SOLVED! Re: AW: 9.0 refusing to run on Ubuntu

Hi folks,

With your help I have got the 9.0 image, with my tip-of-current-development packages,  running on this balky little Ubuntu workstation.

Helge and Tom had it right:  this was font-related.

However,  not being an X nor Ubuntu guru,  I did not research the X.Org font installation question.    There is a nice workaround using the Visualworks settings.   I will share it here, in case anyone needs it.   Basically, you tell Smalltalk not to try for using the system UI ("desktop") font settings:

1)  On a different workstation where the image IS happy to run in Vw 9.0,  open the image.

2)  In the launcher window,  open the File menu.

3)  Select the "Set Visualworks Home..." menu item.

4)  In the tree of options on the left,  pick "Xft" under the "Look and Feel" heading (right at the top of the list).

5)  Check "Ignore font size" and "Ignore desktop font family" and "Do not detect desktop environment";   also set the "Desktop environment" selection to "Unknown";  I left "Actual fonts:" as "Show".

6)  Use the Apply button,  then exit the settings window with OK.

7)  Save the image (under a new name if you so desire).

8)  Copy this image to the workstation that is having trouble loading the image, as described in my original message.

9)  Open the image on the troublesome workstation using Vw 9.0.

In my case,  this got the image loading happily on the Ubuntu workstation,  without my doing any surgery on its desktop or fonts etc.

A more savvy Linux guru might want to chip in and explain how to load the X.Org fonts on this version of Ubuntu,  as that may work just as well.    However,  I have had some trouble with various other tools on the Ubuntu desktop in the last months, and I did not have any enthusiasm for disturbing it much.   The nice flexibility of the Visualworks environment saved me that trouble, today.

Cheers!

Gregory Bourassa

On 07/15/2022 08:11 AM, Tom Robinson wrote:

Helge,

I remember seeing a font problem like this a long time ago on a different operating system. Would it make sense for Cincom to add an error message to the VM so that Linux users could fix this problem themselves? Saying that it's a font problem and what fonts are needed would make this a trivial problem.

With Ubuntu 22.04 this could get worse, since now Wayland is the default, not X. I'm out of the loop on anything that Cincom might be doing in this area...

Tom



Gregory Bourassa
Software Engineer

KEY TECHNOLOGY
Tel: +1 509 394 3260

[email protected]


On 7/15/22 01:14, Nowak, Helge wrote:
Dear Gregory,

did you check whether the respective Ubuntu installation has the X.Org fonts installed? VisualWorks requires these.

Currently I have the following combinations working without a problem:

  *   Ubuntu Mate 19.10: VisualWorks 8.3, 8.3.2 and 9.1
  *   Ubuntu Mate 21.04: VisualWorks 9.1.1 and 9.2

Thus, I don’t know about your specific combo Ubuntu 18.04/VisualWorks 9.0 but don’t expect issues there. Or, you update both your OS and VisualWorks 😉