inkscape: Extension dialog boxes don't stay on top

[fdesar]

I just tested the new package 0.92.4 and found an issue which doesn't show on Windows :

When you open an extension, it opens a dialog box and when you click on the main windows (ie on the canevas), the dialog box goes behind the main window instead of always staying on top.

As this problem doesn't show on Windows, I don't know if it is a specific error for the port or from Inkscape itself, but it would surely need a patch somewhere, the extensions being very hard to use, specially when using preview option to adjust the selection.

It might not seem very important but making huge use of extensions it, in fact, makes Inkscape quite unusable for me.

[fdesar]

Just tested on Linux : it works perfectly!

So it seems not related to Inkscape but very specific to OS X port... sorry.

[fdesar]

Could be an issue with gtkmm port ? Don't know, alas, how to test that...

[mf2k (Frank Schima)]

Have you tried the inkscape-devel port to see if the issue is there too?

[fdesar]

I just tried inkscape-devel port and have exactly the same problem.

[fdesar]

And I'm really stuck for my real-world work : this problem makes an extension I wrote and use daily mostly unusable. I compiled for that my own 0.92.3 version of Inkscape which cannot run anymore because it needs libpoppler.78.dylib which is no longer available from ports... Dunno what to do now. Too bad :-(

[fdesar]

I finally restored the libpoppler.78.dylib from my backups and I can again use my own 0.92.3 working Inkscape...

[dbevans (David B. Evans)]

I've verified the behavior that you mention and expected that it would be controlled by the preference item

Edit->Preferences->Interface->Windows->Dialogs_on_top

but the options there seem to be ineffective.

I'll revert to the 0.92.3 version and verify the behavior there and then see if I can find where things went wrong.

[dbevans (David B. Evans)]

Replying to fdesar:

And I'm really stuck for my real-world work : this problem makes an extension I wrote and use daily mostly unusable. I compiled for that my own 0.92.3 version of Inkscape which cannot run anymore because it needs libpoppler.78.dylib which is no longer available from ports... Dunno what to do now. Too bad :-(

If you revert the inkscape port to its most recent 0.92.3 version you should be able to rebuild the port using the current version of poppler.

[fdesar]

Replying to dbevans:

Replying to fdesar:

And I'm really stuck for my real-world work : this problem makes an extension I wrote and use daily mostly unusable. I compiled for that my own 0.92.3 version of Inkscape which cannot run anymore because it needs libpoppler.78.dylib which is no longer available from ports... Dunno what to do now. Too bad :-(

If you revert the inkscape port to its most recent 0.92.3 version you should be able to rebuild the port using the current version of poppler.

Thank you so much !

If I can help you anyway to fix the problem, don't hesitate.

[dbevans (David B. Evans)]

Testing update:

After spending some time comparing the behavior of 0.92.3 and 0.92.4 releases, I was able to get a bit more specific about the symptoms of this problem.

The problem can be demonstrated as follows:

• open a sample document ( I use the animated clock example distributed with inkscape)
• select an extension to apply (Extension->Color->Black_and_White)
• at his point, an extension dialog will appear on top of document window
• the dialog appears in the upper left of document window (should be centered on the document)
• either selecting the document window or applying the extension will bring the document window to the foreground with the dialog behind it
• correct behavior is for the dialog window to stay on top of the document window even though the focus has shifted to the document.
• this assumes that the Windows preference "Dialog on top" (see above) has been set to either Normal (default) or Agressive. Inkscape must be restarted to make a setting change to be effective.
• only dialog windows from Extensions or Filters are effected. For instance, the Preferences dialog works as expected in all cases.

Inkscape 0.92.3 distribution works correctly, Inkscape 0.92.4 does not, nor does Inkscape built from the latest 0.92.x maintenance branch (inkscape-devel). inkscape-gtk3-devel built from git master appears to work correctly.

Using git bisect, I was able to track down the offending commit on the 0.92.x maintenance branch:

f6a0b7f6fcf690a7ffdd6e2237376ad7ead43e7e is the first bad commit
commit f6a0b7f6fcf690a7ffdd6e2237376ad7ead43e7e
Author: Jabiertxo Arraiza Cenoz <jtx@jtx.markerlab.es>
Date:   Thu May 10 19:33:19 2018 +0200

    Backport from trunk 99f25194657838f3bac55c38dc7edde802c9d2b1 Extension improvements

:040000 040000 fca3a32073bf1420d4627ad55647c6daa852d579 88e0ef0de803fa7cc5d0eee8d3ebf66aefd69fd7 M	src

which certainly has a suspicious sounding name!! I'm looking now to see what exactly in this commit might be causing the problem and why it works on master (possibly a fix not back-ported to maintenance, gtk2/3 differences?).

Will report after I zero in a bit further.

[fdesar]

Great job!

Reading the patch for src/extension/prefdialog.cpp it seems very related to the problem : on added line #157 it seems the dialog should open in the middle of parent window, which it does not, popping top left of it. Something's not working here too).

Hope this may help.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Is this still an issue? If so, any update on tracking it down and fixing it?

[fdesar]

I confirm it is still an issue in 0.92.4 (stable version).

[mascguy (Christopher Nielsen)]

Since this port has now been updated to 1.1.2, please let us know if this is still an issue.

If so, we'll reopen.