On Sun, 19 Mar 2000, Marc Lehmann <marc@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Mon, Mar 13, 2000 at 05:01:56PM +0100, Raphael Quinet <quinet@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: [...] > > So the current situation is: if you do not install the required Perl > > modules (especially Gtk.pm), most of the scripts do not produce any > > useful results. > > This is a bug that was easily fixed once I was told about it. If you had > filed a bug report on the gnome bugtracker, you would have been more than > right to complain (I cannot read it as often as I wished), but as it seems > you kept quiet until lately. OK, I should have used the bugtracker. Actually, I had a quick look at it some days ago (before sending my previous message) and I saw a few open bugs that were related to Perl scripts. I did not look at them (my connection was much too slow) and I though that they were reporting errors similar to the ones I saw, so I assumed that the problems were "well known". Well, I guess that I should double-check before I assume some things... [...] > > You could of course try to fix these crashes, because some of them > > look like real bugs in the scripts, but my message was not intended as > > a bug report.. > > I saw that, and I think this was very unfortunate :( OK. I should have spent a bit more time to make a complete bug report out of my message, instead of simply including the output from the crashes as an example. I spent some time testing all Perl-Fu scripts yesterday, so now I can send you a better bug report. [...] > I would guess reporting bugs in any way (I'd prefer mail on > gimp-developers or personal, to not clutter the list, but I understand the > need to scan the gnome bugtracker very well!) would help the situation > much more than asking for removing of plug-ins from the installation. Just > let the maintainer decide wether he can fix it, or wether the script > should be disabled, and bring the topic up when the maintaier (for > whatever reasons) does not do it. For example, when I was away and a > release needs to be made, disabling most or all of gimp-perl would be very > viable :) I have just send a better bug report to the bugtracker, hoping that it will help you to fix the bugs in the scripts. However, I see that the form on Xach's site wraps the text in a very ugly way, so my nicely formatted bug report is now very difficult to read (#7732). I will send a copy of the bug report to you by private e-mail. > > ... when this is clearly not true. I believe that I understand the > > situation very well and I thought that my previous message contained > > enough explanations to make this clear. > > However, I still don't believe you... ;) I didn't meant to insult you in > any way, I just wrote what I thought (and mostly still think). This is my > opinion. If I wrote it in an insulting way, let me apologize. It was not > what I intended. Well, I still think that I understood the situation quite well. ;-) The difference between you and me is mostly a matter of opinion. I consider that running the Perl-Fu scripts with the default values when there is no Gtk is a bad thing (because of the warning box, because it is difficult to guess what the script will do without seeing its parameters, because there is no help, because some scripts disable the undo on the image and because of the crashes that will hopefully be fixed). So that's why I consider that installing these scripts when Gtk is not present is a bug, or at least a disservice to the user. I understand that you disagree and you would prefer to install them anyway. Well, we can at least agree to disagree... > > Please, read my message again. This is _not_ what I suggested and I > > think that Sven and the others understood my message correctly. > > You did wrote this, whatever you really meant to write. And since you also > wrote verbosely about your reasoning (which was based on "facts" which were > wrong), I came to the conclusion that you lack a good enough understanding of > the situation. Well, I still don't understand why you think that my message was based on incorrect facts. I just re-read the first message that I posted in this thread, and I don't see any incorrect facts. You may think that the _conclusion_ is incorrect because I suggest to disable the installation of the scripts using some optional modules (e.g. Gtk) when these modules have not been downloaded from CPAN (even if the scripts can run with some default values when Gtk is not there). You may also think that it was wrong for me to suggest to disable the installation of "any (or most of the) Perl-Fu scripts" if the required modules are missing, but this is because most modules use Gtk (and, as I wrote before, they should be considered as requiring Gtk because they do not work well with the default values -- even if the bugs are fixed.) I mentioned "most" as an alternative to not installing "any" scripts, simply because it is easier to skip the installation of everything during the configure phase instead of having to make a difference between the scripts that use Gtk and those that do not use it. But of course, installing only the scripts that do not use any optional modules is the best solution if you have the time to configure Makefile.PL correctly. > Your comparison is flawed: most of the plug-ins I wrote, for example, > do very sensible things in their default configurations (simple effects > for example). The plug-ins you mentioned, however, do not even compile > without the library. Well, I disagree with that: even if some plug-ins could work with the default values (i.e. when the few bugs are fixed), I think that their usefulness is too limited for the user so I would prefer to skip their installation. Since the user cannot see which parameters are used by the script (because there is no dialog box if Gtk is not there), it is difficult to guess what the script will do. Also, it is difficult to get any help page for the script. Note: It could still be possible to get the info about the parameters of the Perl-Fu script by using the PDB or by pressing F1 while navigating the menus (if a help page has been registered), but this is not easy for a novice user who only knows about pressing a "help" button in a dialog box. I am considering the usefulness of the scripts from a newcomer's point of view only. For an experienced user, things are different. > > Please do not dismiss this solution by claiming (more or less) that I do > > not know what I am talking about. > > You started your reasoning by starting at "facts" that were wrong. So yes, > I think in this very case you had no idea what you were talking about. At > least it had not much connection with actualy reality. Please don't view > this as personal attack. I really think that bad about that mail ;-> I do > not question your competence witht he gimp in general, not even in that > situation. But you clearly started with wrong information in the first > place, which gives your conclusions a very bad ground. I still disagree with this, but I will keep quiet now... :-) > > Do you want me to post (to you or to the list) a list of all error > > reports from the scripts when I start them with the default values? > > Yes, just bombard myself (and, optionally, the original authur of that > part), as gimp-developers is not the place where the many thousands of > reports I expect should be posted ;) Done. :-) I reported it to the bugtracker, with an additional copy to you (with a nicer formatting, I hope). I found that 8 scripts produce some visible results, 31 scripts crash and the others seem to work but give no visible results. I tried to make sure that I used all of them correctly by having layers, selections or guides defined for the scripts that required them. I only submitted one large bug report for all scripts instead of many separate ones because I expect that the solution to the crashes is the same for several of them. If some bugs are still present in the next release, then I will submit separate bug reports for the remaining crashes. -Raphael
