Getting GTK/W32 applications to run

[Peter Gerwinski]

Hello, WINE developers!

While working on a cross-platform project, I tried to run some
self-compiled GTK/W32 applications on a Debian GNU/Linux Sarge
system using WINE 0.9.29, compiled from source. They crashed
immediately.

After some long, but unsuccessful Google sessions and some long, but
successful RTFS/debugging sessions, I am now able to run and test my
cross-compiled GTK/W32 applications in WINE. :-)

Furthermore, I can start the W32 version of The GIMP up to the
moment where it tries to load its plug-ins. (Without the plug-ins,
the remaining parts of The GIMP even seem to work flawlessly.)

Since Google told me that running GTK/W32 applications in WiNE
- in particular: The GIMP - was an unsolved problem, I am hereby
telling you what I observed and what I did.

 * Out of the box, pango (GTK's font renderer) does not find any
   suitable font.
   
   OTOH a non-GTK program, opening a MessageBox, works flawlessly,
   so the fonts are there.

 * When I tell pango to use a TrueType font *and* place the .ttf
   file in c:/windows/fonts/, I can start GTK's "Hello, world!"
   program, but the text is >300 pixels high, and thus unusable.
   
   (Real-world programs used to crash with a message similar to
   "memory exhausted", but trying to reproduce the exact message now
   results in *running* programs with a giant font. Sorry.)

   I conclude that (at least in my installation) pango does not find
   WINE's pixel fonts (even if I place them in c:/windows/fonts/),
   and sees the TTFs only with a wrong scaling factor.

 * When I tell pango to use the font "Sans 0.1", I get satisfying
   results.

   (In concrete, I got it working with the following gtkrc:

     style "wine-default-style"
     {
       font_name = "Sans 0.1"
     }

     widget "*" style "wine-default-style"

   )

   I cannot fine-tune the font size. Using "Sans 0.2" or "Sans 0.01"
   yields exactly the same as "Sans 0.1". There seems to be one more
   intermediate size at "Sans 0.5"; after that the "normal" font
   sizes start with "Sans 1".

Since both WINE and pango/GTK are free software, I am confident that
these problems will be solved in the long run. I hope that you can
use my observations.

BTW, let me thank you for over 10 years of WINE
by hacking Tom Payne's famous quote on Unix:

  Ten years ago mainstream users were choosing WABI over WINE.
  Now they are choosing $PROPRIETARY_FORK_OF_WINE over WINE.
  What part of that message aren't they getting? 

Keep on your excellent work!

Cheers,

    Peter
-- 
Dr. rer. nat. Peter Gerwinski - http://www.peter.gerwinski.de
German pages for GNU & free software - http://www.gnu.de
G-N-U GmbH - EDV-Dienstleistungen - http://www.g-n-u.de
Essener Linux User Group - http://www.elug.de
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