#73 Mouse cursor disappears if Preferences dialog is open

[Ark]

After opening the "Preferences" dialog, the mouse cursor is not visible in the main area anymore, even if you move it around. It is visible when hovering other areas such as the thumbnailer or the "Preferences" dialog, though. After closing the "Preferences" dialog, everything works as usual. Strangely enough, this does not happen with other dialogs such as the "Library" dialog or the "Enhance image" dialog.

[Ark]

Sorry, but I just don't understand what the patch is supposed to do. As a user, I don't see any difference to the unpatched version. Could you please explain it to me?

[Benoit Pierre]

Not ignore empty directories (see use case previously discussed).

[Ark]

Okay, thanks. The patch indeed makes it possible to enter and leave empty dirs via PgDown. However, with the patch applied, you can also enter directories you are not allowed to read. Let's skip them. (With the patch applied, a dir without read permission also breaks navigation, so you cannot leave it with PgDown but Ctrl+P etc. Skipping them "solves" this as well.)

[Benoit Pierre]

I think we should not skip on error, no matter what. We should show an error message (invalid/unsupported archive, permission denied on directory, ...), and allow the user to switch to the next/previous archive/directory with the corresponding command.

Also, I just tested with a directory without permission, and I can use Ctrl+N/P to get out.

Note: I pushed the fixes for the 2 other issues (Ctrl+N/P when started without an input + close provider on file close).

[Benoit Pierre]

See my branch for an updated patch that support using PgUp/PgDown for switching out of an invalid "file" too.

[Ark]

I think we should not skip on error, no matter what. We should show an error message (invalid/unsupported archive, permission denied on directory, ...), and allow the user to switch to the next/previous archive/directory with the corresponding command.

I think that's fine, too. Okay, so no skip on error.

Also, I just tested with a directory without permission, and I can use Ctrl+N/P to get out.

Yes, Ctrl+P works. However, PgDown, for example, does not but it should.

[Ark]

Thanks for the update on your branch. I am not sure about all commits there, but at least the way you can navigate through dirs definitely feels nice. Please go ahead and push the corresponding commits to SVN.

[Benoit Pierre]

Done.

[Benoit Pierre]

Note: the toolbar/menu controls should not be disabled.

[Ark]

Thank you for [r1216].

Note: the toolbar/menu controls should not be disabled.

Besides this, it just occurred to me that

• you cannot close a dir you are not allowed to read,
• you cannot close an archive you are not allowed to read,
• archives you are not allowed to read are still being skipped.

All in all, the current HEAD looks very promising. I think I will contact Oddegamra soon so he can test the Windows-specific changes, integrate czipfile and manage the licence issues you mentioned earlier.

[Benoit Pierre]

Right, I think a new ticket should be created, listing the various things that need to be fixed for the UI to be consistent when handling those cases.

[Ark]

I received a reply from Oddegamra the other day. Regarding this "force PIL on Windows" issue, he says the following:

Regarding r1188, removing that code is highly likely cause a serious regression in start-up and general image loading time on Windows. The background here is as follows: Starting with GTK 2.18.3, they switched to loading images with Window's GDI+ library, which, compared to earlier releases, increased loading time of images by a factor of 5 or more (for example, see http://osdir.com/ml/gtk-list/2010-02/msg00125.html). So slow, in fact, that loading an image using PIL and then converting it to GTK's native format is still noticeably faster. Since MComix also has to load the various icons used in the UI in addition to loading regular images, this obviously is bad news.

So, what should we do? Right now, I can think of two different ways:

• Revert the change and force using PIL on Windows.
• Determine for each version of Windows which method is the respective fastest one, from XP up to the most recent version of Windows, and adapt the code accordingly.

[Benoit Pierre]

I think we really need someone with access to a real Windows machine to test whether the problem is present or not with PyGTK 2.24.2. I mean those messages are pretty old.