antiX transformation pack – antiX FT 10

[Anonymous]

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figured out a way to “jump to” (without knowing which topic, and which page, a given post resides in)

http://www.antixforum.com/forums/reply/75530/edit/
http://www.antixforum.com/forums/reply/75555/edit/
http://www.antixforum.com/forums/reply/75801/edit/

[Member PPC]

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@Skidoo and BobC – I adapted the most relevant info on those posts and added it to FT10’s “homepage” over at https://gitlab.com/antix-contribs/ft10-transformation/-/blob/main/README.md

It now informs users that the package is available in the antiX repository (and summons up how to install from there), lists “Changes” and I also added a “How to manually edit tiles” section. I did not add a section on how to insert a “Toggle Visual Effects” menu entry because that will probably be inserted, somehow, in the next version, that will include updated localization files (french and italian)…

P.

[Member PPC]

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Since at least a couple of FT10 users seem to install FT10 in other people’s computers (because it’s an easier transition than using the default rox-IceWM desktop), here are some tips, that may make antiX, with FT10 easier to use by ex-Windows users:

1- Install ft10-transformation and enable that user’s preferred menu layout. You may want to enable the visual effects (choose to install compton and then create the relevant menu entry and/or add the compton command from that menu line to the startup file, not forgetting to add an “&” at the end)
2- Change some system default apps: make sure the the default file manager is zzzfm (it does not matter if you are using a rox desktop, but I’ll address that later); that the video player is “Celluloid”, and the default text editor is Leafpad
3- You may want to setup a Trash can/Recycle bin in zzzfm (search for help on the Forum on how to do that)
4- You also may want to add some extra bookmarks to zzzfm (Downloads, Documents, Music, etc)
5- if the end user uses Cloud storage, configure “Cloud” to work with the user’s default Cloud storage service. You can place a link to Cloud .desktop’s file in zzzfm, for easy access
6- If the end user will do office work, install the latest LibreOffice using the Package Installer
7- If the user is not a native English speaker, install the relevant language packs using the Package Installer (for firefox-esr and LibreOffice
8- The user may prefer to use another Browser, like Firefox (and not firefox-esr), Chromium, Chrome or even MS Edge – install those browsers, explaining that some of them do not respect the user’s privacy. also, if installing Firefox, make sure it has sound (even if you have to edit it’s .desktop file so the exec field is “apulse firefox”)
9- You may preconfigure access to some web services, like Streaming Services (Netflix, etc) or On-line Office suites (like MS Office) – you can manually add menu favorites like “firefox-esr netflix.com” or “firefox-esr gmail.com”, etc and choose a related icon. You can even manually edit a “Tile” to do the same (see the previous how-to)…
10- You may install and configure Thunderbird/Seamonkey if the user wants easy to use E-mail client and Calendar (Thunderbird is even able to use Google Calendar). There’s a Thread about how to configure gmail in seamonkey (as far as I know, Google Calendar is now unable to run in seamonkey’s calendar, the needed extension no longer works).
11- You may want to install some games from the Package Installer (add a solitaire if you want to) and even Steam, if the end user is a more than just a casual gamer…
12- If you think the end user may want to install extra software, associate, in zzzfm, .deb packages with the “debinstaller” command.

P.

[Member madibi]

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point 3: trash can (vexata quaestio). Who cares? Only former win users 🙂
point 7: I’d add to this point the localization of Thunderbird (according to my taste this is the best mail tool – it works on pc of mine from 2003!) – so that point 10 may be a bit redundant
point 5: fantastic tool. I suggest to take into consideration to think how to implement also Peppermint’s ICE tool. Now that Peppermint is classified as “dormant” by distrowatch it should be a pity to loose that very interesting tool named “ICE”. I don’t know whether it can be taken in charge by other distros or not
many thx

[Member ModdIt]

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Re trash can, having been called to fix a broken system for, Humungous trash can content.
about 700 mails in claws trash plus the usual crazy chrome cache, I dislike the concept intensly.
I describe delete as burn or shred, not put off to decide some day later, tell users if unsure archive.

Chrome or in my case UngoogledChromium, have setup cache delete on desktop start.

Mail user choice, I vote claws and help users set it up, if they change that smile and say enjoy.

ICE Tool, not sure if I see a usage case, it is released under GNU General Public License version 2
Not maintained since 2019. Sources are at: https://github.com/peppermintos/ice/releases/tag/v6.0.8.
Maybe build on a rainy day some ease for building a deb here https://github.com/peppermintos/ice

[Member PPC]

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On Trash can/Recycle bin – I don’t depend much on it, but it saved me many times, since my Windows days… To me, it’s not an essential feature, and implies an extra maintenance step (“taking out the trash”). That said, some ex-Windows users panic when they don’t see a way to easily recover deleted files… Just telling them “Be really careful when deleting files” is not what they want to ear… So, if they fell they need that feature, it can be added

On “Ice” and “web-apps”- I quite like having easily links to what are not called “web apps” and tried ICE a couple of times in the past. It’s become a bit redundant, since Chromium derived browsers (that are almost everywhere) can create .desktop files that point to any web page- the “create short cut” option + open it’s own window do that. Seamonkey can do a very similar thing running with the -chrome flag. You can create a .desktop file with any icon, description, ex, with the exec field “seamonkey -chrome [address_of_website]”. The only downside is that the “web app”‘s window has Seamonkey’s icon, not the web-app’s… There’s an extension that allows Firefox to do the same (I think ice also performs the same change in firefox, if I recall correctly)
You can place the .desktop’s icon on your toolbar, to instantly access your web-mail, streaming service, news service, etc, etc…

P.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 3 months ago by PPC.

[Member Robin]

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Language file update from transifex for FT10 at gitlab avialable.

Please check whether all the .mo files work as expected. They will probably fit for the packaged version 1.1 as present in antiX repos.

PPC wrote:

Only the .desktop files are missing- I really have no idea if they can directly placed in Transifex or there’s some kind of adaption I have to perform…

Yes, as you have guessed correctly, this is a bit more difficult task. Transifex doesn’t understand this file format, so a special transformation to another file format is needed, and the script set for this is under construction (in testing phase) still. So best will be we’d let go their strings into the next regular update of antiX-desktop files at transifex.

After public testing of the .mo files is done, and the possible errors fixed, we’ll ask to package them, either along with the antiX FT10 package or in an separate FT0-locale package, so they can get installed by users as easily like the package living already in the antiX repos. We should discuss about what is the best method here. Probably it is to much effort to build a package for each language separately (like firefox-l10n-<lang> packages), but on the other hand: Is it a good idea to install 100+ languages in a single package, if user only needs one of them?

P.S.: @PPC I’ve also put the .pot files used to gitlab, along with all the .po files coming from transifex. So you can update them when needed, e.g. for the next version, which you have available already. Please also add all information needed in the .pot file headers, I didn’t care for this detail, since both my PCs are in emergency mode still.

Windows is like a submarine. Open a window and serious problems will start.

[Member PPC]

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@Robin – thanks for all the hard work! I happy to say that I’m currently testing Spanish (made by me, with some help of Deepl, because I’ don’t speak spanish very well) and French localizations. I’ll try to add full Italian and German localizations today, take a look at them (I always check if the Tiles look ok) and then push the latest compressed source code and .deb file to gitlab and ask anticapitalista to compile and send the package up to the repo manager.

I’ve considered that, the way this is going, probably the localization files will be the bulk of the FT10 package- that may seem overkill, but I don’t really mind. The alpha version that I’m testing, can is now localized in the main languages spoken in the Americas (North, Center and South), in the most eastern part of Europe, and in many African countries (the CPLP countries- that speak Portuguese and the French speaking countries too).
But I consider FT10 to be a complement for the main antiX interface- and it’s hard enough, to ask users to install language packs for the main browser and the office suite to localize them… I think that asking users to download and install a language pack for the main interface of an OS (the toolbar and menu) would simply drive away users of the languages that are not supported out of the box…

I usually dislike automatic translations (that are not revised by native speakers), so I’ll probably include some of those (only to translate the toolbar and menu)- This will, at least allow more people to use FT10. if any user of those languages complains about the crummy translation, then I’ll ask them to help us out.

And yes, some .po files were missing or outdated- you used the ones that are on the uncompressed source code on gitlab, that I’ve not updated in a while (Xecure used to do that for me).

The new FT10 package also includes a slightly redone Tiled and Category menus, and a slightly revamped Volume slider. I’m thinking about how to best add a menu entry to control the visual effects, and that will also probably be included.

P.

[Member marcelocripe]

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Thank you so much Robin for all this work.

PPC, I’ll test all the .mo files that are https://gitlab.com/antix-contribs/ft10-transformation/-/tree/main/mo/locale/pt_BR/LC_MESSAGES and then I’ll let you know if everything is in its proper place.

– – – – –

Muito obrigado Robin por todo este trabalho.

PPC, eu vou testar todo os arquivos .mo que estão https://gitlab.com/antix-contribs/ft10-transformation/-/tree/main/mo/locale/pt_BR/LC_MESSAGES e depois eu te informo se tudo está no seu devido lugar.

[Member Robin]

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PPC wrote:

you used the ones that are on the uncompressed source code on gitlab

No. As written some posts above, I used your .deb package from gitlab, it was ft10-transformation_1.2b5_all.deb which was the most recent .deb package present at that time, and extracted the the script files from this package for .pot file creation, relying on the assumption you’ve kept the strings from the versions before. If this was not the case, you should have intervened immediately: This was what I meant when writing: “screem loud if you find something wrong”.

Best way is probably, you’d create the .pot files from your scripts yourself directly, always once you’ve finished a new set of scripts for FT10 (which means: a new version) and put them on gitlab, to the pot folder. It shouldn’t be a problem to update the 11 .pot files (or how many of them may be used in new versions) on gitlab manually. And if you’d come to #antiX-translators channel at IRC on Libera.Chat network I could give you some instructions for the command line mass upload technique (at least what I do know about it, and what I use for this). Also we could prepare the ft10 translation sets for upload to transifex together, avoiding incomplete or mismatching strings. Pot-file creation is simply one additional step after having finished the functional script or program. And as I told you, you can use your native language within the script or program if you like. There is no problem having »en« language files by default in the installer packages. Creating .pot files from your scripts or programs is really easy, once you understood the method and know the commands on bash.

It is important you fill in the header of the .pot files present on gitlab from now on for each next update, so we’ll be able to distinguish for which version of your FT10 a specific .pot file version on gitlab is meant (gitlab keeps all old versions when updating a file). This information is passed down to all the .po files created on transifex then, so these are also distinguishable. Look into .pot files of other programs to learn what is usually expected to be found there:

# SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE.
# Copyright (C) YEAR THE PACKAGE'S COPYRIGHT HOLDER
# This file is distributed under the same license as the PACKAGE package.
# FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR.

Filled in to e.g.:

# FT10 antiX transformation package ver. 1.1 — alarm.sh
# Copyright (C) 2022 PPC
# This file is distributed under the GPL v.3 license as the package itself
# PPC <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, 2022.

You may omit email address if you like better, and adjust your license settings.

Most important question: Did you modify the existing original strings for version updates, rather than only adding some new strings when adding new features in each next .deb package? This would make it difficult to maintain. It is a good idea not to replace original strings within script when it can be avoided while creating a next version. Keep all strings you can, even if you’d rather like to improve an expression. Keep in mind, it will render all translations of this string unusable, even if your replacement is cosmetic only, or a single missing comma or letter only. For all these improvements and error correction in the English language strings you can better use the »en« language at transifex, which allows correction of the English strings visible on program/script execution on runtime, without rendering all the existing translations to other languages unusable. When packaging the English .mo file into the .deb package then, all the improvements will be used on runtime.

PPC wrote:

I usually dislike automatic translations (that are not revised by native speakers)

Me too. But this is the way people will see: This Program (this OS) comes in »my« language already, the translation needs some fixing only. It is enough if one of all these people says while using it: “Oh, this is a stupid mistake I can easily fix, I’ll straight go to transifex and just do it.“

PPC wrote:

… it’s hard enough, to ask users to install language packs for the main browser and the office suite to localize them… I think that asking users to download and install a language pack for the main interface of an OS (the toolbar and menu) would simply drive away users of the languages that are not supported out of the box…

This is true… So, following your argumentation, it will be probably best to package the .mo files for all the languages into the installer package. @Skidoo has pointed out some time ago, that it is easily possible to purge the unneeded languages from a user system completely, removing all unneeded translations for all programs at once, so a user can keep only what he really needs, albeit other languages have been installed beforehand.

I’ll update the files on transifex to the script versions found in your final 1.2 package from gitlab now, hoping you didn’t make to many avoidable changes to the strings, so the existing translations are kept.

Windows is like a submarine. Open a window and serious problems will start.

[Member PPC]

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@Robin- thanks, I’m just now “polishing” version 1.3 (that includes the new “non machine translated” localizations). I tried to, but I could not include .mo files in the .deb package – only .po files will work- if it’s not too much so ask can you upload .po files, only (the .mo files are created from the .po files, when the .deb file is packaged).
I’ll upload “virgin” updated .po files to gitlab, when I finish taking care of every detail of this new version…
I’ll hold on to publishing the official compressed source code until I hear from you, ok?

@All- I know I said I would not add extra features for a while- but I had this one sitting on my hard-drive for about a year- I added a “search” button to the calendar, that allows to search for events, it was just a matter of copying and pasting, and adapting the code a little bit.
I’m trying to solve a bug and then I’ll upload the “non official” 1.3 file to gitlab once it’s done – the usual suspects can download and install it, and test if the localization is working ok or if I messed something up…

P.

[Member Robin]

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Robin wrote:

P.S.: @PPC I’ve also put the .pot files used to gitlab, along with all the .po files coming from transifex.

As I told you, All translated .po files are on gitlab already. Simply look into the folder »po« created by Xecure. There is a new subfolder present now, containing all recent .po files from transifex. All the mo files have been created from these.

PPC wrote:

the .mo files are created from the .po files, when the .deb file is packaged

This is a detail I didn’t know, since I don’t know anything about packaging and I found only .mo files within the .deb package. Many thanks for the hint, this saves me a lot of work in future…

PPC wrote:

I’ll upload the “non official” 1.3 file to gitlab once it’s done

Please let me know, so I can prepare the translations for it contemporaneously. And if you can make it, come to #antiX-translators (You could use hexchat preinstalled in antiX, like Marcelo. The real time translation works great, so we can talk mostly as if we’d speaking the same tongue.)

Windows is like a submarine. Open a window and serious problems will start.

[Member PPC]

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Hi folks.
Version 1.3beta1 if available for testing over at https://gitlab.com/antix-contribs/ft10-transformation/-/blob/main/packages/ft10-transformation_1.3beta1_all.deb.

Changes:
-Upload New File- includes new localizations: fr, it, de, also completed the es localization.
-Small, but noticeable changes in the menu templates.
-Updated the volume slider, it now features a “volume” icon and larger borders. Right clicking the volume icon on the toolbar summons alsamixer.
-The calendar now has a search button, to find events.
-Added a menu entry to toggle visual effects on an off (compton has to be installed- users can install it from FT10’s “Enabler”)
-Fixed a few missing title bar icons.
-Ironed out 1 bug in FT10’s enable script.

P.

Edit: please, to test the localized versions and report here any error (my localization’s folder was a mess and I’m a bit down from having a covid shot, sorry if anything is missing)

Edit2: If you like the visual effects, you can also make roxterm (the default terminal) transparent: open roxterm > Preferences > Edit Profile > “Background” Tab > Check the “transparency” option.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 3 months ago by PPC.

[Member PPC]

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Sorry for not clarifying this point before:
-Version 1.3beta1 is not available in the repository- this means that you can’t update to it running “sudo apt update”, antiX Updater or Synaptic.

To install and use this version (meant to iron out any bug or localization problem) please follow this procedure:
1-Download the .deb file from https://gitlab.com/antix-contribs/ft10-transformation/-/blob/main/packages/ft10-transformation_1.3beta1_all.deb
2-Install the .deb file via the Terminal or a Graphical Users Interface (if you are in antiX 19.X you can try installing it with Gdebi, but Gdebi is not very trustworthy). If you have debinstaller installed (it is included in FT10), you can use it.
2.A- To use a GUI to install a .deb package – left click the .deb package in your file manager.
If the .deb package is not opened with debinstaller and you want to use debinstaller to install .deb files then first associate .deb files, to always be installed with debinstaller. To do this extra step, if you have not done so- right click the .deb file in zzzfm/spacefm > Open > Open With > In the Command field near the bottom, enter
debinstaller.sh
and make sure there’s a check on the second to last option, to it it as default app to open this kind of files.
2.B-To use the terminal to install a .deb package: antiX menu (or FT10 menu) > Terminal
type:
sudo apt install
(make sure there’s a space after the word install)
Now drag the .deb file from your file manager to the terminal and press enter. Type your password, if asked to.

3-After installing the FT10, you have to make sure you are using it doing any of this final steps:
3.A- antiX Menu > Preferences > FT10 – Enable …
3.B- FT10 Menu > FT10 – Enable …
3.C- Restart your computer

P.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 3 months ago by PPC.

[Member PPC]

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Hi, I want to ask the opinion of FT10 (or even non FT10) users:

Intro:
As the main Developer of FT10, I have to make choices- I want to provide a easy, and familiar, computing environment to the majority of our users, and help transition new users over to antiX. FT10 is meant to look familiar to anyone that uses other Linux Distros that run on Desktop Envirnoments or even Windows 10 or 11, and have as many features possible, without “bloating” it and using extra system resources, or even disk space. All that, changing antiX default settings as little as possible…

My doubts:
-I try to not install any packages that the user may not need – that’s why FT10 does not install automatically the compton/picom compositor (needed to provide the Visual Effects) nor the package that includes the “trans” command, needed for the Translator to work. Each of these packages is less than 300kb and do not use any system resources (except a tiny bit of hard drive space) unless they are being used. Should these 2 packages be automatically installed when a user installs FT10? This means using a tiny (real tiny) bit of extra disk space, without any complex dependencies than may be a burden on your system, but makes some extra FT10 features (Turning on Visual Effects and using the in-built Translator) a bit simpler (nothing to install, just click the menu entries and use that feature).

-Should the activation menu ask if the visual effects should always be enabled every time antiX starts (this is the only FT10 features that uses system resources without any real need- it’s just “eye candy”)

-FT10 tries to change as little of the great antiX default settings as possible. But there’s one setting I think new antiX users would enjoy- having zzzfm installed (if it’s not already installed, like in systems older than antiX 21) and configured to be the default antiX File Manager- because the default File Manager, Rox, despite being very powerful, is too different from what users usually expect a File Browser to be… So, should FT10’s activation menu offer, by default to set up zzzfm as default file manager (adding this feature and then also undoing it if the user deactivates FT10 is a bit complex, I may not be able to do this for the final 1.3 version).

-Seamonkey came by default with antiX 19.4, but is not included in antiX 21 – should I add the option to install it to the FT10 enable menu? (This adds a light web browser, a nice looking E-mail client, compatible with gmail, a Calendar with alarms, and a To do list, and a Web page Compositor, all on a single bundle, set up, by default in English, localizations have to be manually installed)

-Should I add an option to try to automatically localize Firefox-esr (and possibly LibreOffice) so it runs on the User’s language?

Edit: (I forgot about this one)
-To make FT10 work better with JWM window manager I had to make many concessions . the one that bothered me the most was removing something most users don’t realize they are used to doing: If you click a task on the taskbar toobar, on most systems you toggle it’s window, hidding or un-hidding it. I had to turn that option off- that’s why clicking the icon of a running window on the taskbar does make it come up if it’s minimized, but if the window is not minized, it does nothing, if you want to minimize it, you have to do it from the button on it’s taskbar… I think it would be stupid to have a different version of FT10 just to make it run ok in JWM… The other option would be always allow to “toggle” window states from the toolbar, but have an extra option on FT10’s enable window, to optimize it for JWM… All this is too much work (I just manually enable to “window toggle” option manually, editing the tint2rc config file myself).

-Is there any extra feature you think FT10 should include out of the box (Setting up a Trash can/ Recycle bin in zzzfm is already in my To do list)?

P.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 3 months ago by PPC.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 3 months ago by PPC.

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