antiX transformation pack – antiX FT 10

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I could see adding a few function keys or special keys (if available) and implement them across 2-3 window managers, but I’d be extremely hesitant to change ALL key bindings; that’s asking for trouble. But as I mentioned earlier, it’s better to leave key bindings, with the exception of a couple of them for navigational consistency – alone.

--
Brian Masinick

[Member PPC]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I’m a bit sadden that Ft10 has so few users that no one reported a bug caused by app-select 🙁
To have an uniform way to add icons to the menu and the toolbar, new icons are selected using app-select. For some reason, the script that Pins apps to the menu / Adds favourite apps, is now using the wrong fields from what app-select outputs.- resulting in a bug: when you pin an app in the menu, only it’s name is added to the menu, no icon, and the app is not launched when you click the new entry.

I’ll eventually have to put out a new FT10 version with a fix for that… Right now, if you use FT10 and want to Pin an app to the menu using the provided GUI, you’ll have to do this:

menu > Terminal

Enter this command:

sudo geany /usr/local/bin/jmenu-editor.sh

enter your password, if asked to and the script should appear on your screen.
Scroll down to around the line 121, that should start with “EXECperc“. Change the “-f” field value, on the end of that line from -f3 to -f4 and keep the closing parentisis, change only the number
Scroll down to around the line 122, that should start with “ICONE“. Change the “-f” field value, on the end of that line from -f6 to -f7 and keep the closing parentisis, change only the number

Save the changes, and you’r done- you can now Pin any app to jgmenu using the provided GUI- my appologies to anyone affected by this annoying bug (if anyone was affected, other than me)…

Edit: if/when I send a new Ft10 version to anticapitalista, I would like to include some small changes:
– Fix this bug and possibly add a message warning that app-select is starting, when you click on “add icon” option to add icons to the menu/toolbar (handy on slow devices)
– have, in the Ft10’s configuration window, an option to always have the menu in RAM- making it launch faster on really slow devices, but costing a few kb of free RAM
– have a script to make appimages executable and launch them, from zzzfm (called something like “appimagerunner” – to be honest this would save myself a bit of time, because I’m an appimage user
– change the default toolbar config file to use a different window switcher, if it’s available (already implemented on the version of FT10 that I use)
– if I can manage it… add a new menu option to the initial Ft10 configuration window- just like the “Tiled” menu, but without the Tiles – it’s cleaner, and also something like what I think the Windows 11 menu should be – have the “Pinned apps” AND “All Apps” directly available and easily searchable.- you can already use this menu, but it requires an extra step- in the “Tiled” menu, click the first menu entry and then, on the new window, click the “Menu tiles” button, to switch the “Tiles” on/off. To be honest, I just created the “Tiles” to show that antiX could easily be configured to be as easy to use to Windows 10 or an Android device – most of antiX’s basic features are available from there, as big, easy to notice icons. Xecure created that menu selection window, so it would take me some work to change it…

P.

• This reply was modified 5 months, 2 weeks ago by PPC.
• This reply was modified 5 months, 2 weeks ago by PPC.
• This reply was modified 5 months, 2 weeks ago by PPC.

[Moderator caprea]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Thanks for the fix, PPC. I’m having another look at ft10 for one hour now and already strumbled about this bug.So it is indeed surprising none of the users of ft10 has come forward with it.
Neither in zzzfm nor in roxfiler debinstaller is shown as an option with right click per default.
If this is configured,
debinstaller works very well, already tested it some time ago.
Tint2 does not show my ram, of course it is shown on icewm toolbar and conky without problems, maybe you can give quick advice.It’s a lenovo t440,nothing special.
Another question, during the activation of ft10 I disabled the volumeicon per checking. If ft10 gets deactivated again the volumeicon will not be restored again. The line in the /.desktop-session/startup got deleted and looks like this
## Puts a volume icon on the taskbar

That sooner or later will raise questions.Is this by design?
My post is not an attack, ft10 will probably be intregated in antiX in one way or another, then it should work the best and of course I want to know how.Thanks for all, you have done a really good job.

Attachments:

1. 

   tint2.1.png
   

[Moderator BobC]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I did hit the app-select issue, but when you are experimenting (making code changes) like I was, you don’t really want to bring up issues unless you are really sure that you didn’t cause them yourself.

[Moderator BobC]

Helpful

Up

0

::

PPC, a feature I noticed that I really like is the miniature preview window that gets displayed when you hover over a running program’s taskbar button. Is that part of tint2 or skippy-xd?

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Helpful

Up

0

::

As for me, I have installed and superficially tried FT10, primarily to determine if I can activate and deactivate it without disturbing my typical workflow; the answer to that is yes.

I’m not sure if I will be an effective tester of the complete tool but I will try to do more because I do believe that it provides the community with a good solution for keeping the overall approach lean while also introducing more familiarity with toolbars and appearance that makes a bridge between commercial systems and what we do.

Some people bristle at any thoughts of similarities. I think this offers an intelligent way to build effective bridges. Let’s try to help PPC and anticapitalista and see if this can become a robust and effective effort.

Whether it works out or not I applaud everything that PPC is doing for our community.

--
Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Helpful

Up

0

::

OK, I’m going to make a concerted effort to actually use FT10. On one hand, I’m very impressed with the set of efficient features, capabilities, and looks of the tools and applications provided. However, if I get into this 100% I’ll want to see a few things that I absolutely investigate and modify almost immediately when I set up software.

Here’s a “for instance”: on the display clock, I prefer to enable “seconds” on the time. Moreover, in the USA where I live, though most clocks display Day of the week, Day of the month, then month, I grew up viewing it as Saturday, December 31, 2022, whereas it shows up as Sat, 31 Dec. Everyone should be able to set this to their own preference; this is something I do with my own toolbar clock.

It’s already been mentioned that the debinstaller doesn’t do anything; if it’s going to be listed, the software needed to operate it should be appropriately installed and configured.

I’m still favorably impressed with the overall features and capabilities; nevertheless if I will actually use this on a regular basis, I’d like to have the freedom and flexibility to configure things like these and have those features available without having to do anything other than a simple appearance change. I hope these minor things can be fine tuned.

--
Brian Masinick

[Moderator caprea]

Helpful

Up

0

::

BobC wrote:

a feature I noticed that I really like is the miniature preview window

tint2 does that and, oh my , I really dislike it. I’m also under the impression that for eg. rox-term it doesn’t do that always, sometimes for rox-term only a lettered field is shown.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Helpful

Up

0

::

As far as clock displays, I have several small scripts that I’ve written that create various clocks in the formats I tend to prefer.

Here is one such script,

xclock.bash:

xclock -d -strftime "%b %d, %Y %r" -update 0.2s 2>&1 >/dev/null &

Here’s another one:

pclock.sh:

#!/bin/sh
while :
do
  date +"%a %d %b %r"
  sleep 0.2s
done  | { trap "pkill -f $0" EXIT ; yad --title=clock --geometry=220x25+220+16 --form --cycle-read --field=": " --no-buttons --undecorated  ;}

• This reply was modified 4 months, 1 week ago by Brian Masinick.

--
Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Here’s a third clock in Python3:

clock.py
#!/usr/bin/python3
# Clock.py from https://www.codeunderscored.com/make-digital-clock-python/
# Copied and simplified by Brian Masinick on Mon, June 20, 2022

# importing the entire tkinter module
from tkinter import *
from tkinter.ttk import *

# to retrieve the system's time, import the strftime function
from time import strftime

# creation of the tkinter window
main = Tk()
main.title('Python digital clock')

# This function displays the current time on the label defined herein
def displayTime():
	string = strftime('%r')
	clock_label.config(text = string)
	clock_label.after(200, displayTime)

# creating an attractive look:  needs styling the label widget
clock_label = Label(main, font = ('calibri', 12, 'bold'),
			background = 'black',
			foreground = 'white')

# defining how to place the digital clock at the centre tkinter's window
clock_label.pack(anchor = 'center')
displayTime()

mainloop()

--
Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Notice that in each of the clocks I was experimenting with I used %r to display the time (this provides two digit hour, minute, and second, plus AM or PM). On displays where I included the date as well as the time, I used %B — locale’s full month name (e.g., January), %d — day of month, and %Y – four digit year.

I’d like to see the capability of allowing us to either accept the default display or to alter things like the day and time with the values we choose, or to omit it and allow us to display it ourselves.

--
Brian Masinick

[Moderator BobC]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Brian, there are clock format settings in the tint2rc file. If you right click the main menu button, then go to Applications >> Preferences >> Tint2 Settings, and edit the tint2rc, then go to the Clock tab, you’ll see the settings to change.

As for the preview window, I wonder if compton (a compositor program) was running, if that would fix it?

[Member wildstar84]

Helpful

Up

0

::

Ft10 looks like a really cool thing to try and from reading here has had a lot of TLC work put into it. I’m interested in trying it out, but pbm. is that I normally use a very hacked & customized AfterStep as my WM along with a very customized antiX (but have other WMs installed too), & my own filemgr. Therefore, I fear not being fully able to remove it (and any added packages) if I decide to stick with my current setup. What would be real helpful to me would be a list of all configuration files that will be modified or added (so I can back ’em up & change ’em back or remove them)! In short, a full & clear “revert” spec.

Thanks!

Jim

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Helpful

Up

0

::

I found out how to modify the clock format – here’s how:

1) Click on the Tint2 panel themes
2) Locate the clock for the theme you want to use.
3) Modify the clock settings, for instance, %r sets the time to HH:MM:SS AM/PM, %B sets the month to the month name; %D sets the month to mm/dd/yy format. Choose whatever format you prefer, or leave it as is.

So the tool DOES have a way to modify the clock display; well done!

--
Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Helpful

Up

0

::

BobC wrote:

Brian, there are clock format settings in the tint2rc file. If you right click the main menu button, then go to Applications >> Preferences >> Tint2 Settings, and edit the tint2rc, then go to the Clock tab, you’ll see the settings to change.

As for the preview window, I wonder if compton (a compositor program) was running, if that would fix it?

Thanks BobC! I found it just before I read your post; when I put my note in, I saw that you had already shown me where to find it.
I also set up a pretty minimal task bar; I can use the regular menu to access other things; this is looking better and better the more I experiment with it!

Great job PPC! Keep it up!

--
Brian Masinick

[Author]

Posts