Motif (getting nedit to work with lesstif)

[Joerg Fischer]

Thomas Orgis wrote:

> I found the same bug report for xmgrace... 
> Thing is, nedit crashes because it tells to pop something down that is not down.

So does xmgrace.

> Pressing ESC kills nedit for every menu _except_ the file menu... 

Just like xmgrace.

> Well... that should editMenu, or shouldn't it? Could that be nedit's fault?

No, we should face it, I didn't expect the last stable lesstif release to
be that bad. (On the other hand, somehow I tried to explain something
about so-called stable releases.)

> The issue preventing any nedit usage (avoiding ESC in menus, even) for me now is that one:
> 
> NEdit warning:
> XmClipboardCopy() failed: XmClipboardStartCopy not called or too many formats.
> NEdit warning:
> XmClipboardEndCopy() failed: XmClipboardStartCopy not called.
> 
> ...every time I try to copy something with Ctrl+C . Middle-mouse copying works.
> Those messages somewhat imply a failure on the application side (API usage)...

It's just another known issue with lesstif. NEdit calls XmClipboard and
relies on the toolkit working. The middle-mouse only transfers the primary
selection, which shouldn't be confused with the clipboard selection.

No, sorry, we have to find some working free tif for Source Mag. 
Since openmotif was dropped by Fedora (for license reason, too),
I searched there. The point is, they fixed a ton of lesstif bugs,
so please try the lesstif sources from one of their mirrors, eg
http://fedora.patan.com.ar/linux/development/source/SRPMS/ 

(I hope you didn't do already ;-). On the Fedora project you're more
likely to find someone fixing bugs, btw. The copying issue at least 
seems to be closed, too, see
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=lesstif&product=Fedora

> I must add that someone on x86 with ArchLinux (nedit 5.5 and lesstif 0.95) 
> did not have trouble with copying stuff.

Could be by chance they grabbed the lesstif sources of Fedora?

> So, please, can someone with access to the nedit website just edit ...

What I had in mind is that you change the [under development] part
to [CVS-05-03-09], or so. 

> As I said, our distro wants to give people the stable upstream default if possible.

No, your distro wants to give people something that works. In big
projects that are organized and deploy some sort of quality assurance,
one may rely on the releases marked as stable. For many low profile
projects the situation is different. (Take Fedora as example, they 
don't rely on the "official" lesstif release.)

>... but I don't think it's good to keep patches around forever as a 
> development model ...

I don't think it's a model, or that it was planned like this, it just
happened. So, it's real, not a model.

> Soon there could be noone trying anymore... nedit is already obsolete...

It wasn't only me who predicted this roughly five years ago.

--Jörg