Bug 1549084

Summary: [grace] Replacement by grace-gtk
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: baoboa <baoboadev>
Component: graceAssignee: José Matos <jamatos>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
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Version: rawhideCC: dominik, itamar, jamatos, sait.a.umar, terje.rosten
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Last Closed: 2018-06-20 18:04:38 UTC Type: Bug
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Description baoboa 2018-02-26 11:20:03 UTC
Description of problem:
Upstream is inactive and technical debt is growing (like t1 fonts #1502175 ). Proposal to switch to grace-gtk as development is active and functionality and integration are better. This version is compatible with saved file of grace. 

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
5.1.25-9

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Actual results:
https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/baoboa/gracegtk/

Expected results:
Less regression, better functionality

Additional info:

Comment 1 Sammy 2018-02-26 13:53:18 UTC
I propose to keep both versions. I think the owner of grace is somewhat active when it comes to things he considers real bugs. He argued that the font issue was a packaging issue. He is responding to reports at the grace web site groups.

The problem I see is exchanging grace plot files. I use both and even the qtgrace which I think is a bit more faithful to original (less extra options) but if I want to exchange grace files with others not on Fedora then there is a problem.

Comment 2 baoboa 2018-02-26 15:21:22 UTC
It's in legacy mode but with a fast evolving distribution like fedora the package maintainer will have a lot of work.
The grace package become orphaned and is broken until now. I think that a broken orphaned package will be dropped soon. 
If the author of grace-gtk want to modernized the code (use of distribution font, gtk3 ) it could be a long term solution.

There is a problem with compatibility of plot files  but it's all related to font, no ?

Comment 3 Sammy 2018-02-26 16:20:28 UTC
Well, gracegtk is really different in some ways. For example, I use it to
insert bitmap figures into the plot. It can also shade between curves etc.

The grace is a motif application and the font issue has been resolved in
bug #1502175 with just link the fonts and a new Fontmap file (comment #20).
This can easily be packaged and have a working grace package.

By the way, there is also qtgrace which is based on qt toolkit. I use that too
for shading between curves. These are all maintained at some level. I am
usually trying to package these for my research group because they are badly
needed in Linux.

Comment 4 baoboa 2018-02-26 17:13:36 UTC
i did look at qtgrace previously , but it was hard to package, the installation procedure look alien to me.
I just update to the newest version and it's much better now, just need to find how to provide the path to the default library, so yes qtgrace is an option too and it can use to the qt font which solve a lot of trouble. 
How to deal with the wizard ? most of the users will be lost with so many questions.

Comment 5 Terje Røsten 2018-06-20 18:04:38 UTC
We will keep grace running on Fedora, others are free to include gtk and qt versions of grace in fedora (please avoid file conflicts if doing so).