Unable to type text in popup with version 3.2.7b on RHEL 8

[Daniel Villeneuve]

Hi,

I've just downloaded and compiled the 3.2.7b version of xfig+fig2dev on RHEL 8.
I've added the xorg-x11-fonts-misc and netpbm-progs packages, compiled --without-xaw3d.
I've installed the Fig app-default file so it is read at startup.

Now, I launch xfig as:
LANG=C LC_ALL=C xfig
and I get no warnings/errors at startup.

However, no popups (e.g., "Edit" to modify the contents of a string object, or "Save as") allow me to type.
I can point to a given character using the mouse and see the rectangular cursor on it, but the keyboard is not responding (arrows not working, letters not being entered, ...).

Is there a missing configuration? a missing package? other environment variables? some X11 settings?

Help welcome!

[tkl]

I can reproduce this issue, but I am sorry that currently I cannot give you an advice. Some further investigation is needed.

[Daniel Villeneuve]

I've just downloaded https://download-ib01.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/8/Everything/x86_64/Packages/x/xfig-3.2.7b-3.el8.x86_64.rpm and it solves the problem above (I can use it on RHEL 8).

However, I needed to install it using: rpm -i --nodeps xfig-3.2.7b-3.el8.x86_64.rpm because the above site does not have the corresponding transfig package. This was not a problem for me since the transfig-3.2.7b from sourceforge compiles ok and works for me.

Maybe the changes applied to get the "-3" version could be merged in the sourceforge version?

Thanks for your support.

[tkl]

Sorry for not coming back to you.
The problem was, and still is, the "--without-xaw3d" option, which links xfig with the old X Athena widget set with flat look. Otherwise, xfig is linked with the newer X Athena widget set with a kind of 3-dimensional look. I believe, the fedora version is linked against the newer widget set, hence it anyhow does not have the problem you described.

The dependency of xfig on transfig really should not be a requirement, but a recommendation. Without transfig or, as it is now called, fig2dev, xfig just runs fine. It is of limited use, because xfig then can only write .fig files, while fig2dev is needed to convert these .fig files to any output format. Hence, that is why distributors probably choose to have fig2dev as dependency.

[Daniel Villeneuve]

Thanks for confirming. I did an "ldd" on the "xfig" executable from the rpm, and indeed it uses libXaw3d.so.8 => /lib64/libXaw3d.so.8.
I will try to build xfig+fig2dev again with the (next) official sourceforge version.

[Daniel Villeneuve]

I've just tried to compile 3.2.8 on RHEL8, and I had two issues:

1. fig2dev now rejects closed splines with 3 points (I had .fig files with that). Adding more points to the offending spline fixed the problem.
2. Xaw3d-devel was not available in standard RHEL8 pacakges, but I could get the package after adding "subscription-manager repos --enable codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms" to the repos.

It's nice to be able to build it again!

[tkl]

Thank you for the feedback.
The development version of xfig in the git-tree now processes closed splines with three points. To fix the error in your version, you could simply patch the file fig2dev/trans_spline.c, delete the line 232, change the '&&' at the end of line 231 by '))', and re-compile. Alternatively, download the file fig2dev/trans_spline.c from the git source tree to replace your version, or download the entire development version.

Your second point, regarding Xaw3d versus Xaw. Plain Xaw does not seem to work, I do not know what to do about this.