Selecting maps in dropdown menu: slider to move up/down maps does not work

[pvanbosgeo]

When running GRASS (6.4 or 7.0) under Ubuntu (11.10 and 12.04), the slider to move up/down in the dropdown list of maps does not work. It does appear (see attached screenshot), but when clicking on it it disappears.

This affects all screens with the option to select a layer (i.e., the gui of almost all grass functions)

It is also not possible to move down or up the list with maps using the keyboard arrow (should that be a feature request?). Thus, the only two ways to select maps is by scrolling using the mouse wheel, or, when one wants to select one map only, typing in the first letter(s) of the map name.

Although specific to Ubuntu (I suspect), it does seriously affect the user experience of these users (not to be overly dramatic, but to illustrate the problem, I finally got to report this because I am getting RSI problems due to too much use of the mouse wheel)

[pvanbosgeo]

Screenshot of the slider in the d.rast screen. This slider will disapear when trying to click on it / to move it

[annakrat]

Replying to pvanbosgeo:

When running GRASS (6.4 or 7.0) under Ubuntu (11.10 and 12.04), the slider to move up/down in the dropdown list of maps does not work. It does appear (see attached screenshot), but when clicking on it it disappears.

Could you try the widget in wxpython demo (download ​here), it's the ComboCtrl widget, look for TreeCtrl popup. If it works for you, there is some problem in the wxGUI code. For me (Ubuntu 10.04) it works fine.

It is also not possible to move down or up the list with maps using the keyboard arrow (should that be a feature request?). Thus, the only two ways to select maps is by scrolling using the mouse wheel, or, when one wants to select one map only, typing in the first letter(s) of the map name.

Related ticket #1251

[annakrat]

I tried wxpython demo with Ubuntu 12.04 and the problems are there too. The only thing I can recommend you is to disable the overlay scrollbar feature as described ​here, then it is working correctly.

I have no idea why the arrows don't work at all. This widget is full of bugs. Maybe we should use a different one, there is ​ComboTreeBox which seems to have the same functionality and it is working properly.

[pvanbosgeo]

Brilliant, thanks a lot for pointing out these solutions! Hopefully this can be fixed permanently, but I am already very happy with this temporary solution.

[annakrat]

To avoid the problem the overlay scrollbar can be disabled before launching GRASS by:

export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0

It is a problem of wxPython/wxWidgets and there is a workaround, so I will close it. Other described problems are already in #1251.

[isaacullah]

I know this is marked as "closed", but I do want to just chime in to say that this a problem on ANY linux windowing system using overlay scrollbars. That includes both Unity and Xfce, and perhaps several others. Thus, anyone trying to use GRASS on these systems is going to run intot this problem, and it is a BIG problem, as it renders GRASS basically unuseable. This may be related to other, more deeper problems with GRASS menus, but since there is such an easy, very non-invasive way to fix this for most by adding the line:

export LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0

to the grass startup script, why not just do that by default?

~Isaac

[hamish]

see also #973 (duplicate?)