Inkscape

dialogs always stay on top no matter what is set in preferences

Bug #308446 reported by Janne Moren
2
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Inkscape
In Progress
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Ubuntu Intrepid and Inkscape 0.46

The dialog windows (like distribute objects, and line and fill) always stay on top of the main window, no matter what I set in the preferences. Whether dockable or floating windows; whether I set "stay on top" to "never", "normal" or "agressive"; whether I elect to show dialogs in the window list or not they are always on top. I have tried restarting Inkscape after each new setting but to no avail.

This makes Inkscape near useless to me; I am running on a laptop with fairly cramped real estate and it's very hard to have to constantly juggle windows around just to have both the dialog and the object I want to use visible at the same time.

Please. I've come to rely on Inkscape for all my illustration needs and this is very, very painful.

Tags: ui
Revision history for this message
Pablo Trabajos (pajarico) wrote :

Can you test a recent release from here? http://sourceforge.net/projects/inkscape/files/

What is that option, BTW?

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Pablo Trabajos (pajarico) wrote :

> What is that option, BTW?
Excuse me, it should be "WHERE is that option?".

tags: added: ui
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Janne Moren (jan-moren-gmail) wrote :

In Inkscape 0.46 the option is in "File" -> "Inkscape Preferences" -> Windows -> "Dialogs on top" with a radio selector for "None", "Normal" and "Aggressive".

I'd try that newer version but I can't build it. Seems I need gdkmm and related stuff which strangely isn't in apt even though libgdkmm and other binary libs are installed. Whatever the issue I'm not going to mess with it and risk break my machine.

Revision history for this message
Janne Moren (jan-moren-gmail) wrote :

Solved the missing library thing (part of libgtk). After a loong compile I try to check. I can't actually install the new version properly since I depend on the existing version being available. Unfortunately, at least when running it from the source directory I can't open any dialogs at all; Inkscape crashes with an error message. So I have no idea if anything is different in this version.

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Pablo Trabajos (pajarico) wrote :

In windows that option is not even there! And release notes don't seem to mention it. Can someone tell me if this is a linux specific thing?

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Pablo Trabajos (pajarico) wrote :
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su_v (suv-lp) wrote :

Not strictly linux but probably a GTK+/X11 thing. Windows uses ported GTK+ libraries that don't need X11 whereas on linux and osx platforms gtk-based applications run under X11 (on osx I have the 'Dialogs on top' options included in the 'Windows' preferences tab as well). But I didn't dig into the sources to see what causes this platform dependent difference. (ping @theAdib - do you know why?)

Revision history for this message
su_v (suv-lp) wrote :

partly confirmed with Inkscape 0.46+devel r22528 on OS X 10.5.8, X11/XQuartz 2.4.0

Undocked dialogs are not influenced by the settings of 'Dialogs on top'. Only those that can't be docked at all follow the window manager hints about 'Dialogs on top -> None'. I tested with the XML editor - with the option set to 'Normal' the editor window always stays on top, with the option set to 'None' it can be moved to the background by clicking into the main window.

bug or feature or wishlist?

Revision history for this message
Beluga (buovjaga) wrote :

Still repro.

Arch Linux 64-bit, KDE Plasma 5
Inkscape 0.91 r13725

Mike (mikenigger)
Changed in inkscape:
status: New → In Progress
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