[3.3.x] Developer Discussion

[slook]

Matters regarding the nicotine-plus code that are relevant for the future version of Nicotine+ 3.3.1

**This is not a conversation thread, and as such, please keep replies in-line and on-topic.**

[slook]

Unresolved and outstanding topics from 3.3.0.dev6 Developer Discussion thread:

• Review check_digit() method [3.3.0.dev6] Developer Discussion #2145 (comment)

• Review on_change_password() method [3.3.0.dev6] Developer Discussion #2145 (comment)

• Keyboard accelerators should not respond to key-repeat events [3.3.0.dev6] Developer Discussion #2145 (comment)

• Not needed horizontal scrollbar in log view [3.3.0.dev6] Developer Discussion #2145 (comment)

• Apply a standard fixed width font for Text View [3.3.0.dev6] Developer Discussion #2145 (comment)

• Feature request: Visual indicator for activated items in Search Files [3.3.0.dev6] Developer Discussion #2145 (comment)

• Auto-complete selects wrong item in dropdown-list on tab-key press [3.3.0.dev6] Developer Discussion #2145 (comment)

• Feature suggestion: Notification icon on Room Wall button when ticker message is added [3.3.0.dev6] Developer Discussion #2145 (comment)

• [ ]

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Unresolved and outstanding topics from 3.3.0.dev1 Developer Discussion thread:

• Add separate thread that handles file operations for transfers [3.3.0.dev1] Developer Discussion #1881 (comment)

• Saving a peer's very large shares list to disk causes the UI to freeze [3.3.0.dev1] Developer Discussion #1881 (comment)

• Opening a very large shares list from disk causes the Select File dialog box to hang open [3.3.0.dev1] Developer Discussion #1881 (comment)

• By default, Nicotine+ launches new Player instances for a multi-selection rather than enqueuing tracks [3.3.0.dev1] Developer Discussion #1881 (comment)

• New chat messages are visually glitchy in TextView after the maximum buffer limit is reached [3.3.0.dev1] Developer Discussion #1881 (comment)

• Feature suggest: If a single File item is selected in a transfers view, then "Browse Folder(s)" should become "Browse to Shared File" [3.3.0.dev1] Developer Discussion #1881 (comment)

• Feature suggest: Quote selection in Chat TextView [3.3.0.dev1] Developer Discussion #1881 (comment)

• Feature request: Chat TextView able to read back log file on demand [3.3.0.dev1] Developer Discussion #1881 (comment)

• Feature request: Chat TextView button that scrolls to bottom to see New Messages [3.3.0.dev1] Developer Discussion #1881 (comment)

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Unresolved and outstanding topics from 3.2.1 Developer Discussion thread:

• When downloads take over 1 day and I look at 1:03:14:15 I always look at it like "What!?" [3.2.1.rc3] Developer Discussion #1533 (comment)

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Minor Bugs and Usability Problems:

• Filter bar layout issues (Result Filters) [3.2.0.dev1] Minor Bugs and Usability Problems #1535 (comment)

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User Experience and Accessibility Improvements:

• Wishlist overhaul Wishlist overhaul #1604

• Text-to-Speech requires a Test button in Preferences or converting to a plugin [3.2.0.dev1] User Experience and Accessibility Improvements #1526 (comment)

• Chat AutoComplete [3.2.0.dev1] User Experience and Accessibility Improvements #1526 (comment)

• Remove "Clear All Results" menuitem from the search tab context-menu. [3.2.0.dev1] User Experience and Accessibility Improvements #1526 (comment)

• Bitrate and other columns are missing from the Downloads tab (and Uploads tab) [3.2.0.dev1] User Experience and Accessibility Improvements #1526 (comment)

• Options for setting background color of all TreeView Lists and Chat TextView [3.2.0.dev1] User Experience and Accessibility Improvements #1526 (comment)

• highlighting friends' nicknames with color [3.2.0.dev1] User Experience and Accessibility Improvements #1526 (comment)

..

[slook]

Feature suggestion: Highlight the Apply button with in the Preferences dialog when change(s) have been made

...and I suppose the Cancel button in red destructive colour as well.

Alternatrively, Remove Apply button from preferences dialog as in #1881 (comment)

[slook]

Feature suggestion: Highlight any configured Shares in Preferences dialog for which the real path does not exist or cannot be accessed

When the Shares Not Accessible error dialog is destroyed, then it can be hard to remember which share(s) had the error.

A ! icon or red colour text style would be sufficient for this purpose, that is updated each time the Shares list view is built.

To further expand on this idea, a tooltip or popover could offer some detail about the error(s), such as if a folder cannot be found or perhaps even containing a scrollable list of files which have tag errors or other such problems. Such a dictionary of errors could be managed in Scanner() alongside calls to log.add().

If an icon column is added to the Shares list view, then it would be reassuring to see a green tick icon or similar to indicate the successfully mounted and scanned shared folders without any logged errors.

[mathiascode]

Remove Text-to-Speech feature in favor of OS screen reader and notifications

The current Text-to-Speech feature relies on running commands, which isn't really possible in the world of sandboxing, and rather unfriendly for cross-platform users. Nowadays we have OS-level notifications, which at least on GNOME are read by the system's screen reader when enabled. It would be better to use them instead of duplicating effort in our own inferior TTS implementation.

We should verify if different OSes read notifications aloud. If this is the case, I propose we remove the Text-to-Speech feature, and instead add an option to mute specific chats (no notification or sound).

[slook]

Hide irrelevant rooms when finding using text entry in Rooms popover

Like the browse shares folders tree view search function.

The matching results can be spread wide, there is no find next functionality and it is not obvious that there are additional results further down the list.

[mathiascode]

I agree we should restore this behavior at some point. It was removed to make it easier to finish the treeview work in 3.3.0.

[slook]

Download context menu items missing keyboard accelerators

Since 5427c5e The D and T keyboard accelerators are gone, perhaps they can be transposed into the remaining menu items instead.

[slook]

See PR #2905

[slook]

GTK 4 on Windows: Reevaluate when the new GPU renderers are stable

nicotine-plus/pynicotine/gtkgui/__init__.py

Lines 131 to 134 in 13006ae

	# Use Cairo software rendering due to flickering issues in the GPU renderer (#2859).
	# Reevaluate when the new GPU renderers are stable:
	# https://blog.gtk.org/2024/01/28/new-renderers-for-gtk/
	os.environ["GSK_RENDERER"] = "cairo"

[slook]

Cannot view User Profile, Browse Shares nor Search Files of another user on the same LAN

Each user has a different port, but is on the same external IP address.

[mathiascode]

Are the ports forwarded?

[slook]

No, behind public NAT, the DHCP server on the WLAN is a mobile device with a basic WiFi hotspot feature. It automatically assigns addresses in the 192.168.1.0/24 range, that is not configurable. Other local services such as FTP, Samba, Cups, adb, etc, all work after configuring local firewalls.

Software firewall logs show that in the case of Nicotine+ no local connections between machines are ever attempted.

[mathiascode]

Ultimately the issue is that the Soulseek network provides the public IP address of users, even ones on the same local network, and all connection attempts are made to it. Unless you forward ports, it's not going to work.

[slook]

Connections count is off by 1 displayed during network outage

The count probably includes own user, but that is irrelevant as in Offline state expectation would 0 not 1.

[mathiascode]

Fixed in 9c054dd

[slook]

GTK 4 errors printed to console and "Clear All..." button can't recieve touch event

The Android Oreo 8.1.0 AOSP device screen is only 5" in size, resolution is 1280x720 in forced landscape orientation. Posting these errors here only out of interest for research and development purposes.

Maybe related to high DPI setting and lack of any theme support in the OS, this is probably not a bug in Nicotine+.

~/git/nicotine-plus $ python3 ./nicotine
[2024-03-05 11:06:28] Loading Python 3.11.8
[2024-03-05 11:06:28] [Misc] Using Python executable: /data/data/com.termux/files/usr/bin/python3
[2024-03-05 11:06:28] [Misc] Using Nicotine+ executable: /data/data/com.termux/files/home/git/nicotine-plus/pynicotine
[2024-03-05 11:06:28] Loading Nicotine+ 3.3.3.dev1
[2024-03-05 11:06:28] Translation files (.mo) are unavailable, using default English strings
[2024-03-05 11:06:29] Loading GTK 4.12.4
[snip...]
[2024-03-05 11:06:31] Rescanning shares…
[snip...]
(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 11:06:31.469: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 90x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddf8fb730 needs at least 116x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 11:06:31.469: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 78x25, but GtkBox 0x7ddf9746e0 needs at least 104x25.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 11:06:31.469: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 90x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddf8fb8f0 needs at least 131x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 11:06:31.469: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 78x25, but GtkBox 0x7ddf974b60 needs at least 119x25.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 11:06:31.470: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 100x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddf8fbc70 needs at least 114x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 11:06:31.470: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 88x25, but GtkBox 0x7ddf9a7460 needs at least 102x25.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 11:06:31.470: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 140x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddf8fbe30 needs at least 195x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 11:06:31.470: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 128x25, but GtkBox 0x7ddf9a78e0 needs at least 183x25.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 11:06:31.588: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 90x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddf8fb730 needs at least 116x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 11:06:31.588: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 90x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddf8fb8f0 needs at least 131x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 11:06:31.588: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 100x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddf8fbc70 needs at least 114x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 11:06:31.589: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 140x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddf8fbe30 needs at least 195x31.
[snip...]
[2024-03-05 11:07:26] [Misc] Cannot read color scheme, falling back to GTK theme preference: g-dbus-error-quark: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop was not provided by any .service files (2)
[snip...]
(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:27.959: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 25x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddf2ec1f0 needs at least 39x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:27.960: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 13x25, but GtkBox 0x7ddf35ece0 needs at least 27x25.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:27.960: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 30x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddf2ec3b0 needs at least 39x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:27.960: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 18x25, but GtkBox 0x7ddec56160 needs at least 27x25.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:28.059: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 25x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddf2ec1f0 needs at least 39x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:28.059: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 30x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddf2ec3b0 needs at least 39x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:33.302: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 25x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddfe58370 needs at least 39x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:33.302: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 13x25, but GtkBox 0x7ddf84c0e0 needs at least 27x25.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:33.303: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 30x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddfe58530 needs at least 39x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:33.303: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 18x25, but GtkBox 0x7ddf84c560 needs at least 27x25.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:33.303: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 104x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddfe588b0 needs at least 114x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:33.303: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 92x25, but GtkBox 0x7ddf84ce60 needs at least 102x25.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:33.398: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 25x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddfe58370 needs at least 39x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:33.398: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 30x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddfe58530 needs at least 39x31.

(org.nicotine_plus.Nicotine:27483): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 12:18:33.398: Allocation width too small. Tried to allocate 104x31, but GtkButton 0x7ddfe588b0 needs at least 114x31.
[snip...]

The application appears to start and operates normally including search and transfer and chat. Hardware video acceleration is as yet unavailable using termux-x11-nightly on this machine, which is only usable with -legacy-drawing, similar software rendering limitation when using VNC also tested as well and works fine without any lag.

The only exception of the "Clear All..." button in transfers view which cannot be touched by finger event (but can be clicked on with mouse pointer click event), regardless of DPI setting.

Tested with actual finger on the physical screen as well as emulated touch event using mouse in sdk mode via scrcpy, either via adb USB or adb over WiFi, in both cases this button touch is inoperative, yet all other widgets can be touched okay.

Physical finger touch event, button can be focused is highlighted but menu doesn't appear:

Emulated touch event via scrcpy, menu doesn't appear until the host Screenshot window takes focus away:

Hardware bluetooth HID mouse directly connected or mouse forwarding over adb via USB pointer click works as normal:

GTK 3.24.8 is also present, and when run with that this problem doesn't exist and menu shows on finger touch fine. Only GTK 4 has issue.

[mathiascode]

The popover issue should be https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/6646, fixed in https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/merge_requests/5782. Do you have GTK 4.14.3 available for testing?

[slook]

Yes, it was recently upgraded just last week termux/termux-packages@391fec6 in PR termux/termux-packages#19986 I will test it soon.

[slook]

Connection error message during startup

[2024-04-04 04:21:43] [Conn] Cannot send the message over the closed connection: <class 'pynicotine.slskmessages.SharedFoldersFiles'> <S - SharedFoldersFiles> {'folders': 321, 'files': 3970}
[2024-04-04 04:21:43] Connected to server server.slsknet.org:2242, logging in…
[2024-04-04 04:21:44] [Misc] Creating Port Mapping rule...

[mathiascode]

Some sporadic timing issue when shares initialize and we're also connecting to the server. Only one of them should send a message (ideally), but in this case the message from the share initialization was queued while we were in the process of connecting.