Image tearing in Mint 14

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Peppermint FTW!!!

Nothing stopping you shinying up Peppermint (is that even a word)

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[Emegra]

Nothing stopping you shinying up Peppermint (is that even a word)

It May be in Cornwall but not up here in the civilised part of the UK where we speak the Queens English

I'm sure peppermint is shinyable I'll have to work on that so don't be surprised if I call on your expertise


Graeme

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Queens English .. "Scaramouche, scaramouche, will you do the Fandango".

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[SeZo]

This might be more to do with gtk2 vs gtk3 rather than Cinnamon

Gramps was written with GTK 2 toolkit. This has been replaced upstream with GTK 3, so Gramps should convert to GTK 3.

(source)
You might be better off asking the question on the Gramps front.

Also are the packages on the same version?

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

Peppermint 3 is gtk3 (12.04 based), and he says it works fine in that

To me it looks like a compositing issue .. ie. a lot of what looks wrong is where I'd expect drop shadows .. Peppermint 3 hasn't got compositing by default, though (a light compositor) it can be added by by switching to the xfwm4 window manager.

I'll try it in Peppermint/xfwm4 with drop shadows.

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[SeZo]

Peppermint 3 is gtk3 (12.04 based), and he says it works fine in that

That might be a case, but as I understand, LXDE is still gtk2 based (could be wrong though)

[Emegra]

Also are the packages on the same version?

Yes all the PC's are synced to the same database and use the same version of gramps,  :(using different versions on different machines can cause data corruption (I learned that the hard way)   

I still haven't tried different themes I had to spend most of the evening doing my VAT return but I will as soon as i can and let you know


many thanks

Graeme

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

*seems* to work in PM3 with xfwm4 and compositing .. though it would be impossible to tell without your database and pics.

There are NO drop shadows, but I'm getting the graduated background you have in Mint

I's not perfect though .. I'm also getting the same white background where the tree lines are that you're getting in Mint.

Are you sure it's not just the image (photo) size that's giving you problems, as there's no pics in your Peppermint version ?

I still think this is compositing related.

[Emegra]

*seems* to work in PM3 with xfwm4 and compositing .. though it would be impossible to tell without your database and pics.

I will happily send you my database if you wish to try it

Are you sure it's not just the image (photo) size that's giving you problems, as there's no pics in your Peppermint version ?

I can't be sure but I can test that out and let you know but I can say I only ever remember seeing this problem since using MINT 14, The reason you dont see pics in the Peppermint screenshot is because at that time I wanted both PC's running Gramps at the same time so I had to copy the database to a different location for the peppermint PC because 2 PC's cant read the same database at the same time,  I didn't copy the media files because the media wasn't important for what I was doing  (hope I've explained that ok)

I've attached a screenshot of the same view with thumbnails in Peppermint to let you see the difference


Many thanks


Graeme

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

OK, it looks exactly the same with openbox-peppermint (no compositing) and xfwm4 (with compositing) in Peppermint 3.

See the 2 screenshots below .. as you can see it looks the same, but you can see xfwm4 has compositing, look at the drop shadows on the file manager window top left.

BTW, if anyone's considering ID theft .. the names/dates have been changed to protect the guilty

[Emegra]

Hi Mark

I see very little difference between the 2 screenshots and would be happy with either, but I took your advice and moved to Peppermint 3 as my main desktop, Mint 14 / cinnamon has been giving me too many issues from video streaming to the problems I'm having with gramps and many more in between, I can't say Mint is the problem or my hardware but Peppermint seems much more stable and fluent,

In an attempt to add a little eye candy to Peppermint I decided to try Cairo dock and i love it but it needs compositing the problem I'm having with that is that I have to switch compositing on manually via a Cairo Dock applet (composite manager), it's simply a matter of toggling every time i boot up but is there any way I can set peppermint to load compositing by default because sometimes when I click compositing manages Cairo Dock will freeze and I have to reboot, also I was so impressed with Cairo dock I decided to install it on my Grand-Daughters PC that's also running Peppermint 3 but it's a bit too slow and sluggish, is there any way I can speed it up or is likely to simply be a matter of too little hardware resources on that particular machine ?


Many thanks


Graeme

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

OK, you have a couple of options here

1) install xcompmgr and set it to autostart

2) replace the openbox-peppermint window manager with xfwm4 (as I've done) .. this also gives you things like window snapping like in Win7 and window drop shadows as beneath the window manager in the screenshots I attached previously .. the down side - it breaks keyboard shortcuts for things like ctrl_Alt+T for opening a terminal.

3) use the "fake transparency" setting in cairo-dock .. but personally I've found this problematic.

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[Emegra]

Hi Mark

I think I'm already using option 3 and it is problematic as in the problem i described in my last post (re freezing) so I'm leaning towards option 2 but I really don't know much about this stuff, can I ask what you would suggest ?


Many thanks

Graeme

[Mark Greaves (PCNetSpec)]

OK first answer these questions ..

a) can you see, and do you like the drop shadow effect underneath the lie manager widow in the second of my screenshots .. the shadow that makes the file manager window appera to be floating above the grandpa window.

b) would the Win7 style window snapping be any use to you .. where you can drag a window to the side of screen and it automagicay resizes to half the desktop, then you can do another window to the opposite side ?

b) do you use keyboard shortcuts ?  <--- this is really the important question (at east till I figure out how to get the keyboard shortcuts to work with xfwm4)

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[Emegra]

a) can you see, and do you like the drop shadow effect underneath the lie manager widow in the second of my screenshots .. the shadow that makes the file manager window appera to be floating above the grandpa window.

It took me while to notice it but now that i do I like it and would like to have that effect if I can

b) would the Win7 style window snapping be any use to you .. where you can drag a window to the side of screen and it automagicay resizes to half the desktop, then you can do another window to the opposite side ?

I've never used Win 7 so I'm sure i can live without it and to be honest it doesn't sound like something I'd particularly care about

b) do you use keyboard shortcuts ?  <--- this is really the important question (at east till I figure out how to get the keyboard shortcuts to work with xfwm4)

I don't use keyboard shortcuts very often (I'm a mousey clicky kinda guy) so I don't think that would trouble me that much