[SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

Bearded_Blunder · 2016-10-18 13:25:22

So I'm setting up my new laptop, I run through the installer and bl-welcome, when I go to adjust the timeouts so it doesn't blank the screen whenever I pause to wipe my nose running on AC (the default timeouts I find annoyingly short), when I open xfce power manager from the battery icon or menu, it's so wide almost half of it is off screen, and it won't resize smaller, only bigger.

I accepted the default options in bl-welcome so it's the bunsen backported version, my search engine magic seems to have deserted me today, I can't seem to find any relevant pages for dealing with such an issue.

I'm also not sure how to back out to the originals that were there before bl-welcome ran, so I'm currently unable to say if this problem exists with both power management solutions, or if it's exclusive to the backported power manager installed by bl-welcome.

Last edited by Bearded_Blunder (2016-10-22 05:00:23)

ohnonot · 2016-10-18 17:25:53

Bearded_Blunder wrote:

when I open xfce power manager from the battery icon or menu, it's so wide almost half of it is off screen, and it won't resize smaller, only bigger.

what's your laptop's screen resolution?
are the fonts too big, too? dpi settings maybe?

Bearded_Blunder · 2016-10-19 00:50:28

Screen resolution is 1024x768, Ihadn't messed with the fonts, still all at defaults, I *can* given this clue make the window resize to fit, by changing the font size from 10 to 4, however, the text is unreadably tiny if I do so, they look about right at the default size.

ohnonot · 2016-10-19 05:20:19

dpi settings are not the same as font size, you might want to try changing those too (in ~/.Xresources, on BL, iirc).
i tried it on my bl, but the xfce-power-manager window is comfortably small.
it could have to do with versions.
also try a different gtk theme.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-10-19 06:45:24

What is the hardware?

lspci -knn | grep -iA2 '\''[030[02]\]'

Bearded_Blunder · 2016-10-20 03:27:39

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

What is the hardware?
lspci -knn | grep -iA2 '\''[030[02]\]'

In answer:

beardy@GD8200-DB-BL:~$ lspci -knn | grep -iA2 '\''[030[02]\]'
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0116] (rev 09)
	Subsystem: TWINHEAD INTERNATIONAL Corp Device [14ff:a028]
	Kernel driver in use: i915
beardy@GD8200-DB-BL:~$

ohnonot wrote:

dpi settings are not the same as font size, you might want to try changing those too (in ~/.Xresources, on BL, iirc).

It appears you recall correctly, right at the top:

beardy@GD8200-DB-BL:~$ head .Xresources
! font settings --------------------------------------------------------------

Xft.autohint: true
Xft.antialias: true
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
!Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.rgba: rgb
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault

96 is what I would have tried right off if it'd been anything else, chaging it, and changing theme neither one made any appreciable difference.
I'd post a screenshot, except I've seen the integrity of too many posts and threads destroyed when they later disappear from forums owing to expired image hosting accounts, which annoys the hell out of me, so I only post images where they get hosted by the forum itself, a description will have to do. However the window occupies 3/4 the height of my screen, the full with, with about a 1/3 of the window, or slightly more out of sight off the edge of the screen.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-10-20 06:26:09

Bearded_Blunder wrote:

it's so wide almost half of it is off screen, and it won't resize smaller, only bigger.

How do you attempt to resize it?

Did the interface start out small and was subjected to an inadvertent resize which was subsequently not correctable or has it always been stretched?

Does this problem occur with a new user?

Does this problem occur in the live environment?

Bearded_Blunder · 2016-10-20 07:45:05

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

How do you attempt to resize it?

By grabbing the edge with the mouse and dragging in the usual way, which works to expand it more, but will only shrink it back to where it started out. Unless I change the font size to something ridiculously small (4pts) in which case I can make the window a sane size, but consequently can't read the text in that or any other window. xfce power manager is the only thing I've found affected by the issue.

Did the interface start out small and was subjected to an inadvertent resize which was subsequently not correctable or has it always been stretched?

It simply opened over-sized the first time.

Does this problem occur with a new user?

Yes (created one to test).

Does this problem occur in the live environment?

Sadly I'd overwritten the USB I used to install with a Windows 7 install .iso, which delayed my response, yes it also happens in the live session.

Bearded_Blunder · 2016-10-20 10:47:03

Firstly, apologies for double posting, I'm never quite certain if i should edit the previous post and make it much longer, or post again...

Upon further investigation (looking at closed bugs) I belive this to be related to Debian bug #763713 The image linked from Message 53 along with the explanation is instructive, the problem is that:

On the "Device" tab the left side contains a 1 line string of the full "$manufacturer $model" string

In my case, rather than the battery not being recognised, "$model" is a long string.

Had upstream accepted the propsed Debian patch, limiting the column width to 200px, I would not have an issue, the information requested by upstream at the time here is as follows:

beardy@GD8200-DB-BL:~$ upower --enumerate
/org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/line_power_AC0
/org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1
/org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/DisplayDevice
beardy@GD8200-DB-BL:~$ upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1
  native-path:          BAT1
  vendor:               SMP                             
  model:                GD8200 Primary Battery          018762                          LiIon                           SMP                             
  serial:               018762                          LiIon                           SMP                             
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Thu 20 Oct 2016 11:31:54 BST (56 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  battery
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               fully-charged
    warning-level:       none
    energy:              58.7088 Wh
    energy-empty:        0 Wh
    energy-full:         58.7088 Wh
    energy-full-design:  56.4516 Wh
    energy-rate:         0.0108 W
    voltage:             4.967 V
    percentage:          100%
    capacity:            100%
    icon-name:          'battery-full-charged-symbolic'
  History (rate):
    1476959514	0.011	fully-charged

beardy@GD8200-DB-BL:~$

obviously

model:                GD8200 Primary Battery          018762                          LiIon                           SMP

is stretching this well beyond 200px.

I'm not really sure how to proceed from here though, filing a bug either with Debian, or upstream, is unlikely to see it fixed swiftly, given how long things take to trickle down to Debian stable. Trying to build from source and patch it myself may well prove beyond my skill-set though, my coding abilities being minimal at best.

tknomanzr · 2016-10-20 15:33:35

Does alt-right clic kand drag work to resize the window?

Last edited by tknomanzr (2016-10-20 15:33:45)

Bearded_Blunder · 2016-10-20 22:18:54

tknomanzr wrote:

Does alt-right clic kand drag work to resize the window?

Afraid not, the issue is that I can only resize downward until the battery details on the Devices tab want to disappear, shrink, or wrap, at which point they won't.
Screenshot
Seems my battery has a long model string with multiple fields, which xfce4 Power Manager insists on displaying complete, and on a single line. The entire interface remains in proportion to this field, regardless which tab is showing, much as the long HEX ID did in those bug reports I mentioned. I can make it bigger but when those two instances of "SMP" hit the ends of that display field,no further reduction is possible.

Last edited by Bearded_Blunder (2016-10-20 22:22:38)

ohnonot · 2016-10-21 05:51:59

^ glad you found the culprit. sadly, i don't see a solution other than use a different software (either patched xfce4-pm or something else entirely).
or change your usage habits so that you don't even need to open the menu.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-10-21 06:42:16

Bearded_Blunder wrote:

Upon further investigation (looking at closed bugs) I belive this to be related to Debian bug #763713
[snip]
Had upstream accepted the propsed Debian patch, limiting the column width to 200px, I would not have an issue

That's strange, that bug report declares the problem fixed as of version 1.4.1-2 [1] and the version used by BL is 1.4.4-4 [2] so it should work fine

Can you confirm which version is in use on your system?

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … =763713#49

[2] https://pkg.bunsenlabs.org/debian/pool/ … r-manager/

Bearded_Blunder · 2016-10-21 10:57:01

I've looked at how upstream actually fixed it, (the actual commit), instead of restricting the field width, as the Debian proposed patch suggested, they check explicitly for the case of an unrecognized battery, and in that case only substitute generic details, which fixes the original reporter's issue, but leaves any user who's battery maker provides verbose model details with the same resizing issue, because they only considered one possible reason the field might get overfilled rather than all cases where it might.

There is nothing strange at all about it, even the default version in Jessie is "Fixed", it's just that upstream's chosen fix is a half-assed one that doesn't cover all corner cases when it could have done, simply by accepting what was proposed instead of doing something else.

But to answer your question I now have two systems now exhibiting this problem. A General Dynamics GD8000 running 1.4.1-1 and a General Dynamics GD8200 running 1.4.4-4~bpo8+1 Both have the upstream "fix", and neither is "fixed", since upstream decided to only deal with the case where the kernel generated 30odd digits of hex, rather than any case where the info was verbose.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-10-21 17:52:08

Bearded_Blunder wrote:

even the default version in Jessie is "Fixed", it's just that upstream's chosen fix is a half-assed one that doesn't cover all corner cases when it could have done, simply by accepting what was proposed instead of doing something else.

Ah, I see

Well, there's very little we can do about that here.

Would you be so kind as to report this upstream?

https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting

https://bugzilla.xfce.org/

If you're desperate, version 1.6.0-1 is available from experimental and can be backported:

https://packages.debian.org/experimenta … er-manager

If you have any troubles with that I can set up an OBS repository with a jessie build of that version and post a link here

Bearded_Blunder · 2016-10-22 04:59:36

So I sorted the problem, good enough to suit me

I decided to have a bash at fixing it, the code has changed some since that old bug report, so the old patch won't simply drop in, but the changes are pretty trivial, a couple of lines in one file, and I'd got an example to crib shamelessly from, so I added

deb-src http://pkg.bunsenlabs.org/debian jessie-backports main

to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bunsen-jessie-backports.list grabbed the source, used geany to find where the change needs making now and made a quick edit.

After a few bungled attempts, pulling in build deps and suchlike, and some playing with dch, and plenty of internet searches for tutorials, I finally got to where the first run through with dpkg-buildpackage gave a helpful error suggesting

dpkg-source --commit

which then generated me the following little patch:

Description: Fix UI grows beyond screen for certain batteries.
 Prevents the UI expanding beyond the screen when the vendor embedded
 battery information [vendor and/or serial] is unreasonably long.
 
 Rejected upstream to fix the same issue caused by long kernel-generated
 information when the OEM information was not detected.
 (Debian-Bug #763713) for reasons discussed at:
 https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show-bug.cg1?id=11217#c2
 The case where vendors embed lots of white-space and multiple 
 information fields in the "serial" was not considered at that time.

 xfce4-power-manager (1.4.4-4~bpo8+1) bunsen-jessie-backports; urgency=medium
 .
Origin: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=763713#30
Author: Bearded Blunder <bearded.blunder@mxstuff.org>
Bug-Debian: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=841479
Forwarded: no
Last-Update: 2016-10-22

--- xfce4-power-manager-1.4.4.orig/settings/xfpm-settings.c
+++ xfce4-power-manager-1.4.4/settings/xfpm-settings.c
@@ -2346,6 +2346,11 @@ xfpm_settings_dialog_new (XfconfChannel
     gtk_tree_view_set_rules_hint (GTK_TREE_VIEW (sideview),TRUE);
     col = gtk_tree_view_column_new ();
 
+    /* Fix the consarned width - unknown batteries aren't the only */
+    /* reason this can grow the UI beyond the limits of the screen */
+    gtk_tree_view_column_set_sizing(col, GTK_TREE_VIEW_COLUMN_FIXED);
+    gtk_tree_view_column_set_fixed_width(col, 200);
+    
     renderer = gtk_cell_renderer_pixbuf_new ();
 
     gtk_tree_view_column_pack_start (col, renderer, FALSE);

After dutifully editing some fields, so that I've owned up to my sins

dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc

built me a set of debs, which I installed, and now xfce Power Manager fits on my screen profit.

I'm sure someone who actually knew what they were doing could find a better UI fix, but this works for me at least till some update gets me, and I have to do it all over.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-10-22 10:02:16

Is there any chance you could pass this patch upstream as part of a formal bug report?

I'm sure the developers (and future users) would appreciate it.

#1 2016-10-18 13:25:22

[SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#2 2016-10-18 17:25:53

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#3 2016-10-19 00:50:28

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#4 2016-10-19 05:20:19

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#5 2016-10-19 06:45:24

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#6 2016-10-20 03:27:39

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#7 2016-10-20 06:26:09

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#8 2016-10-20 07:45:05

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#9 2016-10-20 10:47:03

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#10 2016-10-20 15:33:35

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#11 2016-10-20 22:18:54

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#12 2016-10-21 05:51:59

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#13 2016-10-21 06:42:16

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#14 2016-10-21 10:57:01

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#15 2016-10-21 17:52:08

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#16 2016-10-22 04:59:36

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

#17 2016-10-22 10:02:16

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 power manager interface too wide New Laptop Install

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