Missing menus

[Tommy Trussell]

On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Joe Miller <admin at jolyonmiller.co.uk> writes:
>
> > Hi I'm using GnuCash 2.4.7 on Ubuntu 11.04 and I'm having a problem
> > with missing menus. The unity desktop should display the 'File',
> > ;Edit' etc menus at the top of the screen when you move the mouse over
> > the toolbar, but I'm not getting anything. I can get a menu to appear
> > by pressing alt f but the menu appears half-way down the screen and
> > doesn't stay visible. If I use the menu to open a different account
> > file, then the menu appears correctly.
> >
> > Can anybody help me on this? I've been using GnuCash for two years
> > with no problems, this has just recently started happening.
>
> Okay, I'll ask: what changed recently?  At first glance this sounds like
> an issue with Ubuntu/Unity and not an issue with GnuCash.  Moreover,
> GnuCash is at 2.4.11, but I doubt it will affect this issue.
>
> > Thanks,
> > Joe
>
> > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>
>

There was an old bug in early versions of Unity (back in Ubuntu 10.10, I
believe) where some apps lost their menus. You could work around THAT
particular bug by setting an environment variable. See the description of
the bug for details, and especially comment #3 with a link to more explicit
workarounds, such as setting the  a Gnome launcher:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wxwidgets2.8/+bug/662077

The bug was closed quite awhile ago, but was recently reopened because a
patch to fix a different bug may have broken it again. Try the workaround
to see if it restores your menu; note that comment #3 links to another bug
with more explicit workarounds, such as creating a Gnome launcher with the
environment variable set.

I have not yet upgraded my Ubuntu system running GnuCash from Ubuntu 10.04
LTS to 12.04 LTS as I'm waiting for the 12.04.1 LTS release (pretty
standard when moving from LTS to LTS releases) so I haven't had the
opportunity to see this bug affect GnuCash in Ubuntu yet. If you see the
bug, try the workaround and please report back to the list.

P.S.: for folks annoyed with Unity, there are plenty of places where people
have discussed it, and it's probably not worth rehashing any of that on
this list. Fortunately it's very easy to install any number of other
desktop environments in Ubuntu, and you can switch to any of them at the
login screen.