Problems running Brainvisa/anatomist with linux mandrake 9.2

[Manik]

Hello,

I am trying to install brainvisa/anatomist under Mandrake Linux 9.2, but I can't solve this problem :
whenever I launch brainvisa or anatomist, the window is displayed (including icons, widgets...) but there is no text.
I can see grey and empty menus, the tree on the left of the brainvisa window does not display any text...

I tried to compile everything myself, and the result is the same.
I did launch the script to set up environment variables, the variables are correct but I still don't see any text.

How could I solve this problem ?

[riviere]

I don't have access to a Mandrake 9.2 machine, so I can only guess problem causes and solutions.
Could it be related to Qt plugins from your system ? Try moving Qt config files before running our binary distributions:
mv ~/.qt ~/.qt.save
If it works, tell us... And then you can also try to move only the plugins file: place ~/.qt back at its original location and move the qt_plugins_3.1rc file only
I don't know if we can easily work around this, but we first have to know exactly where is the problem...
If it doesn't work, can you at least tell me if the empty grey menus are just empty (small, no space for text) or if they have a "normal" width but text seems to be invisible ?

Denis

[Manik]

Thank you for your answer.
I did remove the .qt directory, but nothing changes, I still have windows without text.

About the size, I had once very large windows (normal height, but a width of about 30 times my screen width, and python complaining about the size limit of widgets). The problem is gone (before moving the qt directory), but now the menus have a normal size, with the text invisible.
I can even click on items in the menu and see an "open file" dialog, without any text.
There is text only on the title bar of the windows.
I can send you screenshots (I did not find a way to post the pictures here), if it can help.
Thanks a lot.

[Olivier Coulon]

Manik,
here is a small contribution to your problem : I don't think this is directly related to Mandrake9.2. I am runnning anatomist and brainvisa with this linux distribution and everything is running alright.

Olivier

[riviere]

Hi,

- Are you using KDE desktop on your mandrake 9.2 or another (non-Qt) desktop ? I don't know exactly if it can be important or not but I'm thinking about possible qt plugins conflicts

- It looks a bit like a problem encountered with the Mac version on some machines where some fonts (antialiased fonts) are not correctly displayed. Can you run qtconfig to disable antialiased fonts and run brainvisa again ? Does it change anything ?

Denis

[Manik]

Yes, I am using KDE, and I know I am using antialiased fonts.
I will try to disable them as soon as I am back on that computer.
Thank you for your answer.

[Manik]

Thank you for your help.
Brainvisa and Anatomist work perfectly now.

Here is a summary of what I did :
- In a xterm, "source SHFJ/bin/SHFJEnvironmentVariables.sh", then "qtconfig".
I can see the window of qtconfig without any text (which is not very useful).

- In another xterm, I launch qtconfig (version of my linux distribution, not the one provided by brainvisa). I can see where are the font settings (second tab), and the "antialiasing" option (last option button of the window), because the fonts are displayed correctly.
- I uncheck the checkbox, and I relaunch brainvisa
- Everything works.

My system uses Xft antialiased fonts, and maybe that should be supported by Brainvisa's QT.
This could be added to the FAQ, with the Macintosh problem.

Thanks again for your help

[riviere]

Well, so it is almost the same problem as on the Mac version.
Qt provided with the binary package supports antialiased fonts, but there might be some library changes and incompatibilities in libXft or libfreetype (we do not provide these libs because they are tied to the X server). We compiled our package (and Qt) on RedHat 7.3 (rather old) systems, but backward compatibility seems not to be always very good on Linux...
We could maybe make binary distribs for Mandrake (some people of our group and collaborators use Mandrake distribs at home), but we just don't want to be forced to make a package for each existing Linux distribution because it's too much work and we don't have all distribs...
For now, I'll update the FAQ.

Denis

[Olivier Coulon]

Manik, Denis,
There is a package compiled with Mandrake 9.1 on the marspack webpage :

http://marspack.free.fr

It might not work with Mandrake 9.2 though, since they don't use the same KDE version, but maybe it is worth a try.
I will provide one for 9.2 as soon as I have a little time (not just now then...)

Olivier

[Manik]

Thank you, but I will probably switch to Mandrake 10.0 in a few days.
By the way, I think I know what is the difference between two installations of Mandrake, where one works with Brainvisa and the other doesn't.
During the first boot after the installation, I was asked what default desktop manager I wanted (KDE), and how much "beauty" I wanted (with a slider).
On one end of the slider, there was no antialiased fonts, no animation of the windows : eveything was done to speed up X/KDE. On the other end of the slider, I had animations eveywhere and antialiased fonts.
I probably chose a slower configuration than yours and got antialiased fonts...

I understand perfectly that Brainvisa developers can't make a package for all distributions : the FAQ seems to be the best solution.