Re: Qt/gui on MacOSX (was: 4.0 release goals)

[Ben Abbott]

On Nov 5, 2012, at 4:57 PM, Michael Goffioul wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 3:58 PM, Ben Abbott <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> On Nov 5, 2012, at 3:50 PM, Michael Goffioul wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 3:45 PM, Ben Abbott <address@hidden> wrote:
> > Octave exists during the call "QApplication application (argc, argv);"  at 
> > line 87 in libgui/src/octave-gui.cc
> >
> >  80 int
> >  81 octave_start_gui (int argc, char *argv[])
> >  82 {
> >  83   dissociate_terminal ();
> >  84
> >  85   setenv ("GNUTERM", "qt", 1);
> >  86
> >  87   QApplication application (argc, argv);
> >
> > With lack of experience with c++, I don't know how to go further.
> >
> > It looks like yet another hard limitation of Mac OS X. If Qt decides to 
> > exit the app, there's probably a good reason for it, and it's also probably 
> > difficult (or impossible) to work around as-is. You might try to debug 
> > further with debug version of Qt, but I'm not sure it's worth. Now I'm 
> > wondering what can be done to make it work under Mac OS X. Maybe we should 
> > simple re-exec octave with a specific flag to avoid re-forking?
> >
> > Michael.
> 
> Gnuplot overcame the same (similar?) problem.  I asked Ethan Merritt for an 
> overview.  See below.
> 
> Yes, I've read if from one of your previous mails, but that's not really a 
> "solution". It involves running the graphics system in a separate process and 
> communicate with the base program through pipes. That's typically what we 
> tried to avoid by using a in-process separate thread.  Note that using that 
> approach in gnuplot actually doubles the data transfer when using it from 
> octave: first to transfer data from octave to gnuplot, then to transfer data 
> from gnuplot to the separate process running the Qt terminal.
> 
> Michael.

The gui did work on MacOS X before the build process was integrated with the 
CLI.  I assume that indicates there is a solution to the problem?

Ben