GtkPaned_handle_size not setting? Can't change handle size

[Anna]

Hi,

I've been stuck with this bug but basically the handle size wouldn't change, I've had a look at previous bug threads going back to 2015 and tried the fixes to no avail, even though they should've been committed already.

I'm currently running it on Ubuntu 17.04 with the Arc theme.

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

This possibility was removed from GTK+. Accordingly, such a warning is printed:

(terminator:12345): Gtk-WARNING **: Theme parsing error: <data>:4:43: The style property GtkPaned:handle-size is deprecated and shouldn't be used anymore. It will be removed in a future version

Terminator should also remove this config option and UI setting.

Or... actually... it's a bit unclear to me, after all, there must be a way for themes to specify the width of the separator, I mean, it must have a certain fixed width, whatever it is. And then why can't that be overridden? So maybe there's still a (less trivial) way to save this feature.

[Egmont Koblinger (egmont-gmail)]

In the mean time, there's a new gtk_paned_set_wide_handle (boolean), so two different width are still available in certain themes. Adwaita seems to define two different widths, Ambiance doesn't.

[Anna (claritize)]

Aw that really sucks, would've been a pretty killer feature, sadly I missed the boat on that one. Any reason they decided to change it to a boolean setting instead?

[Anna (claritize)]

Also I tried setting the wide_handle property but it doesn't seem to be working, I just changed the original handle_size property to this:

488 css = """
489 .terminator-terminal-window GtkPaned {
490 -GtkPaned-wide-handle: TRUE; }
491 """

[Stephen Boddy (stephen-j-boddy)]

terminator.py:
538 # Size the GtkPaned splitter handle size.
539 css = ""
540 if self.config['handle_size'] in xrange(0, 21):
541 css += """
542 .terminator-terminal-window GtkPaned,
543 .terminator-terminal-window paned {
544 -GtkPaned-handle-size: %s; }
545 """ % self.config['handle_size']
546 style_provider = Gtk.CssProvider()
547 style_provider.load_from_data(css)
548 self.style_providers.append(style_provider)

We use CSS to set handle size in a theme compliant way. It works for me (Gtk 3.18 + Terminator 1.91+). I know some people had issues with newer Gtk versions (3.20+) not allowing setting the property on the class as per line 542. Instead it had to be a named node, so line 543 was added in commit 1714 of the gtk3 branch. After this it worked fine for them too. Now it seems that yet again Gtk is forcing everyone to continuously chase a moving target by removing it completely at some point in the future. That *should* be Gtk 4.0. Just because it is deprecated doesn't mean it doesn't work... for now. Of course I can't find a decent explanation of how to set this with normal css properties at the moment.

I think that maybe you're using a version from before that fix, but it is hard to tell as you haven't provided any of the usual info that helps me understand your system, such as Gtk version, Terminator version etc. I surmise that you are have Gtk 3.20+, but only running Terminator 1.90. Upgrading to 1.91 will likely fix your issue.

[Anna (claritize)]

Sorry for having so little information earlier. So I updated to 1.91 manually since im on 17.04 and still not working, I didnt touch any of the python or config files at all, here is also my GTK versions

libgtk2.0-0:
  Installed: 2.24.31-1ubuntu1.1
  Candidate: 2.24.31-1ubuntu1.1
  Version table:
 *** 2.24.31-1ubuntu1.1 500
        500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu zesty-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.24.31-1ubuntu1 500
        500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu zesty/main amd64 Packages
libgtk-3-0:
  Installed: 3.22.11-0ubuntu3
  Candidate: 3.22.11-0ubuntu3
  Version table:
 *** 3.22.11-0ubuntu3 500
        500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu zesty/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Stephen Boddy (stephen-j-boddy)]

OK, So that's a little more perplexing. The only thing I can think of is the theme. Have you tried Terminator under a different theme? I recommend trying with Ambiance. Exit all Terminator windows, and under a different terminal program (i.e. gnome-terminal):
$ GTK_DEBUG=interactive terminator
Then change the the GTK+ Theme under the Visual tab and see if the handle sizing starts to work.

If other themes are broken too, then it looks like GTK is the issue. If not, then it is something particular about Arc under GTK 3.22 specifically.

For kicks I installed latest Arc on my 16.04 release. For me I can override the handle size. What I notice is that the theme follows a recent trend of creating a default zero width handle, and using a margin CSS param to create a grabbable region outside the limits of the handle. This is damned annoying. It may give a cleaner interface, but then it needs to be disabled for Terminator as it becomes difficult/impossible to select the first character on the line to the right of a vertical handle. If you look in the terminatorlib/themes folder you will see the theme specific CSS tweaks we make.