Indicator Stickynotes 0.3.1+ /Ubuntu 13.10+ -- after reboot sticky notes which use more space than 8 x 25 characters are completely blank , text is still there and can be copy pasted

[DL]

Ubuntu 13.10 makes all sticky notes completely blank, text is still white on white and can be copy pasted
All sticky notes lose all color - text is white on white.
You can NOT see text, but you can copy it from old sticky note.
You can make a new note, but..
New note appears as Yellow with black text until next reboot, then white on white again.

[DL (h-contact-one)]

Was working ok in Ubuntu 13.04

[Umang Varma (umang)]

I won't have time to look at this for at least two weeks. I will try to get to this later. If anyone wants to investigate further, you are free to do so. Let me know what you find out. I don't have access to a 13.10 installation/VM right now.

[Vincent Thiele (vincentthiele)]

How can we get a log from sticky notes? Maybe this would help to find the problem.

[Vincent Thiele (vincentthiele)]

I've investigated this bug further and found out what could cause these problems.
Take a look at ~/.config/indicator-stickynotes:
this works after closing:
{"notes": [{"body": "dddddddddddddddddddddd", "uuid": "0f0a2774-5b42-4173-9892-7d6614cbadcd", "cat": "", "properties": {"locked": false, "position": [65, 24], "size": [224, 208]}, "last_modified": "2013-11-14T20:26:32"}], "properties": {"all_visible": true}, "categories": {}}
works not:
{"categories": {}, "properties": {"all_visible": true}, "notes": [{"last_modified": "2013-11-14T20:27:40", "cat": "", "properties": {"locked": false, "position": [65, 24], "size": [228, 266]}, "body": "ddddddddddddddddddddddd", "uuid": "0f0a2774-5b42-4173-9892-7d6614cbadcd"}]}
Conclusion:
This causes the bug: "size": [228, 266]

[kristian (berserk)]

Go beyond 8x25 and the box will go blank after restart.
See attached example..

[Vincent Thiele (vincentthiele)]

Has someone python knowledge to fix this before umang?

[Patrick (patrickstar777)]

same here, although my stickies have black text on black ground.

the black background also occurs, when renaming objects on the desktop or in nemo file manager.

[Umang Varma (umang)]

I've tried to fiddle around with this on a virtual machine and I've been able to reproduce the bug. Unfortunately, I can't think of what could possibly be causing this. Most likely it's a bug with gtk, but until I can confirm that, I won't assume so.

I haven't been able to find enough time to figure this out. If anyone wants to take shot, please feel free.

[Quadrocube (aix123)]

Same here... Anyone gona tweak it out?

[kristian (berserk)]

In my case it seems that application does not handle notes that is larger than the default note size..
I think application does not handle resizing the note after restart correctly.

In my case:
if you make notes bigger than 8x25 they will be blank after restart.
If you make notes smaller then 8x25 characters, they will be visible as expected after restart.
(See picture attached in post #5 for example)

How to reproduce bug:

1. Make note with either:
    a) more than 25 characters in one line
    b) characters on more than 8 lines.
2. restart application
3.This will result in a blank note.

Is this the same as you are experiencing?

Bug description says "ALL stickynotes is completely blank".
Maybe this is is easier for coders to fix if we narrow it down..
Can we confirm that:
Only notes where "text uses more space than 8 x 25 characters" is affected?

[Vincent Thiele (vincentthiele)]

Yes it's the same bug but like Umang said it might be a gtk bug... This seems plausible because the application code was not touched for the saucy release.

[Vincent Thiele (vincentthiele)]

Update: I've tried Sticky Notes 0.1 up to 0.3 which works after restart. Only 4.x is not working!

[Vincent Thiele (vincentthiele)]

Sorry forgot to mention that also 0.3.1+ is not working.

[Tim Wahrendorff (tim.timwahrendorff)]

Anybody got a link to 0.3 deb or src-files?

[Vincent Thiele (vincentthiele)]

Look here: https://launchpad.net/indicator-stickynotes/+download

[Simplet (simplet)]

Same here on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (sticky notes 0.4.2)

After app restart/reboot sticky notes which use more space than 8 x 25 characters are completely blank , text is still there and can be copy pasted but it renders the whole thing unuseable.

[Andy Rozman (andy-rozman)]

It seems that problem is not in sticky-notes itself but on some library it uses. I upgraded my system from Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04, and sticky notes version was the same (0.4.2) on old install and on new.

I tried to install 0.3 on my system and it works, but this version has no categories, which was one of the best options. Version 0.3 worked, but 0.3.1 not. So whatever changes were made from 0.3 to 0.3.1 are the changes that are giving us headaches now.

I hope this problem can be fixed, because I really like sticky notes, but most of text I use is much longer that 8 x 15 characters, so now I have 5 white stickies and one with visible text...

[Eric Ding (ericding-alum)]

I've narrowed down this particular issue to the following commit:

    Committer: Umang Varma
    Date: 2012-08-11 01:28:43 UTC
    Revision ID: git-v1:ce28fb3546ea652044662cff8f7e9e557a672ef0

Remember hidden state on startup

One issue that had to be dealt with is that the GtkWindow has to be loaded for everything to work properly. At the same time, there were issues with hiding all the notes on startup as they would then default to the 200 x 200 default size. This seems to be the best solution.

In particular, the addition of the following line:

       self.winMain.hide()

appears to be what's somehow tickling this issue in larger notes. If I comment out this line, then all the notes look fine on startup. I don't understand the changes quite well enough (yet) to figure out the "why" of this bug, but for now, I've commented out the line in my system. Hope this is enough for someone else to really fix this without causing a regression.

[Eric Ding (ericding-alum)]

In case the above wasn't clear: everything from "Remember hidden state... " to "... seems to be the best solution." is from the original commit changelog. Everything after "In particular..." is my comment on what I did to work around for this issue.

[Umang Varma (umang)]

Thank you so much for narrowing down this bug, Eric. I will be busy for the next four to five weeks, but unless someone is able to fix this bug before then, I will take a look at this in late-June.

[Umang Varma (umang)]

Thank you so much again, Eric. You definitely identified the problem. By playing around a little bit, I think I've discovered that you cannot hide a GtkWindow (presumably any GtkWidget) until everything has been loaded. The function probably assumes that you are calling it based on a user's action (and everything has been loaded). I couldn't figure out exactly what the right time to call hide() might be (since there were a few different signals I could try to connect to), but I decided to go for a simpler solution: don't create the windows until they actually need to be created. I'll upload a new version with this change soon.

[Michael Liao (michael-liao1112)]

Hello developers, I just downloaded by PPA and my background is black with black text (in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS). It seems the problem isn't solved.

[tomasorti (tomasorti)]

Same here.
In Ubuntu 14.04 LTS all notes start in black backgroung & black foreground.
So, it is not possible to see the text on them.
And it is independent on the size of the note.

[Umang Varma (umang)]

I think your issue sounds like lp:1019380. Can someone verify if the problem is resolved in 15.04?