Support big-endian systems

[Jforce]

When I try to draw a shape using the paintbrush tool, it just shows up as a bunch of dots. When I go to Effects-Artistic-Oil Painting, and it renders, the color shows up. When I use the pencil tool, it just doesn't work at all. FYI I am using ubuntu 10.04 on an iBook g4 (powerpc hardware)

[Jonathan Pobst (jpobst)]

My guess is this is an endian issue? I don't have anything "other-endian" to test on.

[grofaty (grofaty)]

It looks like this bug report is for Pinta 0.4 version. I just guess because there is Ubuntu 10.04 and from #1 print-screen I can see no Type drop-down box. Don't know if this was some kind of bug in Pinta 0.4, but I can't reproduce dots in Pinta 0.5 on Ubuntu 10.10.

[Jonathan Pobst (jpobst)]

Are you trying to reproduce the issue on a big-endian system?

I don't have a big-endian system to test with, so that's just my guess as to the cause, since the original post mentioned PowerPC.

[grofaty (grofaty)]

No, I am not using big-endian system, just I pointed out (and forgot to write that I tested this on Intel) that this report looks like an old version of Pinta 0.4.

Maybe Jforce, could test if the same problem appears in the latest official stable version Pinta 0.5.
Adding Pinta 0.5 moonlight-team PPA using commands:
    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:moonlight-team/pinta
    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install pinta

[Robert Nordan (rpvn)]

I can confirm Pinta has a problem with big-endian systems, because the low level colour pointers (the Bgra pointers) assume it's a little-endian system, while Cairo will use the native byte ordering. (Making the ordering ARGB rather than BGRA.) Supporting a big-endian system would require a rather big rewrite of the fundamental assumptions in Pinta, but would be doable if anyone really wanted to.

[Jforce (j19force93)]

I would actually be very interested in writing a patch for that. I can
probably do it over the summer, since I'm in high school (a senior, going
for Electrical Engineering) I don't have time right now (I'm studying for
my Physics C midterm right now). But if no one has picked it up by the
summer, I would be happy to give it a shot. What parts would I have to
rewrite/modify?

On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 6:14 AM, Robert Nordan <email address hidden>wrote:

> I can confirm Pinta has a problem with big-endian systems, because the
> low level colour pointers (the Bgra pointers) assume it's a little-
> endian system, while Cairo will use the native byte ordering. (Making
> the ordering ARGB rather than BGRA.) Supporting a big-endian system
> would require a rather big rewrite of the fundamental assumptions in
> Pinta, but would be doable if anyone really wanted to.
>
> ** Changed in: pinta
> Status: New => Confirmed
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/596417
>
> Title:
> Support big-endian systems
>
> Status in Pinta:
> Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> When I try to draw a shape using the paintbrush tool, it just shows up
> as a bunch of dots. When I go to Effects-Artistic-Oil Painting, and it
> renders, the color shows up. When I use the pencil tool, it just
> doesn't work at all. FYI I am using ubuntu 10.04 on an iBook g4
> (powerpc hardware)
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/pinta/+bug/596417/+subscriptions
>

[Robert Nordan (rpvn)]

To be honest, I have no idea. I just noticed that at the very least the colour pointers don't work for big-endian, there may well be a lot of other stuff making that assumption. You'd have to make a fairly exhaustive inventory of the code to find out what else is affected, and which bits depend on the pointers being like they are. To be honest I'd say it seems like quite a lot of work to support hardware that not a lot of people use these days. :P

[Jonathan Pobst (jpobst)]

This idea has been migrated to our suggestions site:
http://connect.pinta-project.com/suggestions/130/support-big-endian-systems