SENDING IN BUG REPORTS

   DO NOT send bug reports directly to the developers!
   Please send to the evidence users mailing list so we can distribute
   the load: <evidence-users@lists.sourceforge.net>
   If you do not wish to subscribe to the list, still post there, and
   ask for a CC (courtesy copy).  If you wish to post to the list, but
   do not wish for the posting to appear in the mailing list's archive,
   use the "X-No-Archive: yes" header.
   evidence-related mail sent directly to the developers will be forwarded
   to the mailing list at their discretion!

   To get extra-info from evidence:    evidence -D3
   To see what system-calls are made:  strace -f evidence -D3
   To see what causes a crash:

     > gdb evidence
     (gdb) run evidence -D3
     .
     . (info from evidence, what's happening)
     .
     Segmentation fault!
     (gdb) bt
     .
     . (debugger telling us where the program crashed)
     .
     (gdb) quit



BUILDING

   With all that stuff that evidence supports, won't I be installing
   required libraries all day?

   The build breaks in avifile.cpp, because it can't find avifile.h, but
   I have avifile installed?



RUNNING/LOOK & FEEL

   Where are those fancy tooltips I saw in the screenshots?
   I hover over an icon with the mouse, and nothing happens?

   How do I open the type-buffer (micro-shell)?

   Why isn't the type-buffer always open?

   I get labels in icon-view, but they are garbled!
   (a/k/a/ What about accents, umlauts, UTF-8?)

   Why doesn't it look like efm?  ...like essence?



RUNNING/MEMORY USE

   Evidence is HUGE!!  Does it leak like hell, or is it bloat?

   Evidence uses tons and tons of memory when thumbnailing my fonts dir?









BUILDING

Q  With all that stuff that evidence supports, won't I be installing
   required libraries all day?

A  There aren't a lot of *required* libraries aside from GTK2 and evas.
   Just about everything else is purely *optional*, and in most
   cases you already have the libraries if you are interested in
   the respective functionality.  For instance, there's little point
   in building the vorbis-provider if you're not using vorbis; on the
   other hand if you *are* using vorbis, you in all likelihood already
   have the required libraries on your system.

   Also, most optional functions are not compiled into the main program,
   but into separate modules.  You can build these at a later date without
   having to rebuild the whole program.

   See the file DEPENDENCIES to see what functionality needs which
   libraries.



Q  I get "gtk/gtk.h: No such file or directory" on Mandrake?       [deprecated]

A  automake 1.7 or better is required.  Entering "export AUTOMAKE=automake-1.7"
   in the shell should fix this.  Thankyou.



Q  The build breaks in avifile.cpp, because it can't find avifile.h, but
   I have avifile installed?

A  Try "avifile-config --cflags" and "pkg-config --cflags avifile" -- if
   they give different paths after "-I", something is very wrong, but not
   in evidence. : (

   avifile.pc is broken.  The headers are probably in /usr/include/avifile-0.7
   and the avifile.pc says just /usr/include/avifile -- or the other way
   around.

   Solutions:
   - fix the .pc file and the avifile-config to point the right way OR
   - make an appropriate symlink for the include-dir OR
   - disable avifile support with --enable-avifile=no (SUGGESTED)
     You don't need avifile if you have a working libxine instead.
     (In fact, you can compile with neither, but then you won't get
     thumbnail previews for .avi-movies.)



Q  id3lib is found, but the mp3-provider cannot be built?          [deprecated]

A  See above; id3lib 3.8+ is required, sorry. : (
   If you are positive you have 3.8 or better, but it does not get detected,
   you may be on a Debian box.  Kindly consider rebuilding id3lib from source.
   Sorry for the trouble, but 3rd party packages are beyond my control.  : (



Q  evas is found, but evidence cannot be built?                    [deprecated]

A  If you get "undefined reference to `evas_object_font_cache_set/get',
   `evas_object_image_cache_set/get', `evas_object_font_path_append',
   that's because raster changed the API of evas AND didn't increase
   the version number.  Please upgrade evas.



Q  configure says I need GTK+ 2.2, what's wrong with 2.0?          [deprecated]

A  Apparently, some of the tree-related functions are present in GTK 2.0,
   but don't do anything.  If you build against 2.0, selections (in particular
   cross-selections -- selecting some items in one view, then trying to add
   items to that in another view) may not work correctly.
   To build with 2.0, find the following line in configure.in:
   PKG_CHECK_MODULES(EVIDENCE, gtk+-2.0 >= 2.2 )
   Change 2.2 into 2.0, run ./autogen.sh, and you're set (we advise against
   it, of course, and offer no support for such setups).



RUNNING/LOOK & FEEL

Q  Where are those fancy tooltips I saw in the screenshots?
   I hover over an icon with the mouse, and nothing happens?

A  Hover-for-tooltip needs to be enabled (-W on the command-line).
   By default, the tooltip only comes up when you middle-click an
   icon.  I agree that this violates the principle of least surprise,
   and I apologize, but I am confident that in the long run, you will
   find this behaviour much less annoying and faster to work with.
   And of course if you disagree, you can still get the other behaviour
   as per above.



Q  There are no labels underneath/next to the icons in icon-view?  [deprecated]

A  Sorry, your freetype is broken and does not work with the fonts
   in the theme your are using.  To fix this, you may, in order of
   preference, get a non-broken freetype, edit the theme-file to
   use different fonts, or copy over the offending fonts in the
   theme with ones known to work with your version of freetype.



Q  How do I open the type-buffer (micro-shell)?

A  Escape opens the type-buffer for vi-afficionados,
   / ' or < open it for those with less nimble fingers, and
   L or O, controlled or alternated, open it for browser-buffs.



Q  Why isn't the type-buffer always open?

A  Because that would break about every paradigm of GTK and any
   file-manager that the user may know (with the exception of efm).
   Given that it opens automagically on typing a /, this isn't much
   of a restriction.



Q  I get labels in icon-view, but they are garbled!
   (a/k/a/ What about accents, umlauts, UTF-8?)

A  This usually happens when you have files with non-ASCII names
   (names that feature accents, umlauts, Eastern characters etc.).
   evidence is pretty-characters-enabled (by virtue of using unicode),
   but issues may still arise if the locale is not set up properly
   on the machine in question, or if the font in use simply does not
   feature the characters in question.
   If the locale is not set up (use the 'locale' command to see your
   current settings), no unicode-enabled application will work right.
   Correct the locale and restart evidence.
   If you surmise that the font in use does not support your locale,
   try a font that is known to support your locale.  You can change
   the font from the typebuffer, like so: 'iconfont vera



Q  Why doesn't it look like efm?  ...like essence?

A  Because it's themable, and you are using a non-efmy theme.
   "evidence --efm" is a shortcut that selects a behaviour that
   closely resembles that of efm (it reuses efm's graphics files).



Q  What's with efm (enlightened file-manager), anyway?             [deprecated]

A  There is no efm.
   Repeat after me.
   There is no efm.

   efm was a study, and much of the good stuff that was in there was
   cleaned up went into the e-libs ("EFL").  Hence, efm marked the
   transition from e16 to e17.  It is no longer maintained, and really
   never was, nor was it intended for production use.  There are a
   couple of screenshots on the net showing efm windows, but those
   never really were fully functional versions.



RUNNING/FUN WITH LIBRARIES

Q  Evidence is HUGE!!  Does it leak like hell, or is it bloat?

A  You seem to have the libxine movie-thumbnailer enabled and engaged.
   This eats a lot of memory (if there is something to create previews
   for, anyway).  If in doubt, disable the xine thumbnailer and restart
   evidence -- you should save almost half of the previous memory usage
   that way!



Q  Evidence uses tons and tons of memory when thumbnailing my fonts dir?

A  This is a known leak in Imlib2 that was fixed in version 1.1.0;
   please update. (However, evidence will only thumbnail when there
   are new files, so the problem should not occur too often.)



Q  Evidence cannot thumbnail a certain XPM graphic?                [deprecated]

A  This was fixed in Imlib2 (XPM-loader) on 2003/05/22, please update.



Q  Evidence crashes at startup!?                                   [deprecated]

A  I'm really sorry. : (

-  There is one known bug that is not my fault:  on Mandrake Cooker, you
   can install libmagic and the file-command separately.  If you install
   only the former, libmagic will have no MIME-database and crash rather
   than throw an error. : (  Installing the database too (which is part
   of the "file"-command RPM) fixes this.

-  There have been reports that loading the IPC/DCOP-module        [deprecated]
   crashes evidence on Gentoo.  If you are on gentoo and experiencing a
   crash at start-up, try running "evidence -D1".  If the last message
   before the crash is "checking /some/where/lib/evidence/ipc/ipc_dcop.so",
   remove that file, and restart evidence.  All should be fine.



RUNNING/DEBUGGING

Q  If evidence crashes in gdb, it bombs right out of the debugger /
   it bombs as soon as I ask for a "bt" (backtrace)!?

A  I have no idea what causes this.  It works fine in early versions
   of gdb-5.3; later versions and gdb 6.0 seem to blow up on Linux.
   gdb-6.0 also seems to crash when trying to debug itself ("gdb gdb"
   in the gdb source-directory, or "gdb gdb", "(gdb) b internal_error").
   If you can at all, use an earlier version of gdb until this issue is
   resolved. : (



MISCELLANEOUS/PHILOSOPHICAL

Q  Is evidence in any way related to NeXT/Step (or to Mac OS X)?

A  Yes and no.  The "browser-view" (Alt-B) is a way of file-browsing
   that I think is native to the NeXT.  I've never seen it anywhere else
   (except on GNU/Step, which tries to be NeXT/Step, and apparently,
   Mac OS X, which was NeXT/Step).  I used to work on a NeXT-station for
   a year or two, but I mostly used the shell.  Iso said, "You what, the
   browser's the best thing there ever was!"  Since we'd already sold
   the NeXT, the only way to find out was to write something like it. : )

     All code is original however; no code of NeXT's, Apple's, or even
     GNU/Step's or FSViewer's is used; also while I prefer Objective C
     (and Objective CAML) over C++, evidence was written in plain C.

   I wasn't impressed at first, figuring it doesn't look much, but I
   soon found out that in terms of usability, there's nothing better
   for navigation song-directories or in fact anything where you
   frequently have to go up and down several levels
   ("/music/artist/album/song.ogg").  The "rephormed" text-path does
   something similar for the icon-view, but it still takes one more
   click for the same thing. : )  For fast navigation, there's nothing
   like the browser.



Q  Why isn't evidence a web-browser like all the other file-browsers
   seem to be these days?

A  I seriously distrust apps that try to be both a web- and a file-
   browser.  It's not the UNIX way.
   The UNIX way is small, dedicated legos that you can combine, each
   doing one job, and doing that one job right.
   My web-browser is Galeon (its slogan interestingly being tres UNIX,
   "The Web, and only the web"), and I'm quite happy to have it be a
   separate app from my file-browser so that it won't take down
   evidence if it crashes.  If you want to combine evidence and Galeon
   (or whatever), you might want to look into pekwm and related.  : )
   Personally, I see no point in having wildly separate applications
   share a window -- they already share a desktop, that's good enough.



Q  Why doesn't evidence offer the two-pane design like all the other
   file-browsers seem to do these days?

A  I'm not overly fond of it, and there are already good solutions for
   that paradigm (not to mention you can have something like it by opening
   two windows next to each other anyway : ).  If you want it in evidence,
   send me a patch that will make it a compile-time option.



Q  What kind of name is "Azundris" anyway?

A  Tachlarem.  Female first name.




Next/Step, Mac and Mac OS X may be trademarks, but they are none of mine.
Using them is not a challenge.
