# Troubleshooting

## The &k3d; hierarchy window is empty or shows strange characters

You're using a GTK+ theme with Unicode texts. Just try switching to another theme, Metal should work.

## When I create a document, windows are opened minimized and can't be re-opened ?!?

It happens when &k3d; application is closed with minimized windows, with Restore Window Size/Position option turned on. To turn it off, open Application Window > Tools > Options dialog. Then exit &k3d; and launch it again, open a new document, the windows will open with default sizes.

## Bitmap Viewer doesn't work

The default viewer is not available on your computer: open Application Window > Tools > Options > Applications dialog, and set the command for your favorite image editor or viewer followed by %p which will be replaced by the image name. If the program is not in the system's path, you'll have to write full path. Example on the Win32 platform:

    "c:\Program Files\Accessories\mspaint" %p

Quotes needed because of the space in 'Program Files'.

## Some textures don't render at all, what happens ?

BMRT or Aqsis don't support indexed bitmaps, that is 8-bit per pixel pictures, like GIF files. If you're using NetPBM version >= 9.25, edit the configuration file netpbm.conf you'll find in `k3d/share/` directory and add -truecolor option in the following line to force 24-bit format:

    <writer command="pnmtotiff -none -truecolor %p" format="TIFF RGB" filename="(\.tif$|\.tif\.|\.tiff$|\.tiff\.)"/>

Else convert your textures to a 24-bit picture format.

## K-3D crashed with a Gdk-ERROR **: BadValue message

Typically, BadValue errors are what happens when the X server gets data it can't handle - in general, they shouldn't happen because the GTK+ layer is supposed to trap dumb mistakes before they get through to xlib, but occaisionally something gets through.

There's a way to lookup the error codes, though I don't remember it off the top of my head. A more useful piece of troubleshooting would be to run the app in a debugger. Even more useful would be run your X server in synchronous mode when you do it, since X events can run asynchronously, meaning that the debugger backtrace might or might-not leave you looking at the true culprit.