Re: [gtk-osx-users] cut/copy/paste accelerators on Mac

[John Ralls <jralls ceridwen us>]

> On Dec 27, 2014, at 4:51 AM, Brecht Machiels <brecht__gmane mos6581 org> wrote:
>
> On 2014-12-26 23:58:02 +0000, John Ralls said:
> > 2.24.25 is indeed the latest release of Gtk+-2.24, which is the terminal minor release of Gtk+-2. However, 
> > your earlier message mentioned /usr/local/Cellar/gtk+-quartz/2.24.11/share/themes/Mac/gtk-2.0-key/gtkrc. 
> > 2.24.11 was released in July 2012, which is “fairly ancient”; however, the last release of PyGtk was in 
> > April 2011, so perhaps in your case it makes sense to use the older Gtk release.
>
> Oops. I was accidentally using
>       /usr/local/Cellar/gtk+-quartz/2.24.11/share/themes/Mac/gtk-2.0-key/gtkrc
> instead of
>       /usr/local/Cellar/gtk+/2.24.25/share/themes/Mac/gtk-2.0-key/gtkrc
> For some reason I also installed also gtk+-quartz which is not used by any other Homebrew package. I was 
> now hoping this could explain the problem I'm experiencing, but alas, the two gtkrc files above are 
> identical.

Right, none of those rc files have been touched since Mitch added the more flexible key-binding code 
("Primary" to sub for "Command" on Macs and "Control" everywhere else).

> > 24 > 9.
>
> I said 2.9x, as in 2.90, 2.91 and 2.99. See http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/gtk+/

Ah. The 2.99 series were the development releases leading up to 3.0.

> > > As for Homebrew tampering with the Gtk source, there's no patches being applied in any case:
> > > https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/gtk%2B.rb
> > > What *is* the recommended way for running Gtk+ 2 and PyGtk on Mac, as there seem to be no Mac binaries 
> > > provided on the Gtk+ site? I tried a packaged PyGTK (including a Gtk+ 2.24) before, but that was very 
> > > unstable running Zim (crashes on resizing windows, for example).
> > Recommended by whom? I recommend using jhbuild, which is the official Gnome build tool, along with the 
> > gtk-osx package which I maintain. It’s the environment under which gtk-mac-integration is maintained. No 
> > doubt the Homebrew folks recommend that you use Homebrew, the MacPorts folks recommend MacPorts, the Fink 
> > folks recommend Fink, and so on. Mixing build systems is likely to cause problems because the default 
> > configurations aren’t guaranteed to be compatible. MacPorts, Fink, and Homebrew all pollute the 
> > environment so that even having more than one of them on a system is also likely to cause trouble because 
> > the linker can get misled into getting the wrong library.
>
> Yes, I have noticed that the package manager situation on Mac is less than ideal. I still like to use one 
> (and only one) of them however, as manually installing packages from source is not my idea of fun. So far, 
> I'm happy with how Homebrew organizes things.

Mac != Linux. From the viewpoint of an ordinary user, the Mac model of dragging an app off a .dmg onto the 
Applications folder beats a package manager hands-down.

> I appreciate all the effort put into https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GTK+/OSX/Building, but if I can 
> replace all those steps with "brew install gtk+ --without-x11", I opt for the latter. And it seems to work 
> fine, with of course the exception of the shortcut keys in Zim, which is probably due to PyGTK (just now I 
> verified this with Geeqie a non-PyGTK GTK+ application).
>
> > Note that those are recommendations for building. There are no packaged binaries because no one is willing 
> > to commit to making them at every release. You’ll notice that the Windows binaries on the site are also 
> > rather old. That’s because the guy who used to build them regularly moved on and no one has been willing 
> > to take his place on an ongoing basis.
>
> Ah, the troubles of open source software...
> I only spent so much time on this homebrew/gtk/gtk-mac-integration adventure because I haven't found a 
> suitable replacement for Zim since switching to Mac. At least it's running stable now, the menus are where 
> I expect them to be and most keyboard shortcuts are using Cmd now. I should probably be happy with that 
> result.
>
> In any case, thanks for your help,

You're welcome.

As an aside, I found and fixed the problem with building the python bindings in gtk-mac-integration 
yesterday. There was an error in configure.

If you can convince the Zim team to move to Gtk3 I think you'll get the binding issues resolve; the 
introspected bindings provide full API coverage automatically, something PyGtk was never able to do. This 
benefits Linux users just as much as the other platforms.

Regards,
John Ralls