Golly 2.8 vs. Ubuntu 17.04

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M. I. Wright
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Golly 2.8 vs. Ubuntu 17.04

Post by M. I. Wright » July 31st, 2017, 8:45 pm

This latest Ubuntu update seems to have broken compatibility with a lot of things, including Blender (unusable due to what seems like a weird double-buffering glitch), scratch.mit.edu (the site crashes upon trying to load any projects in Firefox; not a huge loss, admittedly, but still), and now apparently Golly as well. Here is a screenshot; most any attempt to open a popup dialog (File -> Preferences, Run Script, Set File Folder, whatever) will result in a blank window that cannot be closed except by ending/killing the Golly process entirely within the system monitor.

What might I do to alleviate this? Note that I don't have root access nor any other computers available, if that changes anything. Apologies for any ignorance I may have inadvertently expressed with this post (and on that note, is it even appropriate to report Golly bugs in this subforum?).
Last edited by M. I. Wright on July 31st, 2017, 9:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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gameoflifeboy
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Re: Golly vs. Ubuntu 17.04

Post by gameoflifeboy » July 31st, 2017, 9:30 pm

I have this problem too. After it happens, the window cannot be closed except by killing the process. I have lost over ten windows of Golly to this today alone. Actually, I have had this for years.

Not to divert this thread from its original point, but today I noticed another Golly problem on Ubuntu. I was running a script that created many popup windows, one after another, in a loop. Each time I closed a window or pressed escape, the program continued to the next window. So far, this was the behavior I have come to expect. But then, when I held down the escape key, it kept happening. (For context, on Windows holding down the escape key for a few seconds causes the script to abort.) Then I tried it on Windows again, and the same thing happened for Golly 3.0, but not Golly 2.8.

For what it's worth, I have Golly 2.8 on Ubuntu. I never installed Golly 3.0 on there.

To reproduce this bug, try running this Python script, which creates popup notifications in an infinite loop. On 64-bit Windows Golly 2.8, holding down escape for a few seconds should cause the popups to stop appearing and abort the script, but not on Windows Golly 3.0 or Ubuntu Golly 2.8.

Code: Select all

import golly as g

while True:
    g.note("a")

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Andrew
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Re: Golly 2.8 vs. Ubuntu 17.04

Post by Andrew » August 1st, 2017, 2:56 am

M. I. Wright wrote:This latest Ubuntu update seems to have broken compatibility with a lot of things...
Doesn't really surprise me. The wxWidgets developers are highly annoyed at the way every new Ubuntu release seems to break their wxGTK code. There's a good chance they'll simply stop trying to support Ubuntu.
What might I do to alleviate this?
One option would be to switch over to a different flavor of Linux (I personally think Ubuntu's UI is horrible). Failing that, you might try building Golly from source (see docs/Build.html in the src distribution), but rather than using the most recent *stable* wxGTK version, grab the latest development version (see http://wxwidgets.org/develop/code-repository/) and build the wxGTK libraries from that.
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Andrew
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Re: Golly vs. Ubuntu 17.04

Post by Andrew » August 1st, 2017, 4:17 am

gameoflifeboy wrote:To reproduce this bug, try running this Python script, which creates popup notifications in an infinite loop.
I'm not sure I'd consider this to be a bug in Golly -- more a mistake by the author of the script. Having said that, I have found myself making that mistake and having to hammer away at the escape and return keys to abort the script. To avoid that, I've made a simple change to the g.warn and g.note commands so that their dialog boxes have an extra Cancel button. You will then have the option of hitting OK to close the dialog and continue, or hitting Cancel (or the escape key) to close the dialog and abort the script. This change will be in version 3.0b2 (out soon).
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gameoflifeboy
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Re: Golly 2.8 vs. Ubuntu 17.04

Post by gameoflifeboy » August 8th, 2017, 9:07 pm

Okay, so I had previously only installed Golly 3.0 on Windows, but now I installed it on Ubuntu as well and the empty box glitch seems to be happening way more frequently than on 2.8. On one Ubuntu 16.04 (my dad's, but I use it frequently), the bug happened about 3/5 of the time, and on another Ubuntu 16.04 (mine that I will take to college, it also has 12 cores, yay fast apgsearching), the bug ALWAYS happens when I set the rule. It even happens when I run a script from the clipboard (only have data for Lua so far, Golly can't find Python yet on this computer). The only way I know of to fix this is to save a Lua script setting the rule and choose File->Open Script in Golly. Strangely, the same bug doesn't happen when opening the help files or online archives. I don't think it ever has.

UPDATE: After looking at this post, I have become able to access the rule menu by setting a custom key shortcut for the "Set Rule" action.

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Andrew
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Re: Golly 2.8 vs. Ubuntu 17.04

Post by Andrew » August 9th, 2017, 8:29 pm

M. I. Wright wrote:What might I do to alleviate this?
gameoflifeboy reminded me that removing the global menu bar solves most (all?) of the problems with Golly on Ubuntu. See this post for more info: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1704&p=41077#p41077
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Andrew
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Re: Golly 2.8 vs. Ubuntu 17.04

Post by Andrew » August 9th, 2017, 8:32 pm

gameoflifeboy wrote:Strangely, the same bug doesn't happen when opening the help files or online archives.
The help window is non-modal. The bug only seems to affect modal dialogs.
UPDATE: After looking at this post, I have become able to access the rule menu by setting a custom key shortcut for the "Set Rule" action.
Thanks for reminding me -- I'd completely forgotten about that fix!
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M. I. Wright
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Re: Golly 2.8 vs. Ubuntu 17.04

Post by M. I. Wright » August 22nd, 2017, 2:27 pm

Andrew wrote:gameoflifeboy reminded me that removing the global menu bar solves most (all?) of the problems with Golly on Ubuntu. See this post for more info: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1704&p=41077#p41077
Awesome. I was hesitant to confirm immediately, but this seems to have fixed the issue; haven't seen it happen in two weeks. Thanks!

EDIT: shoot... spoke too soon. Hm.

MarkJ
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Re: Golly 2.8 vs. Ubuntu 17.04

Post by MarkJ » May 2nd, 2020, 5:30 am

I just installed Golly for the first time in 2 years (and I've freed my mind and converted Ubuntu instead of Windows) and noticed this bug and found this thread. Moreover my version seems to be 2.8. Why is the repository giving me a 3½-year old version!? Never mind that, I uninstalled 2.8 and downloaded 3.3 manually, and it still has the same problem.

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