FAQ List

Known bugs, and other problems

The Win32 version is not very stable. This is in part due to the underlying GTK+ libraries. The situation will slowly improve. Code/patch contributions are always welcome!

Not enough bounds-checking is being done by the components. This can lead to SEGVs or FPU errors crashing the program.
There are some problems with GTK+ (I think) which cause incorrect display updates in the control-panel.
There are problems dragging controls about within the control-panel. Somehow the events aren't getting through to the correct widgets :-(

FAQs

I like this program, and want to send you money! What should I do?

This question gets asked a lot. Naturally, you should send me some money (or interesting beer, or flash new hardware, or book vouchers, or anything you like, really). You can find my contact details here.

I'm getting Gtk-CRITICAL errors and warnings when I run gAlan!

If you're seeing messages like this:

	Gtk-CRITICAL **: file gtkwindow.c: line 992: (gtk_window_realize):
	assertion !GTK_WIDGET_REALIZED (widget)' failed.

you are seeing something which is harmless, but which I don't know how to fix. I've spent a couple of hours trying to get rid of these messages, but with no luck. Perhaps a later version of GTK+ will make them go away. Ignore them in the meantime, however. (Reported by drkforce@berkeley)

Hey! There are no plugins listed under the "New" menu!

gAlan needs to know where to look on your filesystem to find the plugin files (which end in .so). They are expected, by default, to be in the directory /usr/local/lib/galan/plugins, and must have both read and execute permissions set (chmod a+rx *.so).

If you don't want to (or don't have the permissions to) put them there, you can instead put them in a directory of your own choosing, and set the environment variable GALAN_PLUGIN_DIR before invoking gAlan, like this:

	$ GALAN_PLUGIN_DIR=/my/dir/containing/all/the/plugins
	$ export GALAN_PLUGIN_DIR
	$ galan

or the equivalent, if you're a c-shell user.

The other option is to place the plugins in the directory .galan/plugins off your home directory, that is

	$ cd <wherever the distributed plugins are kept>
	$ mkdir ~/.galan
	$ mkdir ~/.galan/plugins
	$ cp *.so ~/.galan/plugins

If this problem occurs with the downloaded sources, after you've done all three of ./configure, make, and make install, then I don't know what's gone wrong, and you should contact me. (Reported by Erwan Le Bras)

I'm having trouble dragging the controls around the control panel. What's going on?

This is a known problem (see above). It's something I'm doing wrong with regard to the flow of events that GDK is letting me see.

This problem is fixed in the cvs. Get it from there or wait for gAlan 0.2.9 which will be released soon.

The controls in the control panel sometimes display incorrectly, or stop showing updates. How can I correct this?

A workaround is to move a control.

gAlan sounds TERRIBLE when running on Win32. What's going wrong?

Win32 audio output is a new feature (one day old, as of this writing). It's currently just a very quick hack. There are some problems with it, notably that the latency is enormous (about 400 ms!) because I can't make Windows tell me that it's ready for more output in time unless I use lots of double-buffering.

Anyone with Win32 audio output experience... I need some help with it. It works (barely) but it could be much, much better. DirectSound, perhaps?

Update: I've spoken with a friend of mine who did some rudimentary profiling of gAlan on Win32 - and it turns out it is spending an unacceptable amout of CPU time, (around 50%!) mostly I assume in the mmsystem audio parts of the program. As WinAMP etc use very little (~3%) CPU time, there has to be a good way around this.

The Win32 version of gAlan is missing features/keeps crashing/is buggy!

This is most likely to do with the incomplete status of the port of GTK+ to Win32. You can either wait until it gets a little better, or help make it better yourself. Other possible sources of problems include Windows' inherent instability and my primary development platform being a Linux box.

Note that sometimes loading gAlan files created on an earlier development version of gAlan will not load properly in more recent versions. This affects both the Linux and Win32 builds of gAlan. I'm working on making the file-loading code more robust.

I've found a bug/I want a feature. What should I do?

If you can fix it, or write it yourself, please, do so! (And then send me the patch.) Otherwise, please check the documentation and the web site to make sure it's not already known/being worked on. If you are convinced you've really found a new bug, please send as much information about the bug as you can gather (within reason) to me, and I'll take a look.

I'm not going to guarantee I'll have time to work on improvements or fixes to gAlan instantly, but I will try. I am a student and working part-time to support myself, so my spare time can be somewhat limited.