Re: gEDA-user: Gerbv-2.0.1 for Windows released, but not working!

[Dan McMahill <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Stuart Brorson wrote:
> gerbv is built on GTK which is built on XWindows, the unix windowing
> system.  The GTK port to MS Windows is ragged, and apparently has
> problems if you don't write your code in a specific way.

In what way is it ragged?  I'm only aware of 1 bug that is affecting us 
and that is the 'artifacts when printing directly to the printer' one.

> The stuff which reads project files makes assumptions about the
> underlying file system, which differs between Linux and Windows.

That is not the problem.  The problem is the stuff which reads init.scm 
has broken assumptions and it's almost luck that it works on any os 
currently...  Those assumptions are not really OS or FS specific.

> Apps which run on both Linux and Windows usualy have lots of
> #ifdef/#else clauses to do this on Linux, and that on Windows.  We
> have only begun to do this work in gerbv.

I don't really agree with that.  We have very few of those in gerbv and 
we need very few.  In fact, the fewer the better because it makes it 
more likely that the code will continue to work on both.

> You're just stuck in hell because we have lots of Windows
> bugs, so lots of menu items don't work as they should.

I don't think that is a fair statement at all.  I am only aware of 2 
bugs in the windows version that don't exist in the unix version.  Those 
are:

  - loading of project files is broken.  I have this fixed in my local 
tree.  This is actually not 100% unique to windows, it is not hard to 
reproduce in linux.  If you ever do this:

./configure --prefix=/tmp/gerbv && make && make install
mv /tmp/gerbv /opt/gerbv

you'll have the same problem.  The only reason this showed up right away 
under windows is that it is very common to do exactly that under windows 
and less common on unix-like operating systems.  This is something I 
fixed in PCB long ago so it was pretty easy to bring that code over to 
gerbv.   Note that one way this might show up in unix-land is if you 
build gerbv, install to a temp area and then just tar that up and put it 
on a different machine.

- printing directly to a printer produces artifacts on circular pads and 
diagonal traces.  I haven't fully investigated but the links that Peter 
C. gave suggest this is a bug in cairo.

As far as I know that is it.  In fact, installing gerbv under windows is 
as easy as the easiest linux and way easier than some, it is just a 
single installer.  In fact it is *way* easier than installing gerbv on a 
production linux machine I use where I can't freely reinstall updated 
versions of piles of dependencies.  I ended up having to build 
glib/gtk/cairo/.... all by hand to have a locally up to date version there.

There are speed issues on some systems, but there are speed issues under 
unix-like os's too.  It seems to be more related to the exact graphics 
hardware than the operating system.

-Dan



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