Processing 1.0 - Processing Discourse - Processing in Mepis Linux

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Index › Programming Questions & Help › Integration › Processing in Mepis Linux - IDE problems

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Processing in Mepis Linux - IDE problems (Read 2572 times)

TomR

Processing in Mepis Linux - IDE problems
Mar 7^th, 2009, 1:16am

The Linux Processing download (1.0.3) installed with no problems to my home directory in Mepis 8.0 Linux and seems to run fine EXCEPT that under the IDE "HELP" tab the only thing on the pull down list that works is the "About Processing" item at the bottom of the list. The "reference" folder is installed under the "processing-1.0.3" folder and it DOES contain all of the .HTML help files and some other folders. None of these seem to be accessible from the IDE. I have tried various modifications to the PATH to include the reference folder and I have tried some changes (changed browser from Mozilla to firefox) to the preferences.txt file. So far nothing has made any difference and two days of searching this discourse and general Internet searches have not turned up anything similar to this issue.

I DID NOT have to install any other version of Java to make everything else work. It appears to be using the Java in the download of Processing.

I have used Processing under Windows 2000 pro and am still enough of a novice to NEED the help files!

Thanks

Although I am now using the work around this problem still haunts me. I have tried every option in the preferences.txt file that I can think of and it never seems to open the browser. I have tried mozilla, firefox and Konqueror with the same results. I can launch any of them in a terminal session in the processing-1.0.3 directory.

I suspect now that there is something in the IDE Java code that is just not working in Linux. At least not in Mepis and I have tried it in version 7 and 8. I have also seen the same problem in the Arduino IDE which is based on the processing IDE.

If anyone else is having this problem in any other distro of Linux please post your experiences. I am thinking of opening a bug report on this, but I really would like to confirm that more than one other person is having the same problem and would especially like to see if it is in more than one Linux distro.

Thanks

« Last Edit: Mar 14^th, 2009, 11:41pm by TomR »

koogy

Re: Processing in Mepis Linux - IDE problems
Reply #1 - Mar 7^th, 2009, 6:43pm

> None of these seem to be accessible from the IDE.

isn't the workaround just to have a bookmark in your browser pointing to the local copies of the files? that's what i do (having never thought to try the help entry in the menu)

address will depend on where you've installed stuff and the version. one of mine is here (and the other pages are available from the links at the top of this page):
file:///home/fedora/dev/processing-0135/reference/index.html

(yes, my username is, confusingly, fedora)

TomR YaBB Newbies Offline Posts: 6	Re: Processing in Mepis Linux - IDE problems Reply #2 - Mar 7^th, 2009, 9:07pm Thanks! That works for now! I can even put it on the Firefox tool bar. I just wonder why the IDE works in Windows and not Linux. I don't know enough about Java to follow the source code yet. Maybe one day!

TomR

Gnome vs KDE
Reply #3 - Mar 26^th, 2009, 1:30am

I have created a dual boot box with Ubuntu 8.04.1 and Kubuntu 8.04.2. I downloaded Processing 1.0.3 for Linux and installed on both (just extracted the tar ball to my home directory). In Ubuntu EVERYTHING seems to work. The "HELP" menu in the IDE is fully functional and Firefox opens and displays each help file in the resources directory. This is in the GNOME desktop in Ubuntu.

In Kubuntu, everything works EXCEPT the help menu. The default browser appears to be Konqueror, but it does not open. This is the SAME result I have been getting on Mepis which also uses KDE, but has Firefox installed.

Has anyone been able to get the Processing IDE HELP displays to work in Linux with KDE? If so HOW??

Thanks,
TomR

TomR

Re: Processing in Mepis Linux - IDE problems
Reply #4 - Mar 29^th, 2009, 11:46am

I am beginning to suspect that the problem I am having with Processing on multiple versions of Linux using KDE has to do with the call that the IDE makes to kde-open, which does not appear to exist in either Mepis KDE or Kubuntu. I also used the example for the Open command in processing to write a couple of small sketches to try to open either firefox or konqueror from the sketch. Both give an error message that neither gnome-open nor kde-open is found, but then in the sketch they WILL fall through and open the browser specified. I am wondering if the IDE has additional logic to trap an error like this and just does not "fall through" and open any browser, which is what appears to be happening.
Does anybody have any comments or ideas on this?

TomR

Re: Processing in Mepis Linux - IDE problems - SOLVED
Reply #5 - Mar 31^st, 2009, 3:51pm

The problem seems to be that some Linux distributions with KDE as the default desktop (Mepis and kubuntu are known) do not ship with kde-open installed. While it appears possible to get kde-open in a kde 4 package called kdebase-runtime from the Debian Lenny repository neither I nor others on a Mepis forum have found a similar package for kde 3. Without kde-open most of the menu items for the Processing IDE just do not work since the IDE just passes the path to the appropriate local "index.html" file or a full URL to the Processing web site directly to the shell and it does not know what to do with it. To solve this problem I wrote the following short PERL program:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
$pgm = "konqueror";
exec("$pgm @ARGV");

I named it kde-open and put it in the Processing directory. I also modified the processing run script to add my current directory to the end of the path. This seems to work for both the "konqueror" browser and "firefox". The choice is yours and does not depend on what default browser is defined.

With this "work around" I now have a Processing IDE that, so far, appears to be fully functional on Mepis 8 Linux running KDE 3.

I want to thank everyone that has helped on both this Discourse forum and on the Mepislovers forum.

To be easily findable I would like some feed back as to whether I should post this PERL program and work around as a separate topic titled something like "Running Processing on KDE"

TomR

Re: Processing in Mepis Linux - IDE problems
Reply #6 - Feb 6^th, 2010, 4:15pm

My PERL script work around failed when I upgraded to Processing 1.0.9 and it required editing the .processing/preference.txt file to change the launcher from the default "launcher=gnome-open" to "launcher=kde-open" which invokes the PERL script that I wrote to launch Konqueror or any browser of your choice.

It appears that the default behavior in the IDE of trying gnome-open then trying kde-open has changed so that only gnome-open is used. KDE, at least prior to version 4 does not have a native kde-open launcher.

rj Ex Member	Re: Processing in Mepis Linux - IDE problems Reply #7 - Mar 5^th, 2010, 4:24am how about xdg-open ?

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