Hello, I have a general question about how GTK+ can be used and after my investigations have lead me nowhere, I thought I would post to the list. I have an application that reads data from a database and renders probability density function plots thereof to the user's display via my gui program. Over time, the users expressed the desire to output these images to be viewable elsewise. Using libpng and the appropriate GTK+ routines, it was easy to output these images to a .png file on disk (for viewing by a web-browser, for example). Continuing the idea, the users requested that the middle-man, i.e., the gui, be completely cut out of the process: produce a program that reads the data from the database and writes directly to .png files. I have done this without problem, I can read data, make images and output them to disk in .png format just fine, as long as there's a physical display available. The problem comes when I attempt to execute this job under cron (analysis data is created on a server, stored in a database, followed by a program to read this data and create images for automatic web display), or if executed directly on a server machine with no physical display (but with X11 and GTK+ installed). When doing in either manner, my gtk_init() fails since there is no (alleged) existence of a display. My questions are two: 1) when run under cron, there ma be, in fact, an X-server running (say, serving the login splash screen), just not for the executing user. Is there any way to force a gtk+ program to connect to an X-server running on the same machine from within a cron execution? 2) more ideally, however, I would like to be able to write a program that does not in any way have to rely on an X-server instance running at all. All drawing routines in GTK+ demand a drawable, which, in turn, require that gtk_init() be called before-hand. So, in general, is it possible to write a drawing program using GTK+ that outputs a .png image without having to rely on the physical existence of a screen or an X-server? Or must I resort to using some other library or program? Or am I missing something obvious here (which I hope)? thanks for any tips or pointers, this is really the final open question that will make the system I've been developing for the last three years (graphically, at least) complete. cheers, richard boaz _______________________________________________ gtk-list mailing list gtk-list@xxxxxxxxx http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-list
