[Solved} Is there a Cinnamon setting which alters mouse hover behaviour?

[LateJunction]

I'm running Mint 21 with Cinnamon version 5.4.12, Kernel 5.15.0-56-generic and nVidia driver 525.60.11-0ubuntu0.22.04.1

A key application for me is the raw image post-processor named darktable, On the PC in question I an running version 4.0.1 of darktable. A useful feature of this application, in its lighttable mode, is to pop-up the full path name of a selected image, even when the panel that shows this information is not wide enough. In these circumstances the path name width is reduced by replacing the required number of characters with '...'. Hovering the mouse over this condensed path name causes the full path name to be displayed. Except it doesn't in this install of Mint and darktable. The action is correct on my install of LMDE 5 with this version of dt, was correct under Mint 20.3 and is correct with Windows 10.

I am unable to determine whether the action is caused by the version of Mint, or the version of Cinnamon, or the version of darktable or is hardware related. I wonder if there is either a Mint setting or a Cinnamon setting that I have not enabled correctly (excluding the option for mouse hover to generate a 'click' - this is not relevant) ?

[JosephM]

I don't think there is any setting for this. My guess would be that it's a different version of Darktable and possibly a bug. I don't use it myself but that's what it sounds like. Especially since it works fine in LMDE5.

[LateJunction]

I don't think there is any setting for this. My guess would be that it's a different version of Darktable and possibly a bug. I don't use it myself but that's what it sounds like. Especially since it works fine in LMDE5.

That's interesting: I had convinced myself that it couldn't be an error in darktable because this same version worked OK under Mint 20.3 and works OK under LMDE5 - which is a completely opposite opinion to the conclusion you reach, working from the same data. Thanks for you input though.

[JosephM]

Well if the version of Darktable is the same, then I'm a bit at a loss. I didn't see where you pointed that out. The versions of Cinnamon should be the same in Mint and LMDE as well, so I really don't know what the difference might be.

[LateJunction]

Thanks for the continued interest. I think I'll wait until darktable version 4.2 arrives (on or about 25 December). I'll check how that behaves on Mint 21 and LMDE 5 (i.e. I basically suspect darktable has a 'feature' that is invoked only by some peculiarity in Mint 21 that does not happen in LMDE 5 - and hence the possibility of convincing either darktable or the Mint development team to produce a fix is vanishingly small. My workaround for this will be to switch to LMDE 5).

[LateJunction]

I need to raise this topic again, after installing the latest release of Darktable (version 4.2.0):

Other darktable users running Mint 21 report that the mouse hover behaviour in darktable's 4.2.0 lighttable works as specified when hovering over the full path name field, in the 'image information' panel for a selected image. It does not on my install on Mint 21 - but it does on LMDE 5, but on different hardware and it does on the Windows version, but again on different hardware.

I am therefore satisfied that this 'failure' on Mint 21 is not a bug in darktable and is not a defect in Mint 21, but it is specific to my install of Mint 21 on my particular hardware. I am inclined to question if there is some BIOS setting to do with a USB connected mouse that could be the issue, but I do not understand enough about how XHCI mode or XHCI Hand-off or EHCI Hand-off should be set, or if indeed there is a setting within Cinnamon that might affect mouse behaviour. I have tried both wired and wireless USB mice (both by Logitech) and the application worked correctly with both types of mouse when running Mint 20.3 and darktable 4.0.1 (if my memory is correct), but fail (in the hover function) in Mint 21 and darktable 4.0.1 and 4.2.0.

Anybody here got any suggestions? Should I be posting this under 'Hardware' ?

[LateJunction]

This issue is now solved. The defect was in darktable data. It was solved by renaming the darktable files 'darktablerc' and 'data.db' , located in ~.config/darktable, to anything else, such that darktable then recreated good versions of these files on the next start-up.