Tangram, Flatpak and language settings

For my microblog and some other tabs I use to keep open I'm trying out Tangram - the "Browser for your pinned tabs".

I tried before and failed miserably, because didn't work on my (), but worked on my notebook running the same system.

This time I tried harder.

Failing

After installing the tangram from and starting it on my I found a welcome screen asking me for the URL of my firsted pinned tab.

I entered the URL of my blog. The next page showed me an empty address field, a go button and that's it. See the screenshots appended...

Debugging

Debugging on the phones screen is a slow process if one is used to a keyboard, mouse and bigger screen. Since Tangram works on my notebook I used waypipe to log into my Librem5 via ssh using waypipe -n ssh -R /tmp/socket-way:/tmp/socket-l5 l5h. This way I can use the ssh session to debug and get Tangrams window on my desktop - so I thought…

Starting Tangram from cli I got these messages:


purism@pureos:~$ flatpak run  re.sonny.Tangram 
Gjs-Message: 07:45:13.738: JS LOG: env: flatpak
Gjs-Message: 07:45:13.738: JS LOG: data_dir: /home/purism/.var/app/re.sonny.Tangram/data/Tangram
Gjs-Message: 07:45:13.738: JS LOG: cache_dir: /home/purism/.var/app/re.sonny.Tangram/cache/Tangram
Gjs-Message: 07:45:13.738: JS LOG: config_dir: /home/purism/.var/app/re.sonny.Tangram/config/Tangram
Gjs-Message: 07:45:13.738: JS LOG: applications_dir: /home/purism/.local/share/applications
Gjs-Message: 07:45:13.738: JS LOG: keyfile_settings_path: 

(re.sonny.Tangram:2): Gtk-WARNING **: 07:45:13.972: Locale not supported by C library.
	Using the fallback 'C' locale.
flatpak-spawn: Invalid byte sequence in conversion input
Try "flatpak-spawn --help" for more information.

The last part about Invalid byte sequence appeared when I tried to enter an URL. Looking for information about the messages I stumbled over this flatpak issue describing a problem with flatpaks dependencies when the locales of the system are set to different values for e.g. LANG and LC_NUMERIC like on my .

When doing debugging, sharing error messages or screenshots with others I mostly need english language, but I wanted my local notations for date, numbers and time. So I'm using:


purism@pureos:~$ localectl 
System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
               LC_NUMERIC=de_DE.UTF-8
               LC_TIME=de_DE.UTF-8
               LC_MONETARY=de_DE.UTF-8
               LC_PAPER=de_DE.UTF-8
               LC_MEASUREMENT=de_DE.UTF-8
    VC Keymap: de
   X11 Layout: de,us
  X11 Variant: ,

As I understood this triggers the issue. To check whether this applies to my flatpak environment and the Tangram flatpak and its dependencies I did the following:


purism@pureos:~$ flatpak run --command=sh re.sonny.Tangram 
[📦 re.sonny.Tangram ~]$ locale
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TIME=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_NAME=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ALL=
[📦 re.sonny.Tangram ~]$

There again is an error saying that the locale cannot be found. Following the description in the flatpak issue I looked at the config


purism@pureos:~$ flatpak --user config
languages: *unset* (default: en)
extra-languages: *unset*

and only found a default for en. I added the languages I generally want to use and might have set via environment and checked whether the setting had been saved:


purism@pureos:~$ flatpak --user config --set languages 'en;es;de'
purism@pureos:~$ flatpak --user config
languages: en;es;de (default: en)
extra-languages: *unset*

This didn't change anything, yet and I ran an update that downloaded further components for my Locale packages:


purism@pureos:~$ flatpak update
Looking for updates…


        ID                                          Branch                Op           Remote            Download
 1. [✓] org.gnome.Platform.Locale                   44                    u            flathub           241,8 kB / 340,5 MB
 2. [✓] re.sonny.Tangram.Locale                     stable                u            flathub             8,4 kB / 66,1 kB

Updates complete.

Repeating the check from above I found the error about the missing file or directory gone:


purism@pureos:~$ flatpak run --command=sh re.sonny.Tangram 
[📦 re.sonny.Tangram ~]$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TIME=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_NAME=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ALL=
[📦 re.sonny.Tangram ~]$

Running Tangram again didn't show the error message anymore…


purism@pureos:~$ flatpak run re.sonny.Tangram 
Gjs-Message: 08:32:33.264: JS LOG: env: flatpak
Gjs-Message: 08:32:33.265: JS LOG: data_dir: /home/purism/.var/app/re.sonny.Tangram/data/Tangram
Gjs-Message: 08:32:33.265: JS LOG: cache_dir: /home/purism/.var/app/re.sonny.Tangram/cache/Tangram
Gjs-Message: 08:32:33.265: JS LOG: config_dir: /home/purism/.var/app/re.sonny.Tangram/config/Tangram
Gjs-Message: 08:32:33.265: JS LOG: applications_dir: /home/purism/.local/share/applications
Gjs-Message: 08:32:33.265: JS LOG: keyfile_settings_path:

but when I entered the URL I got these messages in exchange:


(process:2): Gdk-WARNING **: 08:32:37.280: No such backend: *

(process:2): Gtk-WARNING **: 08:32:37.281: Failed to open display

Poking a bit more around gave me the strong feeling that this might be an issue that Tangram or parts of it (webkitgtk?) do not find my display forwared through waypipe, so I tried on my Librem5s display and found Tangram working as expected.

What next

In Phoshs application menu Tangram does not show as mobile friendly which it should. I proposed a change of the desktop file to include the setting X-Purism-FormFactor=Workstation;Mobile;.

If you do not want to wait for this to happen you can copy .local/share/flatpak/exports/share/applications/re.sonny.Tangram.desktop to .local/share/applications/ in your home directory and then edit .local/share/applications/re.sonny.Tangram.desktop to include that setting.

I couldn't resolve the issue about running Tangram over waypipe, so I opened an issue. I guess it's not important that this works, but the root reason for the problem might surface in a different situation as well, so maybe the developer will help me to look into it further.

One thing that I miss in Tangram is an integration for an external password store. I already asked for it and made some suggestions how it could be done.

If you like the project you can support the developer @sonny@floss.social through kofi, too.

Tangrams Welcom Screen
Screen after entering the first URL and tapping Go when affected by the flatpak issue
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@amadeus@mstdn.social @agx@librem.one @linmob@fosstodon.org @sonny@floss.social
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Guido Günther's avatar
Guido Günther
@agx@librem.one

in reply to this object

@me @sonny Instead of hand editing desktop files (which will then get out of sync with upstream) you can flag any app as adaptive via

gsettings set sm.puri.phosh force-adaptive "['re.sonny.Tangram.desktop ']"

Chris Vogel's avatar
Chris Vogel
@me@chrichri.ween.de

in reply to this object

@agx@librem.one @sonny@floss.social Thanks for that hint!

I guess I can delete at least two files in .local/share/applications now... 🙃

Chris Vogel's avatar
Chris Vogel
@me@chrichri.ween.de

in reply to this object

BTW, published using :) …