Ximage command error

radiance-general
1

Hi,

I am following this simple tutorial to get familiar with Radiance. However, when I reach to the point where it suggests to run the command ximage render.pic I am getting the following error:

X Error of failed request:  BadName (named color or font does not exist)
  Major opcode of failed request:  45 (X_OpenFont)
  Serial number of failed request:  23
  Current serial number in output stream:  37

any idea what could be he cause? My guess is that some fonts are missing but the questions is which ones.

2

I’m guessing there is something wrong or incomplete in your X11 installation. It could just be a missing font directory, or it could be something more basic (like no runtime environment) and this is just the first error that shows up.

3

Thanks Greg, it was the first, i.e. missing directory, I’ve updated the Xserver to be aware of the new directories and it seems to work now :-).

1 Like
4

Try ximage render.hdr.

The output of the file extension has changed from pic to hdr

Re: Request for a change
Kind Regards
Terrance McMinn

5

Thanks @Terrance_McMinn1, I’ve noticed that as well.

Not to open a new thread trad is also complaining with the following message:

 Error in startup script: invalid command name "helplink"
    while executing
"helplink .mess trad trad messages"
    (file "/opt/radiance-renderer/bin/trad" line 103)

I found this thread but it seems outdated. Any new instructions how to make trad to work?

6

It sounds like trad didn’t get installed properly, or its library got moved. Are you installing from a package, or building from the distribution?

7

Hello ttsem

Check line 11 in the trad file and make sure radlib is pointing to the
correct folder. In my case that is as below:

# Insert our autoload directory (may require local system modification)

set radlib /usr/local/lib/ray/tcl
set helplib $radlib

Re: Request for a change
Kind Regards
Terrance McMinn

8

To be honest, I don’t remember if @Rob_Guglielmetti and I ever got this sorted out in the NREL installers. I’m glad you brought it up, as we’re currently updating the installers for the next official release…

9

I am building from my distribution with cmake and I am setting a new installation path other than the /usr/local/{bin,lib,man} in my distribution /usr/local is not that commonly used.

This means that I still need to created the tcl directory and copy the corresponding files into that folder and then change the line to point to this path. Because as it is now my compiled output does not have any tcl folder anywhere, is that right?

Greg isn’t it a bad practice that there is a fixed path in this line? I would expect to be updated according to where the tcl folder is located. Also the fact that the tcl folder does not seem to be created during the building, could be considered as a bug?

10

Creating the directory, copying the files and setting the corresponding path in trad worked like a charm.

But still I believe that this should be addressed in first place during compilation or something.

11

We never did. As an X11-dependent application, the way to get that going on Windows–at least the way we handled it with rvu–was to build a Qt version. And that’s been its own rough ride, as you know, so we decided to not bother. I’ve always just used a pcond/pfilt/ra_tiff/[pick_your_tiff-to-png-or-jpg_converter] workflow instead of ximage. I may be (am) lazy and possibly ignorant to any new niceties you’ve added to ximage over the years though, Greg. Should we revisit this?? Definitely not for this release but maybe down the road? Does anyone know of other ways to support/convert X11 apps for use on Windows?

Just realized we are talking about trad here. OK so different dependency (tcl/tk), and no “easy” fix like compiling the Perl scripts was. This one would prob need to be converted to a Qt app or we’d need to include a tcl/tk support thing which we already punted on with regard to Perl…

12

I think the problem is much simpler – we need to run the util/tradinstall.csh script from cmake on Unix systems. No need to bother about Windows support, but we should add a command equivalent to what gets run in Rmakefile using cmake. What’s happening is that the trad main program is being copied, but not all its dependencies. Rmakefile has a line:

csh -f tradinstall.csh $(INSTDIR) $(LIBDIR)/tcl

that is missing from cmake. Should be an easy fix to add it.

2 Likes
13

Hello All,

Has anyone considered adding packaging of Radiance as a snap application
(https://snapcraft.io/first-snap) and/or flatpak (https://flatpak.org/)?
I am running Ubuntu 20.4 and it is hard to tell when running an
application, if it is a native install, or a snap install.

This could eliminate a large number of installation issues for novice
users on Linux/mac and soon windows (https://snapcraft.io/first-snap/c).

Re: Request for a change
Kind Regards
Terrance McMinn
Please consider the environment before printing this email.

14

Personally I am against snap/flatpak/docker solutions, to my experience there might be fine for testing or light usage but not for actual development. But as I said this is a personal preference, for the majority of the users though it might be proved a nice workaround.