Small blank window pops up and freezes Audacity 2.1.2

[calmansi]

Hi,

I'm using Audacity 2.1.2 on a laptop with OS Linux Ubuntu 16.04.LTS. I don't know how Audacity was installed because it was already there when I bought the laptop.

Sometimes when I edit labels, a small blank window* pops up and makes Audacity freeze, and I cannot close that small blank window. So I have to force Audacity to quit.
Is it some keyboard shortcut I unwittingly type? Is there a way to close that small window?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Screenshot of the issue:

[Gale Andrews]

So was it a laptop originally owned by someone else? If so I recommend you do a thorough anti-virus check.

If you look in Help > About Audacity... then the "Build Information" tab, what version of wxWidgets is mentioned and what is the build date? And if you search for Audacity in "Ubuntu Software Centre" does Audacity show as installed?

I don't know what the problem is but I would guess it's an assertion error. Is your Ubuntu system language French and in Edit > Preferences... , Interface section in Audacity, is System language selected? Or is your Ubuntu system language other than French but in Audacity Preferences your language is set to French?

Does the box only appear when you type very long labels, or type labels very fast?

Can you provide a backtrace by running Audacity in gdb in a terminal then trigger the bug? We could tell you how to provide a backtrace if you don't already know.


Gale

[calmansi]

Thank you so much for your detailed reply, Gale.

Re "So was it a laptop originally owned by someone else?": no, I bought the laptop new from a shop that advocates and installs free software. When I ordered it I asked that they install Audacity too. I'll phone them on Monday to ask how they did that.

Re: "Is your Ubuntu system language French and in Edit > Preferences... , Interface section in Audacity, is System language selected?" Yes to both.

Re: "Does the box only appear when you type very long labels, or type labels very fast?" Yes to very long labels: I use the labels to transcribe audio recordings. No to very fast: I'm not a fast typist, and the pop-up also appeared once when I had deliberately slowed down. I'll try to make shorter labels, yet the funny thing is that the pop-up never appeared when I made vers long labels on my former laptop that ran on Mac OSX: there, I was simply unable to go on typing after a while.

Re: "Can you provide a backtrace by running Audacity in gdb in a terminal then trigger the bug? We could tell you how to provide a backtrace if you don't already know." I'd be most grateful if you could explain how. Apologies for my tech incompetence: I switched to a free environment out of conviction, but I still have a lot to catch up with.

Best,

Claude

[Gale Andrews]

Can you give the build date and Widgets version from Help > About Audacity..., Build Information tab?

I don't see any assertions on Ubuntu 14.04 with system language in English and Audacity in French, typing long labels with accented characters. I know that is not your system, of course.

Note that you can have more than one label at the same point. It might be a solution.

To provide a backtrace, assuming they installed Audacity normally, do the following. Press ENTER after typing any command to run the command.

Code: Select all

$ sudo -i

which is needed to run the terminal as root because we want to turn on logging to a file in a protected area.

Code: Select all

$ cd /usr/share/applications

Code: Select all

$ gdb audacity

Code: Select all

(gdb) set logging on

Code: Select all

(gdb) run

which launches Audacity.

Trigger the problem.

Code: Select all

(gdb) bt

should write the backtrace in /usr/share/applications/gdb.txt.

if bt does not do anything you could try

Code: Select all

(gdb) t a a bt

Gale