Labs/Bespin/KnownIssues

The definitive place for issues is of course Bugzilla but for large concerns we wanted a place for people to see that we have been thinking about them.

How do I create a new file?

This is harder than it should be. In the future you will be able to create a new file directly in the dashboard file browser, but for now the command line is the best bet. From the editor type:

 newfile path/to/file.txt ProjectName

E.g. to create an aliases file in your settings area:

 newfile aliases.js BespinSettings

Why doesn't Bespin support i18n well?

This is something we very much want to fix. Unfortunately it isn't trivial. Our problem is that we do a lot in the key handling side, and we know that on foreign keyboard you often have to hold down a couple of keys to get a keypress event that makes sense (e.g. to get a { in the document).

We have started to make this work better, and contributors like Andrea's have given us great thoughts on using a hidden textarea to get us through, and we need to work more on this. Please help!

I am having strange issues with my key bindings

Key binding that works across different browsers, platforms (operating systems) and country settings is hard.

For example, we have seen issues where for some people hitting backspace in Chrome causes a back command to fire, even though we are trapping that code.

We realize that we need to abstract our current key binding system to branch off for various platforms.

If you run into problems, we want to hear from you. What works best is if you can try the key combination that you are using in the Keycode tester. This way we will know exactly what is coming through.

Also, we are planning on creating an interesting key map tool that will enable people to setup their own keymaps and crowdsource the problem to make sure we are rock solid on key handling.

Why does it seem slow on Linux?

People using Firefox3 on Linux with an Nvidia card are facing important performance issues on canvas rendering that makes Bespin unusable (see related Bug).

This is due to the fact that, under firefox 3, canvas uses xlib/xrender for its rendering instead of pure software rendering under firefox 2. Unfortunately, the state of xrender in Nvidia binary driver is still far from perfection.

Users of Intrepid can now install the Nvidia 180 drivers (which have much better 2D performance) from the intrepid-updates repository:

 sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-180

Other solutions are to either to use the "NV" drivers (but it won't be possible to benefit of the same level of 3D acceleration used by compiz and co) or to use the latest binary drivers (>= 173) and tweak the InitialPixmapPlacement as follows:

nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2

To make this tweak permanent, add a new entry in your session configuration. For example in Ubuntu: System > preferences > sessions > add ...

Why does it seem slow on Chrome?

We were surprised ourselves when we first ran Bespin in Chrome (v2.x) and it was very slow for us, and the fonts were wacked. Still trying to work this one out.

Why is copy and paste not working with the system clipboard?

As of Bespin 0.1.4, the system clipboard is now working properly with WebKit and Firefox. Vote for this bug to allow us to add better capability for Firefox.

To read more on the issue check out a couple of posts from us on the topic:

http://almaer.com/blog/supporting-the-system-clipboard-in-your-web-applications-what-a-pain

http://almaer.com/blog/supporting-the-system-clipboard-in-your-web-applications-part-two