All text missing - LiveCode on Zorin x64

[XL-Dennis]

Hi all,

Enclosed please find a screen shot which shows that all text is missing (!).

Can anyone shed some light over it?

[richmond62]

Well, here's a thought:

buttons that have their textColor set to empty SHOULD display text in Black; but, maybe on Zorin they
just display as whatever the 'empty' clour is, so the text mreges with the backgroundColor of the
menuButtons.

I suggest you have a go with this:

http://andregarzia.on-rev.com/richmond/HA4.zip

use it to turn colour on in your palettes.

[FourthWorld]

Dennis, since Zorin is based on Ubuntu where I've seen similar issues with text rendering in some controls, I believe this bug report may be relevant:
http://quality.runrev.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12607

Note comment #14 there = when I added that package my rendering issues went away. Hopefully it'll do the same for you. If not, please add your comments to that bug report.

Going forward the Linux engine is being rebuilt in ways that make better use of GDK, so by the time LiveCode v7 is released these sorts of issues will be behind us.

In the meantime, please continue to test with pre-release builds as they become available so we can make sure the final release does what we need it to do.

[richmond62]

http://www.zorin-os.com/

It is unclear what Window manager and/or desktop manager Zorin uses.

I do know that Ubuntu variants with the old GNOME, XFCE and LXDE have no
display problems with Livecode version 2.0.1 through to 7.0.0.

As Zorin is Ubuntu-based I suspect the problem may lie in some sort of
customised desktop manager.

Zorin is, at present at least, only available in a 64 bit version . . .

I would recommend that XL-Dennis plays around with Zorin's "Look Changer" to see
if the meni items are always invisible, or only with some of the 'looks'.

[FourthWorld]

I do know that Ubuntu variants with the old GNOME, XFCE and LXDE have no
display problems with Livecode version 2.0.1 through to 7.0.0.

Hanson's comment #7 in the report I linked to suggests this is the result of changes in Ubuntu 14.04 and later.

Fraser's comment #9 there confirms this, with a hopeful note for LC v7:

The root issue is that LiveCode isn't a GTK application; it is an X11 application that just happens to take advantage of certain GTK functions if they are available at run-time. In theory, it still runs on ancient X11 servers with no extensions, though I imagine nobody has tried this for a very long time.

One of my current projects is moving the Linux windowing code over to GDK (the library that GTK uses for its low-level components). The reason I am doing this is because X11 simply does not support certain important features (for example, many IMEs for non-Latin text input hook into GDK or Qt and can't be used in a pure-X11 setting). It should hopefully also smooth out some of the look-and-feel issues as we can do some things at a higher level.

[richmond62]

Livecode has no problems with Ubuntu 14.04 variants running either XFCE or LXDE;
so it must be connected with the "new" GNOME desktop.

[XL-Dennis]

Many thanks for all the input - it's highly appreciated

Zorin 32-bits is also available so i installed it and managed to get LC to run as expected.

Now I will go back to Zorin x64 and I will use a pre-build version of LC as per suggestion then I will use the input to try to resolve the issue.

(If I remember right Sabayon and Deepin are the only two distros I'm aware that is only available as x64.)

[XL-Dennis]

Success

1. I installed the package from the #14 comment of the Bug report.
2. Restarted the computer.
3. Installed 7.0 dp.
4. All text was back during the installation.

The HA4 runs well too.

Many thanks for the help, highly appreciated.

When the my time permit I will explore LC in both Sabayon x64 and Deepin x64.

[FourthWorld]

Glad that worked out. Please keep us posted on the results from your tests with Sabayon x64 and Deepin x64.