menu text does not display

[Ryan]

I'm running ubuntu 8.10 on an old dell with a GeForce4 Ti 4200 video
card and a Samsung Syncmaster display. I do not see any of the main
menus when I open picasa 3, such as file, edit, help. I can see the
underscore on the menu items, and if I click on them, they very
briefly appear. I had a similar problem with openoffice and I ended up
with the following .fonts.conf file:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="autohint" >
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
<const>none</const>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="hinting" >
<bool>false</bool>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
<const>hintnone</const>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
<edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font" >
<edit name="embeddedbitmap" mode="assign">
<bool>false</bool>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>

I had to install the ms fonts and they wouldn't render properly until
I created the above file. I'm hoping there is some similar tweak for
picasa.

I'm not familiar enough with linux and display problems to
troubleshoot this further. I couldn't find anyone else with this
problem in the forums, so this is a longshot, but I'm hoping that
someone reads this with more experience than I.

[dank]

On Jan 16, 8:22 pm, Ryan <rbrue...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm running ubuntu 8.10 on an old dell with a GeForce4 Ti 4200 video
> card and a Samsung Syncmaster display. I do not see any of the main
> menus when I open picasa 3, such as file, edit, help. I can see the
> underscore on the menu items, and if I click on them, they very
> briefly appear. I had a similar problem with openoffice and I ended up
> with the following .fonts.conf file:
>
> <?xml version="1.0"?>

...

Wow, hadn't heard of that workaround. Cool.

You're suffering from an nvidia driver bug,
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/300476
You can either switch to the non-nvidia driver,
or use a similar workaround for wine by making the registry entry

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\X11 Driver]
"ClientSideWithRender"="N"

using /opt/google/picasa/3.0/bin/wrapper regedit

- Dan

[Ryan]

Thank You Dan, I was able to get it to work. For future reference if
anyone stumbles across this thread I had to do the following:

1. Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf as sudo and change the value "nvidia" to
"nv"
2. Restart X windows by typing CTRL-ALT-Backspace
3. Now if you start Picasa you will see the menu items, but I wanted
to use the original nvidia drivers.
4. Use /opt/google/picasa/3.0/bin/wrapper regedit and navigate to the
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\X11 Driver folder, and right click and
"add a string". Enter the name "ClientSideWithRender" then click in
the value column and enter "N".
5. Restart X windows again by typing CTRL-ALT-Backspace

I had initially went to edit the registry key but found all of the
text for the navigation and menus was missing like it was in Picasa.

Thanks again, now if I could only get the facebook plugin to work, I'd
be happy.

[dank]

Nicely done!
Sorry, I should have given you the shorter recipe:
1. Create a text file named foo.txt containing the two lines

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\X11 Driver]
"ClientSideWithRender"="N"

2. Run
/opt/google/picasa/3.0/bin/wrapper regedit foo.reg

- Dan