gnumeric in cygwin ports of Gnome1.4 and Gnome2.x

["Bob Clark" <clarkb at fc dot montgomerybell dot com>]

I've got a huge problem (to me) that some of you guys can hopefully
provide some insight and guidance for.  About a year ago, I made the
wonderful discovery that the Gnome desktop and many Gnome applications had
been ported to cygwin
(http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=67909)! I was like
the proverbial child in the candy store!

It turned out that the Gnome desktop ran too slowly on my computer, but
many of the applications worked marvelously even without Gnome proper. For
example, I used fvwm2 as a window manager and was able to run dillo, gftp,
ggv, gimp, gnome-help-browser, gsearchtool, gnumeric, gmc, gqmpeg,
gtklife, et al.

I was out of the country last summer, but upon returning I discovered that
Gnome had become an official part of the cygwin release, which made me
very happy. Cygwin continues to get better and better over time!

A couple of days ago I updated someting using the cygwin setup utility. I
ended up adding the new Xwindow stuff after I saw that Xwindows had
apparently been reorganized. For example, the xwin packages in the X11
category were no longer called XFree86 in the setup utility and the
packages with XFree86 in their names were in the removed packages section.
I really should have known better, but apparently I didn't.

During the update I may or may not have explicitly added any of the new
Gnome stuff (I don't remember). However, whatever I did completly
foobar-ed all the Gnome stuff on my computer that had been working! Every
program would generate a Windows error window that complained about not
finding cyggdk.dll.

After looking around, I discovered that the Gnome package in the cygwin
release is version 2.8 while my old beloved programs were built on version
1.4, which caused me much anguish. It was starting to sink in that it may
be a long time before these programs are up and running again (if ever).

Still, I tried various fixes but without success. I ended up deciding to
delete my entire cygwin directory and reinstall cygwin w/o any of the new
Gnome stuff in the cygwin setup file. I also didn't include any gdk or gtk
stuff.

Then I went back to the Sorceforge repository that had the Gnome 1.4
ported to cygwin and added all the libraries (and their dependencies)
needed by gnumeric "by hand" (i.e., w/o cygwin setup). I am most concerned
with gnumeric because I'm a high school teacher who has mid-quarter grades
due next week, and I've got all my grades on gnumeric spreadsheets!

Anyway, I intalled the gnumeric dependencies from the following tar files:

GConf-1.0.9-9.tar      gdk-pixbuf-0.22.0-9.tar  gnome-vfs-1.0.5-9.tar
ORBit-0.5.17-9.tar     ggv-1.0.2-4.tar          gtk+-1.2.10-20.tar
audiofile-0.2.3-9.tar  glib-1.2.10-9.tar        imlib-1.9.14-1.tar
esound-0.2.29-9.tar    gnome-libs-1.4.2-10.tar  libglade-0.17-9.tar
gal-0.23-1.tar         gnome-print-0.37-9.tar   oaf-0.6.10-9.tar

Then I downloaded and installed ggv and gnumeric. Alas, they did not run. 

The next thing that I tried was admittedly a very long shot, but I was
desperate at that point. I tried deleting the entire /opt/gnome directory,
added Gnome2 from cygwin setup to see what gnumeric would think of that.
Not surprisingly, it wasn't happy. Since gnumeric is the program that I
desperately need, I made notes of what I tried. Here are my notes:

*********** begin notes from gnumeric trouble-shooting************

Windows error 
complains of not being able to find cyggdk_imlib.dll, so I did the
following:

  cp -p cyggdk_imlib-1.dll cyggdk_imlib.dll

after which it complained about not finding cyggdk-1-2-0.dll. The file
/opt/gnome/bin/cyggdk.dll exists so I did the following:

  cp -p /opt/gnome/bin/cyggdk.dll /opt/gnome/bin/cyggdk-1-2-0.dll

after which it complained about not finding cygglib-1-2-0.dll. Second
verse,
same as the first:

  cp -p /opt/gnome/bin/cygglib.dll /opt/gnome/bin/cygglib-1-2-0.dll

after which it complained about missing cygglade-gnome.dll; after
installing
the libglade, it complained about not finding cygdb-3.1.dll; there was a
cygdb-4.2.dll, which I of course copied to cygdb-3.1.dll:

  cp -p cygdb-4.2.dll cygdb-3.1.dll

after which it complained about not finding cygxml.dll. You know the
routine:

  cp -p cygxml2-2.dll cygxml.dll

after which I get the critical error cygwin error:

gdk_imlib ERROR: gdk has not connected to the display
IMLIB ERROR: Cannot allocate XImage buffer
gdk_imlib ERROR: gdk has not connected to the display
IMLIB ERROR: Cannot allocate XImage buffer
IMLIB ERROR: Cannot allocate XImage buffer
IMLIB ERROR: Cannot allocate XImage buffer

Gdk-CRITICAL **: file gdkwindow.c: line 1406 (gdk_window_get_visual):
assertion `window != NULL' failed.

*********** end of notes from gnumeric trouble-shooting************

I tried a couple of other things such as trying to rebuild from source.
However, this message is getting too long already so I'll spare you the
gory details.

At this point I think that I'm in over my head. Although I've had some
success with getting stuff to work in the past, it's mostly been feeling
around in the dark. I am not a programmer. My greatest success (with ALOT
of help from Ralf Habacker) was probably getting a cygwin port of gqmpeg
to read ogg files
(http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2004-01/threads.html#00297 and
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2004-01/threads.html#00552), but I
have a feeling that that was small potatoes compared to this project.

That feeling is reinforced by a message I came across yesterday in which
Gerrit Haase put out a call for helpers last June
(http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2004-06/msg00367.html). A stated
"Goal is to get all (or most) base libraries into the Cygwin net release
so you could try to build GUI applications that don't need a full blown
GNOME desktop." I can attest from my experience that this is very doable.
However, he didn't get a single reply to the message!

Is there anyone out there who's gotten some of these programs to work that
maybe hasn't publicised it yet?

It sounds like the original porters no longer have any interest in the
Gnome1.4 port (http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=377428),
and it looks like the Gnome2.x project isn't as far along as I need it to
be.

At this point, I'm at a loss as to what I can do. I see at
http://cygnome.sourceforge.net/relnotes-14b2.html that there is a
documented "snapshot" of what they used to build the Gnome1.4 port. Is
there anywhere I could go to download this version of cygwin all at once?

Any other ideas?

If you've read this far, I sincerely apologize for the length of this
message. However, I don't know what information might be useful to some of
you experts.



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