sorry you did not succeed, but those errors are normal: wxWidgets
>>>>> comes in different flavours depending on the platform: wxGTK (as Etha=
n
>>>>> told you), wxMSW for Windows, wxMAC which you logically installed, an=
d
>>>>> others. There are a couple of places where it is necessary to choose
>>>>> between two possible behaviours (two threads or one) in the terminal
>>>>> code. Since I only have access to Linux (wxGTK) and Windows (wxMSW), =
I
>>>>> have chosen to enable the compilation for those two only.
>>>>>=20
>>>>> However, attached is a patch that enables the compilation for wxMAC. =
I
>>>>> will be very glad to see you try it. Apply it in src/wxterminal and t=
ry
>>>>> to build again. Hopefully it will work. Don't hesitate to report any
>>>>> issue.
>>>>>=20
>>>>> Thank you very much for your efforts.
>>>>>=20
>>>>> Best regards,
>>>>>=20
>>>>> Timoth=E9e
>>>>>    =20
>>>>>        =20
>>>> Timoth=E9e,
>>>>=20
>>>> I applied the patch, borrowed fontconfig from X11 with an export
>>>> PKG_CONFIG_PATH, and successfully built gnuplot-4.2.rc1 with a wxt
>>>> terminal.
>>>> (I'll send you a screen shot separately.)
>>>>=20
>>>> To test, I started gnuplot, set term wxt, and did a plot [-4:4] sin(x)=
 to
>>>> see what would happen.
>>>>  =20
>>>>      =20
>>> The plot is rendered properly, that's a good point !
>>>=20
>>>    =20
>>>> I got the plot, but I could not get "focus" or whatever you call it fo=
r the
>>>> plot window. When I placed the cursor in the plot window area, all I g=
et
>>>> was
>>>> a twirling icon telling me to wait. This happens any time the cursor
>>>> crosses
>>>> the wxt window.
>>>>      =20
>>> Do you mean that the plot window is just like dead ? Is the cursor
>>> position updated in the status bar for example ?
>>> If it's the case, there is probably an issue with the GUI loop running
>>> in a separate thread.
>>>=20
>>>    =20
>> Timoth=E9e,
>>=20
>> I realized after I sent the message I should have been more clear on thi=
s
>> point. Clicking inside the window does not get the focus, and the bar at=
 the
>> top is always grayed out as it is in the screen shot that I sent you. Yo=
ur
>> question about the screen being "dead" is a good description.
> I'm not familiar at all with MacOS. Is it a behaviour that you've
> already observed in other situations ? (with X11, when the application
> is dead, the screen is no longer updated and you get gray surfaces when
> you drag another app on top of the dead one, for example)
>=20
Timoth=E9e,

Any time you drag the cursor across the wxt window, it changes from an arro=
w
pointer into a twirling color "pinwheel." Note that the red, yellow and
green lights at the upper left of the wxt window are gray, an indication
that the window is not active.

Typically you see this behavior on the Mac when an application is hung, and
you have to use "force quit" to exit the application. "Force quit" is
probably the UNIX kill command with a nice gui. For wxt, the behavior is a
different. The terminal.app window where the the interaction with gnuplot
occurs, is still usable, and as soon as you exit gnuplot, the wxt window
also disappears, as it should. This is not like any behavior I have observe=
d
with X11 on a Mac, but only about 10 percent of what I do is in X11, and
those interactions are with well debugged applications.

On a Mac, as with X11, one window at a time has, what I think X11 calls
focus, i. e., only one window is interactive at a time. The wxt window
refuses to become an interactive window, and you can't drag it around the
screen with the cursor on the border like you can other windows.

>=20
>> The cursor
>> position at the lower left is frozen as it shows in the screen shot, and
>> does not change when you move the cursor.
>>=20
>> I have done a bit more testing. I can get octave-2.9.9 to open wxt windo=
ws,
>> and display plots,
>=20
> Can you display several plots successively ? That would be another
> argument in favor of the dead gui thread, because the plot rendering is
> done in the main thread.
>=20

Yes, several plots will stack up, but the only way to see the lower levels
is to use Apple Expos=E9, which is a quick way (press F9) of displaying
miniatures of all open windows, so you can click on the one to bring to the
front. Each wxt plot window comes forward as it should for viewing.

>> which is good, but it doesn't display legend information
>> that displays in both X11 and AquaTerm.
> Do you mean the mouse cursor position as above ?
No, this is an additional problem that the legend text describing the lines
is not displayed on the plot (usually upper right). This is a problem for
later, and may be cured when we fix the other problems anyway.

>=20
> Thanks, best regards,
>=20
> Timoth=E9e

This is getting wordy. Perhaps we should take this discussion off-list unti=
l
we have something significant to report. I should be available for trying
things for the next few weeks. I'm an old Fortran programmer who uses octav=
e
and gnuplot for data analysis, so I can't be too helpful with C or C++
issues. Are there any questions that I should be asking of the wxwidgets
folks? Let me know.

Joe