Re: RPM 0.99 report

[raster redhat com]

On 18 Dec, Gisli Ottarsson scribbled:
->  
->  
->  Folks:
->  
->  Here is an excessively long account of my experiences when upgrading
->  from 0.3 to 0.99 last night.  I experienced some failures but all in all
->  things worked pretty well.  Hopefully this report can be of some use
->  to the developers and other in my shoes.
->  
->  I grabbed all rpms ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/redhat/latest/i386
->  except the devel stuff, 24 files in all.  My system is a RH 5.2,
->  kernel version is 2.1.130 (SMP).
->  
->  Per the README I made sure that my gnome 0.3 installation contained
->  neither gtk+-devel nor imlib-devel and performed an 'rpm -Uvh *' in a
->  directory containing the new RPMs.  The packages gtop-0.28-1,
->  ggv-0.26-3, balsa-0.4.6.2-1, pygtk-0.5.3-1 had a dependecy on
->  libgdk-1.1.so.2, libglib-1.1.so.3 and libgtk-1.1.so.2 so I did an 'rpm
->  -e' on them.  The new packages gnome-pim-0.99.0-1.i386.rpm and
->  control-center-0.99.0-1.i386.rpm reported conflicts when I tried to
->  install them with the others but a second attempt worked fine.  So far
->  so good.
->  
->  I had been running icewm-0.9.14-1 (is an RPM of a gnome compliant
->  icewm available somewhere?) but per README recommendations I edited
->  .xsession, replacing
->  
->    exec icewm &
->    panel 
->  
->  with 
->  
->    panel &
->    exec enlightenment
->  
->  I also moved my .gnome directory to ensure starting with a clean
->  slate.  Then I and logged out and in.  BTW, if the panel owns the
->  log-out mechanism, why isn't it the last entry in the .xsession?
->  With this latter setup it seems that I would have to log out of 
->  the panel *and* the window manager.
->  
->  Anyway, this worked fine.  My observations follow:
->  
->  Enlightenment
->  -------------
->  
->  Very nice, but a bit busy for my taste.  Is there a way to turn off
->  all the bells and whistles all along the screen perimeter?  Where is
->  the panel supposed to fit?

see the ? button - hit it and read :)

->  The icons at the top right seem to start applications.  Isn't the
->  panel supposed to contain these?  Most of the icons seem to be hooked
->  up to eterm which I don't have.  That hammer icon tried to start
->  ConfigEdit which was not present on my system.  Should eterm and
->  ConfigEdit be rpm-ed with E?  Presumably ConfigEdit might have allowed
->  me to customize E in some way.  Is this different from the
->  customization in the control-center?

these buttons are there form 0.14 - they will be nuked by 0.15 release
- tis justa configuration issue - nothing more.

->  Since E is gnome aware, the panel allowed me to add the gnome pager
->  applet, very nice.  However, this didn't work as expected.
->  
->   - When I picked on the pager I got taken to a different desktop, but
->     the panel was not sticky and got left behind.  I was, therefore,
->     unable to use the panel to get back.  I could not figure out how
->     to make the panel sticky.

the problem here is a race condition of panel, pager and E - the panel
starts up - looks for a gnome compliant WM - e hasnt started yet -
panel works in "fallback" mode - but then E finishes init.

the solotion:

(sleep 4; panel) &
exec enlightenment

for your startup :)

->   - Next to the panel is an array of tabs for the applications on the
->     desktop.  Left mouse to raise, middle mouse to iconify, right mouse
->     for a menu.  Pretty nice.  However, since the application table
->     gets a little icon in it when the corresponding application is
->     iconified, why is a separate large icon needed?  This extra icon
->     obscured my panel.
->  
->   - Another potential problem with this tab array (icon dock) is that 
->     it grows dynamically.  This seems to be a problem because it might
->     displace applications from an overpopulated panel.  On a low
->     resolution display, the real-estate on the panel is probably at a
->     premium.  Should the tab array be given a fixed space and compact
->     the tabs within the array?
->  
->   - I monkeyed around the E section of the Control Center and found
->     everything that I tried to be intuitive.  The fonts and colors
->     sections were empty, however.  BTW, considering that E is
->     registering itself with gnome, should the E section go away when
->     *not* running E?  I revisited this after starting ice and found
->     that E was still an option under Workspace.

the E confi capplet is getting an overhaul right now - whoudl actually
be useful when I'm done :)

->  Basically, I have to say that most of the E gizmos mystified me
->  because most of them seem to have a counterpart in the panel.

primarily cause E is designed to run standalone and thus diplicates
stuff - its as simple as:
ctrl+alt+b

:)

->  Control Center
->  ==============
->  
->  I next switched back to ice, because although the version I have is
->  not gnome compliant, I was more comfortable with it and thought I
->  might be more likely to find something missed by others.  I used my
->  old .xsession version (see above).
->  
->  After logging out and logging back in I noticed that gnome/ice was not
->  setting the background, the XDM background remained.  From
->  Workspace->Background I was able to set a wallpaper, but after logging
->  out and back in, the XDM background remained in the background.  This
->  is something that used to work fine in gnome 0.3.  A look at my
->  .xsession-errors revealed that the my .xsession still contained calls
->  to background-properties, keyboard-properties, mouse-properties but
->  these programs were no longer available.  Should these lines have been
->  removed?  Should they have been replace by anything similar?
->  
->  In the Screensaver section (I have xscreensaver-2.34-1), none of the
->  Screen Savers that I selected allowed me to <Try>.  'Ant' offered a
->  <settings> button which allowed me to <Preview> but the preview showed
->  nothing and the display was totally locked.  I had to nuke the
->  screensaver from a VT.  When I set the screen saver settings to 1 min
->  and waited, I got the message 'Unable to execute "-root"' message on
->  a black background.
->  
->  In Multimedia->Sounds, I was unable to <Play> any of the Sound Events.
->  This in spite of getting a cute sound when E started.
->  
->  Throughout using the Control Center I observed that when pressing <OK>
->  the panel would get cleared and the panel that I had visited earlier
->  would be displayed, this would culminate in: 
->  
->  Gdk-ERROR **: BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)
->    serial 3451 error_code 3 request_code 4 minor_code 0
->  
->  aborting...
->  
->  
->  
->  Next I walked through some of the applications in the System Menu, 
->  
->  Audio
->  =====
->  
->  Mixer, OK
->  
->  CD Player, OK, couldn't get CDDB to work, may be a firewall thing.
->  
->  ESD Volume Meter, starts and looks nices but doesn't seem to do
->  anything.
->  
->  Productivity
->  ============
->  
->  the calendar, is a thing of beauty!
->  
->  the time tracking tool, started thumbnail sized.  When sized to a
->  something visible came up empty with the message "no project
->  selected".  Any attempts to create a project via New were
->  unsuccessful, as far as I could tell.
->  
->  gnomecard behaved similarly, except it crashed, with the following
->  message:
->  
->  Message: [19994] returning buffer 0x80b4488 from recv_reply
->  Message: [19994] returning buffer 0x80b4488 from recv_reply
->  Message: setting col 0 title to Card Name
->  Message: setting col 1 title to Email
->  Message: setting col 2 title to Organization
->  Message: gnomecard_clear_canvas not implemented
->  Xlib: unexpected async reply (sequence 0x2a33)!
->  Gdk-Message: 
->  ** ERROR **: sigsegv caught
->  
->  Gdk-ERROR **: BadIDChoice (invalid resource ID chosen for this connection)
->    serial 10857 error_code 14 request_code 55 minor_code 0
->  
->  aborting...
->  
->  Utilities
->  =========
->  
->  Gnome Search Tool.  Unable to resize Search Results window.  The
->  scheme of building up the find logic via <add> is not very intuitive.
->  While searching, the tool should display a "busy" cursor.
->  
->  
->  
->  File Manager
->  ============
->  
->  I am unable to understand the purpose of the Home directory desktop
->  icon on the root.  I could not get it to respond to left mouse clicks,
->  even after going to E again.  It would seem that this should do
->  something, perhaps open the file/directory in the file manager.  Right
->  clicking brought up a move/rename/copy/delete menu.
->  
->  Double clicking file icons never did anything and I could not see how
->  to bind files to be opened by a particular application.  Also, when 
->  selecting 'Open' or 'Open with' one is presented with a dialog box 
->  with a field containing the file name.  It is impossible to add text
->  to this field without erasing the file name.  In one case I tried to
->  close this dialog box by clicking the window managers close button and
->  the File Manager application crashed with 
->  
->  Gdk-Message: 
->  ** ERROR **: sigpipe caught
->  subshell.c: couldn't get terminal settings: Inappropriate ioctl for device
->  
->  Icons in an icon view of the files would often be offset off the top of
->  the window, in such a way that they would have been exposed by dragging the 
->  scroll-bar up -- except the scrollbar was already all the way up.
->  
->  Dragging files to applets in the panel, e.g. the printer applet, seems
->  to work fine.  However, I expected to be able to drag a jpeg to
->  electric eyes and have it be previewed.  This did not work.
->  
->  
->  
->  Applets
->  =======
->  
->  Amusements
->  
->    Bus-sign:  no response
->  
->    Fish:  
->  
->  ** CRITICAL **: file goad.c: line 713 (goad_server_activate_shlib): assertion `g_module_symbol(gmod, "GNOME_Plugin_info", &plugin)' failed.
->  
->    Gticker:  no response 
->  
->    StashApp:  no response 
->  
->  Network
->  
->    PPPdialer: Very useful after you realize that it hard codes
->               /etc/ppp/ppp-on.  It would be nice if the commands
->               for on and off could be set in preferences.  Also,
->               it is pretty dumb about figuring out whether the
->               connection is up or down.  It prints "On" if *it*
->               handled turning the line and "Off" it *it* handled
->               turning the connection off. 
->  
->  
->  Misc
->  ====
->  
->  I have many applications, e.g. gnorpm, which I have never been able to
->  run because they complain that 
->  
->    gnorpm: error in loading shared libraries
->    /usr/lib/libgnomeui.so.0: undefined symbol: GTK_TYPE_GDK_COLOR
->  
->  
->  
->  
->  
->  
->  Thanks for your heroic efforts.
->  
->    Gisli Ottarsson
->  
->  

-- 
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