Weather applet shows strange icons in panel

[Lucas]

The applet shows strange icons in the panel. Depending on the weather it sometimes shows a icon that shows a sun with a few clouds but also an UbuntuOne icon or just no icon!

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

Could you please attach a screenshots of strange icons?

Maybe, no icon means that Weather Indicator is loading, ubuntu one icons means no connection.

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

I've just made three screenshots.

The first shows what I've seen just when receiving your comment - a few minutes ago. There's no icon at all though the menu shows that weather data is being received (and the data is correct).

The second one shows expected behavior - for this one I've added London to my location list temporarily.

But mostly I see the behavior shown on the third screenshot. As you can see this seems to be shown for the same weather data as on the first shot. But until yesterday I was believing it would be the UbuntuOne icon always when a scattered sky is reported. Strange thing....

Best regards,

Lucas

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

status confirmed

OK, I guess, we got three cases here:

1) Empty icon is being displayed when data is being received. Fix - show
some stub icon
2) Everything is OK
3) "No data icon" is displayed when weather data is present. Fix - check,
that old data is not being displayed or menu items are deleted if error
occurred

Lukas, could you please start Weather Indicator from terminal and post
output here (especially for the third case)?

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

Okay, I've just tried it and unfortunately I have the "no icon case" at the moment.
In terminal it just prints:

Update : Bedeckt (every 5 min. for Neuenstein)

I just found out an interesting thing: First I tried to reproduce the "UbuntuOne icon case" by adding other Locations and finding the right weather conditions for that. But I failed. All Locations showed just no icon. After trying Palma de Mallorca, Hamburg, Berlin, Oslo, New York, Atlanta and others no icon appeared.
Then I switched to Sydney and there it was: The icon came back and it was the right one for a partly cloudy Sky. When then switching back to Neuenstein or Göttingen (Göttingen was active when starting the weather indicator) the icon for partly cloudy stayed, though it should have been covered sky. This icon then stayed a long time while I tried different Locations like Moscow or things. It did'nt change anymore. First when switching to Munich, it changed to snow. And now this stays though I switched back to Göttingen where partly cloudy should be shown.

During all these tests I had the terminal opened and it only shows the update messages for the respective cities.

I also restarted the indicator and then it started with no icon again. When switching between my locations Neuenstein and Göttingen nothing changed - but when switching to Munich it immediately changed to snow although this was just after a few seconds since starting the program.

I assume it is a problem with refreshing the icon - but the effect seems to be dependent on the city you have set. Some cities refresh the icon immediately while others don't.

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

Icon and label update bugs were fixed in RC3, see unstable repo or wait for a new official release

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

I've just added the unstable repo in my sources and updated the weather indicator. Unfortunately the program does not start anymore but gives the following terminal output:

lucas@Lucas-PC ~ $ indicator-weather
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/indicator-weather", line 1311, in <module>
    wi = indicator_weather()
  File "/usr/bin/indicator-weather", line 623, in __init__
    self.menu_normal()
  File "/usr/bin/indicator-weather", line 742, in menu_normal
    self.winder.set_label("")
AttributeError: 'appindicator.Indicator' object has no attribute 'set_label'

I'm not a pro and so I don't see the problem here and I also don't know if I've done something wrong in switching to the new version. I'd be grateful for any hint about this...

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

Lucas, which Ubuntu are you using?

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

It is Ubuntu 10.04 but in fact it is Linux Mint 9.

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

Lucas, I've pushed another package in unstable PPA with possible fix for
this problem.
Unfortunately, I can't check this on either Lucid or Mint 9.

Could you please file another bug for this if this crash is still
reproducible?

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

It's still the case for the new version. I've opened a new bug report here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/weather-indicator/+bug/714045

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

I've now managed to get the weather-indicator work again with your help by deleting the settings in gconf-editor.

Now I've seen the following behavior: I started the program and set two locations - Fritzlar and Kassel, both in Hessen, Germany. Fritzlar was the first one and set active - the icon was shown correctly.
Then I switched to Kassel and the icon switched to this UbuntuOne sign again. I then opened the menu to see the current condition and it sayed:

"BUG: Condition name is empty!"

After this I switched back to Fritzlar and the icon didn't switch again. The UbuntuOne icon stayed. After restarting the weather indicator there's no icon shown. When switching the location to Kassel again, it shows the UbuntuOne sign which will then stay independent from location switching.

For all this there's no terminal output...

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

Now the applet stores debug output in log files (see ~/.cache/indicator-weather.log* files)

Please, add more information using 'apport-collect 710295'

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

I've updated and the indicator did change the icon correctly I think. I had the "empty condition name" again (Valecnia) in the last session a few minutes ago but when changing the location back to my home the icon immediately changed back to a correct icon. The UbuntuOne icon did not stay. So the thing seems to update the icon now when changing the location.

I've attached the log file you mentioned to this post.
I've also executed the apport-collect command and followed the instructions it prompted. This thing is completely new for me and I don't know if I've done everything correctly as it finally said that no additional information was collected. I also don't know where those information should by stored now. Hope it worked...

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

Thanks for the attached log file.

It seems, that sometimes empty data is returned for some weather conditions
- there is nothing Weather Indicator can do about it. Thats' why 'Bug:
condition is empty' is displayed. I guess, we should switch to a more
reliable data source, but that's all we have got for now.
As far as I know, this is reproducible for some weather conditions, not
specific locations, so this situation is temporary.

That is strange, that apport-collect didn't work, maybe, due to the fact
that Weather Indicator is not an official package in Ubuntu. By the way, the
package has already been sent to REVU, so, I hope, that WI will be in the
repo soon.

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

I think this is no problem. When the data is not being sent correctly by the weather station everyone will understand and the UbuntuOne icon is okay. So the prompt for "empty condition name" is good so that one can see what's wrong about it. As the icons now switch immediately when switching the location the indicator works fine for me. Thanks for your work and your fast help, Vadim!
One thing confuses me at just this moment: It is 11:43am and the indicator shows the moon behind "few clouds" - is there some time setting I've overlooked?

There are now a few questions I still have - just for understanding:
The first thing is that your dialog for searching locations has changed. Did you change the data provider or were the locations just dummies and the next airfield's data was used anyway?
Another thing is whether the units for wind are being sent with the data or set by the weather indicator. The point is: I know that the English speaking world always uses things like mps - but this isn't very good in my opinion. The unit should be m/s so that it is the correct SI notation and everyone knows what's ment. MPS could also stand for miles per second - and does MPH mean Miles per hour or meters per hour? You see - the official notation of units would be more precise, wouldn't they?

Best regards,

Lucas

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

2011/2/8 Lucas

> I think this is no problem. When the data is not being sent correctly by
> the weather station everyone will understand and the UbuntuOne icon is okay.
> So the prompt for "empty condition name" is good so that one can see what's
> wrong about it.

I'm not sure about the text, actually. If you have any better text - feel
free to suggest.
Also, there is a bug on usage of UbuntuOne icon - in some icon set the icon
doesn;t fit, so I guess, we need an artist to design a new icon for
"incorrect condition" or "connection error" cases. Luckily, we already have
a Weather Indicator icon (see project page), which can be used for this
icon.

> One thing confuses me at just this moment: It is 11:43am and the indicator
> shows the moon behind "few clouds" - is there some time setting I've
> overlooked?
>
Day/night icon should be correctly selected in the code, based on
sunrise/sunset time. Seems, that timezone check has been broken again. Could
you check once again and post a new bug?

> There are now a few questions I still have - just for understanding:
> The first thing is that your dialog for searching locations has changed.
> Did you change the data provider or were the locations just dummies and the
> next airfield's data was used anyway?
>
In previous releases we used Google Weather API data. This was a very
unstable and incomplete source of information, as the API could confuse
Paris, France and Paris, TX, USA and could not convert weather units
correctly.
We had to switch to something more detailed. The price for this was a
significantly smaller amount of locations.
What I would like to implement is Yahoo Weather API usage, but, just as
Google Weather API, it has no reliable way to get all locations for specific
country.

If you have any idea on which API to use - please, suggest. I guess, we
already have a blueprint for API selection.

> Another thing is whether the units for wind are being sent with the data or
> set by the weather indicator. The point is: I know that the English speaking
> world always uses things like mps - but this isn't very good in my opinion.
> The unit should be m/s so that it is the correct SI notation and everyone
> knows what's ment. MPS could also stand for miles per second - and does MPH
> mean Miles per hour or meters per hour? You see - the official notation of
> units would be more precise, wouldn't they?
>
Thanks, my english-fu is rather weak, so please post a bug - we will rename
labels. Also, I guess, we should add other convertable units - like
kilometers per hour

Thanks for such a constructive discussion. I'm planning to release a new
version on weekend, so we have several days to fix the most obvious
mistakes.

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

Hi Vadim,

I've opened two new bugs:
The day/night thing with the icons can be found here https://bugs.launchpad.net/weather-indicator/+bug/715657

The units discussion can be found here https://bugs.launchpad.net/weather-indicator/+bug/715660

Concerning the other issues I want to say a few words:
The output for empty condition names could be a bit shorter - for example you could erase the "BUG:" perhaps. This is not really a bug in your program as you told me - so this word could be misunderstood. But except this the prompt about the empty condition name is really okay - it tells what's wrong and this it is for.

The thing with the different weather APIs is surely not easy. Of course it would be nice to have as many locations available as possible. You say that the Google API could not differ between equal named cities in different countries. I guess you can just resolve this by letting the user choose. But I don't know how to implement this ;) I can just tell you that I had exactly this problem in the first version I tested. I typed in my home location which is called "Neuenstein" which stands for two absolutely different "cities" in Germany. After typing it the program found one Neuenstein and called it "Neuenstein, Baden-Württemberg" so I knew that it was the worng one. I went back and typed "Neuenstein, He" and the program then found "Neuenstein, Hessen" and there I was done with the correct location.
Perhpas it would be best to get a list of results in such cases from which the user can choose. But as I mentioned I don't know if this would be easy to implement or if it could by done at all.

For the "wrong condition" case and the "connection error" case I've tried to make little icons made up on the program icon. I'm not a pro on this and so it is just a suggestion. I found that it's not easy to design such an icon that can be "read" when beeing displayed in a little panel of about 20 pixels or so ;)
You can find the icons as an attachment to this comment.

Regards,

Lucas

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

The second icon attached to this post...

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

Great job, Lucas. New package in unstable PPA with these icons is being created. I guess, further discussion should be in bug #714714.

Removed "BUG:" as it was just for testing purposes - now more info available from log
On different API usage - thats a challenge for the next release.

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

Hello again...

unfortunately I have again the problem with missing icons depending on the current weather condition.
If possible it would be interesting for me where the icons should be stored on my harddrive so that I could check if there are all files present. Perhaps it's just a missing file issue (?) ...

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

Icon set depends on your icon theme - it should be /usr/share/icons/<theme
name>/status/scalable/weather*
Icon set may not include all icons, but inherit them from the parent - check
/usr/share/icons/<theme name>/index.theme, "Inherits" value

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

I've looked up the location you told. There are no weather icons in the folder of used theme. But there are weather icons in usr/share/icons/gnome/scalable/status and they are looking exactly like the ones the weather indicator shows.
There are icons for "clear" (day and night with different moon phases), "few clouds" (again day and diff. moon ph.), "fog", "overcast", "severe weather", "showeres", "showeres scattered", "snow" and "storm".

So, if these conditions are all possibilities the indicator calls my thought must have been wrong and there must still exist another problem. But I have to say that missing icons is not very often in the current versions...

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

Yes, that it is a complete list used icons (adding custom 'network error' and 'unknown condition').

Could you please make a screenshot for missing icon and post a new bug. Also, the log and your gconf settings would be really useful (use apport-collect for this)

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

At the moment I cannot reproduce the problem. But I'll report when again seeing it. I will try different locations for that...

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

Now I'm a bit confused:

Today the panel shows the "connection error" icon though the right data is being shown in the indicator. Please see the attachment for screenshot, conf-editor screenshot and logfiles.

After a while (more than five minutes) the indicator shows the right icon. Could this be a slow refreshment for the icon - perhaps the Internet connection was not present immediately after starting the machine although it is a cable connection...

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

Reopening the issue per comments from Lucas.
Note, that a new unstable version with data caching and improved weather data pickup is coming soon, so please recheck this on new unstable build

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

Solved by using Google and Yahoo providers, which have a defined set of icons
Check 'Unstable builds' PPA in Weather Indicator Team for a new version with the fix

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

Just installed the newest unstable release.

Now there's the possibility to choose between Google and Yahoo sources.
After entering the locations (there are much more locations available now) the right data is being recieved. But unfortunately there's still this "refreshment" thing I think. I have the "connection error" icon now for several data refreshment patterns (set to 5 minutes, half an hour gone now). Icon doesn't change I think...

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

I didn't catch that, could you please attach logs and a screenshot, if possible?

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

requested logfiles and screenshot...

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

Lucas, several fixes, related to icons and weather condition handling have been released in 11.03.27 version.
Could you please check the bug on a new version?

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

I've always installed the latest versions via your PPA and tried to observe the behavior of the weather indicator. Because I was a bit busy in the last days I didn't report much - I also did not do systematic tests of the indicator.

What I can say right now is that the program seems to show the correct icons. But sometimes it doesn't show any icon. I sometimes tried to start it again because I thought it has crashed or something like this. But when trying to restart it told me it would already be running. So I guess that it just didn't show any icon.

You have told that Google and Yahoo have "defined icon sets" above. What does this mean? Should there be other icons than before or does it just mean that the number of different icons is defined so that you can write your code more reliably? What I want to say is that I have still the same icons as before - so I guess the second possible meaning is the correct one...

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

Addition: Today I have again the same issue with the "connection error" icon. It is there since I started the computer today and doesn't change though new data is being received correctly.

[Felix Lawrence (felix-lawrence)]

Hi Lucas, it looks like the latest problem is that your theme is missing an icon for "weather-clouds" and/or "weather-clouds-night". So whenever the weather is "Cloudy" or "Mostly cloudy", the correct icon won't be displayed. At other times it should display correctly. Can you confirm that since 11.03.27 you only have a wrong icon when the weather is "Cloudy" or "Mostly cloudy"?

Newer versions of ubuntu ship with a new set of icons, which includes "weather-clouds" and "weather-clouds-night". We need a way to fall back to the "weather-few-clouds" and "weather-few-clouds-night" icons on these systems without ubuntu-mono-dark and ubuntu-mono-light (or should we list ubuntu-mono-dark as a dependency?)

If this is really annoying you, as a workaround you could run the following commands:
cd /usr/share/icons/gnome/22x22/status/
sudo cp weather-few-clouds.png weather-clouds.png
sudo cp weather-few-clouds-night.png weather-clouds-night.png
sudo gtk-update-icon-cache /usr/share/icons/gnome/
That will create the missing icons and hopefully fix the problem for your computer.

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

Hi Felix,

I've just checked the file and it is really missing. This could explain everything. I of course cannot say this for sure - but I will observe if the wrong icon only shows when there should be "cloudy".

At the moment the indicator works well. It shows "foggy" right now.

If this is really the problem it could be good to make sure a full icon set is installed for all users. You suggested to do this by a new dependency. Of course this would install a full theme instead of the icon files only (if I understood right).
But what about an own icon set the weather indicator could bring with itself. This would of course be some artwork (I could try to contribute here). The disadvantage would be that the icons would not automatically fit into every active theme of the user.
But is this really a problem? I think weather icons have their own colours anyway - I mean nobody would not expect the sun to be yellow or a cloud to be white/grey.

What do you think about this?

[Lucas (lucas-sichardt)]

Hi again,

I can now confirm that it should be the missing file: Just now the weather indicator shows the wrong icon again and weather data says "mostly cloudy".

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

I guess, we definitely could benefit from own icon theme, but this should be left as an option or as a fallback, if the icon is missing. Anyway, to fix this bug we need the following:
 - Check, that icon to be displayed exists in current user theme
 - If not - check in Weather Indicator icon theme and display this icon.

Maybe, creating a new icon theme from the scratch would be a little overhead - I guess, we may include icons from any default set.

Any thoughts on that?

[Felix Lawrence (felix-lawrence)]

I agree with Vadim - we're best off letting each theme choose its own weather icons, and we need to offer a fallback set of icons. That way, on the default Ubuntu themes (which have no colours in them), we can use the great icons provided.

Can we expect the gnome icon set to be installed on every system that indicator-weather can be installed on? If so, then we only need to bundle an icon for 'cloudy' and install it to the gnome icon set (assuming it's not bad form to install icons to the gnome set). If not, then we should bundle the whole gnome icon set (or some other one) and install it into some other standard fallback set (hicolor?).

[Vadim Rutkovsky (roignac)]

I've added commands, suggested by Felix, to postinst script, so missing icons will be copied after new package is installed.
Please, reopen the issue, if other incorrect icons are displayed

[Dario Panico (dariopan)]

same problem here with actual weather conditions
using localized version, i'll try to translate:
storm ("temporale" in italian)
mostly cloudy ("per lo più nuvoloso" in italian)

[Joelburge (joelburge)]

So, yeah, me too.

I've been using the applet in Natty as long as I've had it installed. Now it's acting very strange.

First, the icon in the menu bar is a form of a '?,' basically. And, as you'll see in the screenshot, the forecast just shows the 'broken image' icon for all weather conditions.

I've tried reinstall, reinstall after 'complete removal,' using Synaptic and dpkg-reconfigure. No good.

I'm using the Faenza icons, yes, but even resetting back to Ambiance/Ubuntu icon theme completely - nothing, same problem.

Also, the behavior various slightly using Yahoo as a provider - I get some form of a weather icon in the menu bar, but the exact same issues in the forecast.

Thanks,
Joel

[Joelburge (joelburge)]

So, yeah, me too.

I've been using the applet in Natty as long as I've had it installed. Now it's acting very strange.

First, the icon in the menu bar is a form of a '?,' basically. And, as you'll see in the screenshot, the forecast just shows the 'broken image' icon for all weather conditions.

I've tried reinstall, reinstall after 'complete removal,' using Synaptic and dpkg-reconfigure. No good.

I'm using the Faenza icons, yes, but even resetting back to Ambiance/Ubuntu icon theme completely - nothing, same problem.

Also, the behavior various slightly using Yahoo as a provider - I get some form of a weather icon in the menu bar, but the exact same issues in the forecast.

Thanks,
Joel