Hi Brion,

Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 13:21:46 -0800 From: Brion Vibber
To: gimp-user@lists.xcf.berkeley.edu Subject: [Gimp-user] Re: New to list! Cannot write XPM
Geek wrote:
> I am a Debian woody user and use the .deb package of GIMP, which is 1.2.3 at > this time.

1.2.3 is about three years old, and two entire release cycles have gone by since then, including lots of bug fixes. If you can't run a current version (the current stable release is 2.2.2), you might try contacting the Debian package maintainer.

(Much more recent versions of Gimp are available in Debian's testing and unstable distributions.)

Unfortunately, that's not an option for me. There's serious glibc conflicts in the installers and therefore I'm stuck on stable. Pro'lly a hardware bug on my end.

I just had to re-install and found my freshly installed GIMP cannot write XPM,

> but only read.
>
> I have the full XPM libraries installed, including the -dev headers.
A google search on 'gimp save xpm' turns up a notice about a problem on Mandrake with a bug in the XPM library causing Gimp to be unable to save XPM files. The same or a similar bug may or may not be hitting you.
Also, you might want to specify just how things are failing. Is there an error message when you try to save, or is the option of XPM not even given? Are there messages on the console? etc

Dead silent - no errors, nothing. It gives correct dialogs, alpha settings, then acts like it's saving, but the file's just not there!

Enabling debuggers also show no errors.

Google will not show the bug - for spam reasons, many maillists have "spider-spray" ;-)

Sven gave me some good info, so I'll wait a week for the bugfix, then install the XPM library from sources.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)