[Xastir-dev] Xastir/Cygwin & Sound -- Odd Malfunction

[Dan Srebnick]

I've been working with Xastir under Cygwin and in the process of doing
so, cleaning up the documentation in README.CYGWIN.  The first pass was
to clean up the dependencies list and I am working on a simpler install
process and associated description.

While Cygwin is much stabler than when that document may have been
originally authored, I am running into an odd issue pertaining to
sound.  I've added the sox package, to gain access to the play command
line utility, and have downloaded the sounds from git.

Under both 32 and 64 bit Cygwins, on 2 different machines, I have
experienced a malfunction whereby xastir temporarily locks up when the
first weather alert sound is received.

Here is the sequence.

1 -- Open an X enabled console and start xastir &
2 -- Maps paint, data flows, and I wait for the first weather alert.
3 -- A weather alert message is received and the following paints in
the console:

/usr/local/share/xastir/sounds/thunder-01.wav:

 File Size: 38.0k     Bit Rate: 64.2k
  Encoding: Unsigned PCM
  Channels: 1 @ 8-bit
Samplerate: 8000Hz
Replaygain: off
  Duration: 00:00:04.74

However, no sound is heard and Xastir becomes unresponsive to menu
navigation and clicks.

4 - I press ctrl-c in the console window:


[1]+  Stopped                 xastir

5 - A command prompt is returned.  If I type fg, xastir resumes and the
queued sound plays.  Everything works after that until things lock up
again.  Here is some more info painted on the console screen.  At this
point, the application is unresponsive and I have to kill it using task
manager.

xastir
In:0.00% 00:00:00.00 [00:00:04.74]
Out:0     [      |      ]        Clip:0    Warning:
    Name: create_appshell menubar
    Class: XmRowColumn
    XtGrabPointer failed.

Warning:
    Name: create_appshell menubar
    Class: XmRowColumn
    XtGrabPointer failed.

Warning:
    Name: create_appshell menubar
    Class: XmRowColumn
    XtGrabPointer failed.

In:100%  00:00:04.74 [00:00:00.00] Out:37.9k [      |      ] Hd:0.0
Clip:0
Done.

Anyway, I wanted to report this.  If it turns out it is a Cygwin issue
I'll put a note in the docs to avoid sounds, but I thought that I would
put this out there to see if any of the developers have any thoughts on
what it could be and how to fix.

Should anyone want to try to replicate, here's the install command
(including package dependencies) that I used for cygwin.

setup-x86.exe --quiet-mode --packages autoconf,automake,binutils,^
db,font-util,gcc-core,git,GraphicsMagick,gv,libcurl-devel,libdb-devel,^
libgdal-devel,libgeotiff,libgeotiff-devel,libjasper-devel,libjbig-
devel,^
liblcms2-devel,libpcre-devel,libshp-devel,libtiff-devel,libwebp-devel,^
libwmf-devel,libxml2-devel,libGraphicsMagick-devel,libX11-devel,^
libXext-devel,libXm-devel,make,nano,sox,unzip,wget,xfontsel,xinit,^
xorg-x11-fonts-Type1,xorg-x11-fonts-dpi100,libbz2-devel,libproj-devel

The command line can be cut and pasted into an elevated command prompt
after cd to the directory where the setup command has been downloaded.

73,

Dan Srebnick
K2DLS