w3mimgdisplay doesn't work on jpeg

[cantcsharp]

As is the trend these days, I've installed Ranger and have been trying to get it to do image previews for me (because why else get ranger?)

I originally had used urxvt as my main terminal, and used the urxvt method for image previews, which relies on pixbuf and urxvt's ability to draw images on the background of the terminal. Unfortunately, urxvt comes with a slew of problems surrounding Powerline fonts which caused me to switch to Termite (and yes, I made sure to use the vanilla flag and even tried compiling from github source with the flag for wide characters--my laptop just isn't having it with urxvt and I ran out of patience). With Termite, ranger must use the w3m method to provide image preview capability.

Alas, w3mimgdisplay simply will not display jpegs. It will show a PNG when invoked directly from the command line, and Ranger will preview a PNG with no complaint. However, it simply refuses to work with jpegs. It gives me the error message "Failed to execute w3mimgdisplay, []". Since a command line invocation against a jpeg also fails, I concluded this is not a problem with Ranger, but with w3m.

As a test, on Arch I compiled w3m from source and installed Termite and Ranger through Pacman. Setting ranger to use w3m and I had image previews on the first try of pngs and jpegs both. I also tried opening jpegs on the Gentoo machine with other applications, including ImageMagick and Terminology, and had no trouble with those applications. This leads me to conclude that the problem is not with w3m but with how I've installed it, configured gentoo, or with the w3m ebuild.

My local use flags for w3m:

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

Just to be clear, because you didn't mention but can you view jpeg from other applications on the system? Have you tried installing either feh, or some other image viewer to check and make sure that jpeg libraries (package is media-libs/jpeg are working correctly)? Also you may need to consider if this is related to your X server at all since that can change how graphics renders image on the system. But also global Use flags are sorta messy and a better way to go about it may be debugging the software application. So perhaps you can find some way to do just some of that and post results back here about it? Just trying to help, although I know there is not a lot of specific help included.

[cantcsharp]

I can view jpegs with ImageMagick, yes. Edited OP accordingly.

With Ranger, I can get image previews to work in urxvt using the urxvt mode (which relies on pixbuf, if I understand correctly) and Terminology with the terminology mode. Both of these work fine with jpegs--it seems to be only w3m with a problem.

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

cantcsharp, ok sorry I misunderstood. As for your initial question, no I can actually verify there is no issue with the package/method as I have it working just fine on my machine. It does appear that maybe some of your USE flags could be off. Also, this other thread may be of help: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-952780-start-0.html


With my install, here are the use flags I have:

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

Assuming you were reading up on Ranger then make sure you also take a look at the list they provide of Troubleshooting tips for this situation, including different terminal emulator among other things

[cantcsharp]

[cantcsharp]

AHA!

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

Hey cantcsharp, so this was actually more a problem with the emerge command! I find these to be the more useful flags for system and world updates, -D -u -N. Best of luck to you!

[LIsLinuxIsSogood]

That is of course if your goal is to Focus on all use flags updating throughout and not worried about how I could rebuild then just run new-use flag like you found out.