Re: gtk3 option for misc/libreoffice

["David H. Gutteridge" <david%gutteridge.ca@localhost>]

On Sat, 10 Apr 2021 at 10:51:47 -0700 (PDT), Paul Goyette wrote:
>On Sat, 10 Apr 2021, Chavdar Ivanov wrote:
>>>        FWIW, this is with a brand new installation of all packages and
>>>        dependencies, with gtk3+ version 3.24.27
>>
>>    Mine is 3.24.28, if this is of any use; as I said, I have no problems.
>
>I'm rebuilding now with 3.24.28
>
>>    Perhaps the windowing environment in use? In my case I switch between
>>    xfce4 and, recently, lxqt ( which turned out to be rather nice
>>    actually ). I have also kde4+plus the latest bits from kf5, mate and
>>    gnome (incl. the recent wip/gnome4 stuff built, but I can't get it to
>>    work at all).
>
>I'm just using simple in-tree X11 with fvwm2 window manager.  Nothing
>fancy.  (fancy ==> having-to-learn-stuff)

Hi Paul,

Perhaps you've solved your issue by now? Anyway, I have a few things to
add.

I'm also someone who had issues with the GTK3 VCL in LibreOffice, and
had specifically disabled it in the package options for a long time
(before the period when it was removed from the defaults). In my case,
Writer was unusable, as it would never render the scrollbars. However,
with the latest version in pkgsrc, I no longer seem to have any
problems with it.

I tried testing with a roughly comparable software base (NetBSD 9.99.81
from mid-March, older Intel graphics, base X11, up to date pkgsrc), and
wasn't able to reproduce anything. (I tested with a variety of WMs and
DEs: fvwm2, blackbox, fluxbox, icewm, Xfce, MATE, LXDE, and LXQt. I
didn't note any significant rendering differences between them.)

If you want to try switching between VCLs ("gen" vs. "gtk3"), you can
change them on start, e.g.:

SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen lowriter &

I don't know why the basic X11 VCL would be slower. I've never found it
to be slow, though, to be fair, I haven't really compared it to GTK3.

An earlier question was whether the GTK3 dependency should in fact be
recorded in options.mk. As far as I know, that VCL plugin is the only
component that would depend on GTK3, so it would seem to make more sense
for it to be tied to the option, rather than being recorded as a generic
dependency.

Speaking of VCLs, there are others that could be relevant that aren't
packaged at present. There's "kf5" (KDE Foundations integration) and
also "gtk3_kde5" (GTK3 with a KDE file chooser, which may have a more
selective appeal).

Regards,

Dave