- This topic has 37 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated Dec 21-3:51 am by Anonymous.
-
Posts
-
PPC
Hi.
Using some ideas that came to my mind (reusing parts of other scripts), I copied and pasted until I got a new version of T.I.M.the code is over at:
https://pastebin.com/raw/pywckfhsChange log:
1- TIM now has a rudimentary “move” icon option – I presented this to anticapitalista, some months ago, and it did not make the cut to any antiX-goodies newer version. If someone has any idea how to make this feature faster, or more “elegant” please, do chip in
2- To add new icon’s to the toolbar, now users have a selection window that presents them with a localized name for all apps installed on the system (if that’s available) and also the full address to the respective .desktop file.
The downside is that, for this feature to work, a small script that searches for .desktop files, opens them and extracts the localized name is tun on the app’s startup. On my single core test CPU, this takes almost 3 seconds…I used this new way to choose icons, inspired by the recent posts about making antiX more user friendly – from a newbie’s perspective, having to choose a weird file to get an icon is not intuitive- when all that user wants is a app’s icon- so, merely listing localized apps names does make sense- even more if the OS is localized…
Any suggestions are welcomed, as always!
PS: with some work, the same script can be adapted to add icons to the (personal) menu or even the desktop… Also, the app’s description can be added to the app’s name- but that does slow the script down even more…
P.
- This topic was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by PPC.
ModdIt
Hi PPC, are you reading minds ?,
been discussing the subject with BobC using PM to discuss what might be best concept.Needs are Add, Position, Remove. and application name shown on mouse hover.
Will take a look at your scripted setup once my very broken, runit test stick is fixed.
My fault, one too many experimental change.perfection would include adding starter for self contained applications like ungoogled
chromium, Firefox, Tor dropped in a home directory but that is easy enough for
anyone more advanced so likely better not to bother.You wrote: The downside is that, for this feature to work, a small script that searches for .desktop files,
opens them and extracts the localized name is tun on the app’s startup. On my single core test CPU, this takes almost 3 seconds…Compared to adding even a single application with present tools that seems a small wait. @ present if position or grouping is
wished for it means either pre planning or moving items in text files. Pre planning is far from ideal as wishes change with time
and usage, removing applications back to text files. Many new users have never heard of hidden files, that is fun.BobC
PPC, I haven’t had time to look at the new script, yet. I will look/try it out over the weekend. I didn’t use the old TIM normally because it was quicker/easier for me to just edit the file, finding the App I wanted on the main menu and copying the “prog” line from the menu itself over to the toolbar file where I wanted it. Ok, that’s great for me, and it illustrates some possible methodology options, but is not good to ask normal people to do things that way.
Your previous TIM was good at adding an icon to the toolbar as long as you were ok with it adding at the end. It was not good at building a toolbar with 15 or 20 icons on it like I have or like Moddit uses for himself or has the kids creating.
Xecure, Moddit and I were discussing different other ways of getting there (as part of the fix/replace icewmcc thing). Obviously you are doing more than discussing, and must also see the need for nicer solution like we do.
Options I see:
1. Better YAD solution, maybe you just posted it or maybe something based on my take it from the menu idea.
2. Drag and drop folder of desktop entries to a “toolbar” folder renamed in the sequence desired, ie 01-Firefox.desktop, 02-SpaceFM, and matching script to generate toolbar file. Not sure if normal people would be able to handle the renaming concept, but could be done with YAD prompts telling them to drop the .dsktop files into the folder and at the end generating the new toolbar. The idea seems clunky compared to the tint2conf fork.
3. Tint2conf fork of Launcher panel and matching script to generate toolbar (written in C).
4. App-Select based Launcher panel clone and matching script to generate toolbar (written in Python).
5. something else – anyone suggest?To generate a toolbar, we would start with a base template, and generate additional App lines. It could also generate toolbars for Fluxbox and JWM, similar to how menus are generated for each. There are more knowledgeable people than I here on this subject, thinking skidoo, anti and Dave as well as probably Xecure.
PS: The people that need this are ones like Moddit, and his kids, and other people wanting a super efficient workflow setup tuned for the Apps they use all the time, and I think meeting their needs should be the driving force deciding what solution gets us there.
Bit from my side, I can easily manage the present userbase, that is likely to grow, I hope rapidly, as and when we return to a more normal situation.
Driven by mainly by growing brutal poverty which really hurts.
Being a poor post war kid in a rich country, taunted and discriminated for wearing scruffy second hand clothes, holes in shoes. Sent to a bad school,
having to work full time at 15. going to bed hungry. Searching on rubbish dumps for anything useful will linger in my mind until my last breath.
Even helping one person is of value, I hope to have the strength to help many more than one, at least a tiny amount.One of the last hurdles is easy setup, apart from the fact we can not afford to forget money filled briefcases behind office doors that is..
To try and keep this compact.
German schools have tons of older laptops. Literaly Tons. Many on XP.
T410 T420 T430, mostly I3 processor some I5, They would become very usable with a modern lightweight OS, instead of mostly gathering dust.That is one possible scene.
Another is that the Government spends a few millions on new hardware for schools, unlikely as poor companys like Lüfthansa and VW are more (gr)needy and government
and politicians are shareholders. Teachers get new laptops for free, less well off Familys, warm words.The school computerstock could be upcycled within a kids company, cleanup, new BIOS battery, some would need repair, install a modern, efficient, and user friendly OS.
Then marketed, putting profits back in to either more hardware, spares, a maker lab for the school. 3D Printer, home made reflow oven.
Raspi working microscope. So many possible projects.Problem is getting some decision makers onboard. Preferably at a high level. Ideas on that are present, including one tentative but Influential down to earth contact in
the German parliament greens.
If one such project could be started within advanced curriculum in a school like the one my daughter goes to (ca.1700 students, kids administer and present it, it might
just take off.Yes, Pie in the Sky, Elephants that fly. I still wish for an easy way to select 20 Apps and put them on the toolbar. I’m a dreamer, I know.
The move button worked nicely, PPC. It does improve the script. WOW, is that a complex YAD script.
Xecure
I have tested it a bit and seems to work well. I will look at the code later.
Would having it look similar to the “Manage Favorites” (in badwolf) help with user experience?
By default, show the list of icons and let you select them to edit them or move/remove them.
Buttons would be “Edit” (to change name/icon, position or remove it from the list), “Add” (to add new ones), “Save” to apply all changes.
This way you wouldn’t need so many buttons. EXIT button can be removed, as clicking the top X or hitting Escape key will close the window without saving the changes (so no need for UNDO button). “Add” would let you search for a file (in a similar way to your “Recent files” gui), instead of only displaying the .desktop files in /usr/share/application. And when selected, it will show a gui window similar to the “Add Link” window in “Manage Favorites”, where you can change the icon if needed or even add parameters to (or change) the command.
The Edit button would replace both MOVE, REMOVE and ADVANCED, so it would lead to less overwhelming feeling.I will look at the code later when I have some time.
antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.Dave helped last night with a change to App-Select that allows you to right click in app-select and run a custom plugin which we will need to create. He was working on an option to add icons to the desktop, and this is very similar.
1. Could we add a button to run app-select with instructions to tell the user to right click and click Add to Toolbar for all of the Apps they want to add.
2. Create a plugin script to add that icon to the end of the toolbar list.
3. When they come back after exiting App-Select, refresh the list and then let then they can move them where they want on the list, or edit as needed.An idea of Dave’s was to have a numbered list and an entry field where they type a Move before line number to make it quicker moving them around. I don’t know how hard that would be to do. I would say the priority should be on getting the App-Select mass add feature working first as it might solve Moddits problem.
Anyone willing to tweak it a bit more? I’m not a YAD professional like you guys, but I think this will provide a nice solution for Moddit without a big effort.
- This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by BobC.
Hi! Thanks for all this input!
I’m now in week-end mode, unfortunately without my daughter, so I have some time to dedicate to antiX…
In order of firt come first served: 🙂
@Moddit: this script provides “Add” , “Remove” and localized “application nam2 on mouse hover”. As for “position”, it’s provided in a indirect way- users can choose the icon to move and then click “left” or “right” buttons to freely move it around. That’s particularly useful when you just want to adjust a little bit the position of an icon (for example, I like always having “antiX updater” on the most right side of my quick access toolbar icons, so I always move it there), but not very handy when you have to move the icon a large distance, or move several icons…
It’s because sometimes, manually editing a config file is the fastest way to go that I kept the “advanced” button, that presents a short “how-to” explanation of how editing works, backs the “toolbar” file and then opens it for edition… This teaches users how to adjust the toolbar to their liking, quickly moving application icons around, changing icons, etc.
It’s not an ideal solution, but it’s a “usable” GUI- because most users don’t like editing config files- and, to be honest, even those that like it, can find it challenging finding the correct binary file and/or icon…@BobC- I think, generally speaking, when an user adds an icon, it’s expected that it’s added to “the end of the pile”- that’s what happens, for example, in a Windows desktop that automatically arranges icons- so this seems logical to most users…
Yes, unfortunately, as for most things, usually GUI’s are not good at repeated tasks, like adding large amounts of icons- probably editing the config file by hand would be faster… Even if you do it faster using the GUI- after all it’s just clicking the app’s names on a list, reordering those icons would be many times faster by manually editing the config file…
About your suggestion (nr2) – I can’t really think of a GUI way to generate a toolbar file like that… more on an alternative for than in the end… As for your other suggestions, I don’t know any C or Python,maybe someone can chip in…
On your second post – maybe there’s a way to select more than one app to add to the toolbar, more on that below…@Xecure- thanks for the suggestions… I think I don’t have enough know how to have TIM look and act the way I like:
in a very similar way to tint2 config launcher option (also XFCE’s):
On the left the list of apps currently on the toolbar, on the right the list of all available apps.
Double click an app on the right and it gets added to the list on the left.
select one app on the left and then use “remove” “move up/left” “move down/right”.
After the user is done editing, just click the “apply” button and the toolbar refreshes to show it’s new contents…For now I’ve been thinking about turning the list of available apps into a check list- the user just checks the apps that are to be added to the toolbar and then click “apply”.
This has 2 parts- first turn the simple list into a check box list, one check box per line
second: save that selection, count how many items where selected, do a loop (for as many items as where selected), adding one selected item at a time until the end of the loop. Refresh icewm to see the changes…
Pros: it’s insanely fast to add many new items to the toolbar
Cons: the items are added in alphabetical order- I can’t think of a way to add them by the order in which they are clicked…PS: the original version of the script – that was meant to just add icons, started showing up the selection window- so adding an icon was a matter of launching the script and double clicking the right .desktop file. When I began adding functionality to the script I thought it may confuse users and provided a more “uniform” user experience- now, adding, removing or moving an item always is done the same way- by selecting the app’s name in a list…
Do you guys think that showing up front the list of available apps to add to the toolbar would be better?
P.
Using App-Select will let them add all the icons at one sitting. Using App-Select (with its search) is much nicer than giving them a list of 100 icons and telling them to “Go fish”. The script will add them to the end of the toolbar file as they do it, but we won’t restart IceWM until they come back. Otherwise it would be restarting IceWM after each icon was added.
I agree people will expect us to add them to the end of the line.
Letting them adjust the positions:
Method #1 – We convert the file to fields on lines after stripping the headers and footers, and number the lines, and multiply each by 10, then line #10 would be the 1st icon and line #170 would be the 17th icon. Those are the icons “Current slot”. Add a column called “New slot” where they type what number they want to move it to. When they hit Resequence, we re sequence the list in their new sequence. When they click Apply we change the file to match it. This would be very efficient for the users if they don’t goof it.
Method #2 – We convert the file to fields on lines after stripping the headers and footers, and number the lines, then line #1 would be the 1st icon and line #17 would be the 17th icon. Those are the icons “Slot number”. Add a column called “Move Before” where they type what number they want to move it in front of. When they hit Resequence, we resequence the list in their new sequence. When they click Apply we change the file to match it. This would be very efficient for the users if they don’t goof it.
Method #3 – We convert the file to fields on lines after stripping the headers and footers, and number the lines, then line #1 would be the 1st icon and line #17 would be the 17th icon. We don’t actually need to display the numbers, just remember which is which. The user just does a “Drag and Drop” to move the line up or down on the list. When they click Apply we change the file to match it. This would be very easy and efficient for the users. Not sure this can be coded with YAD to do that screen.
I can help generate the toolbar file itself.
- This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by BobC.
And yes, you could have 3 buttons on each line to move up/down or remove. Again, I think it slows it down and is distracting to actually refresh the toolbar itself until they hit apply.
@Bob – yes, the third method would be the most user friendly- but I have no idea how to implement it…
The more logical and perhaps easier to implement would be your second suggestion…Should we not wait to see anticapitalista official position on this “improvements” before we throw even more hard work into this?
I simply patched together parts of previous scripts and filed it all down until it all worked fine, and that took me more than a couple of hours (I’m not a professional programmer)! I have no idea how long those suggestions would take to implement.For now for the current beta of T.I.M. , with a bit of work I can think of a yad confirmation window that pops up after the user selected one app to be added to the toolbar- asking at which position it should be placed. It would be trivial to add the line to the selected position. If the field is left empty, simply add it to the “top of the pile”
One alternative could be having one extra button on the app selection window, to select its position…
But I’ll wait until the dev team says we should pour more work on this or not… also, me trying to work on TIM when it’ll be partily merged with app-select seems a duplication of efforts…P.
Xecure
I think there would be no problem if these scripts were added to a separate package (an update to icewmcc-antix ?) and then ask anticapitalist to update the package in the repo.
All these tools are very icewm specific, so it is better to have it in a separate package, instead of increasing the antix-goodies package.
As SamK stated, let us not expect it to be added to official antiX. Once we have our own package, with all updates, then we can suggest for it to be added to the antiX repo, and then to the next release.Let us try to maintain a package ourselves. I am sure that will be better for the dev team and also for us. This way we can simply update a file in gitlab with the changes, and be able to easily follow the changes easily. And when we think something is ready, prepare a new deb package and make a formal request on the forum.
antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.SamK
Let us try to maintain a package ourselves.
Another potential method has been previously suggested; produce a respin. Doing so will provide public availability without delay. That way one has total control over everything.
• What is included/excluded
• What new ideas are incorporated
• When it is updated
• How often it is produced
• etcPPC, Yes, the 3rd method is the Elephant that flies. Your modified script is a good improvement and could/should be implemented ASAP. And you right, anticapitalista decides what he wants in his distro.
I will help make the App-Select plugin come to fruition myself. Dave is a Dev and has already added the feature to App-Select, so its going to be safe to use it soon, I would think. I will write and test the plugin script it runs to add the icon to the end of the toolbar file. I will try to get that working this weekend. App-Select is completely independent and doesn’t NEED to be called by your TIM.
On my system I have 27 icons on the toolbar. I bet Moddit and all his school kids have more than I do. Just imagine the time to add and position them all.
There will be no duplication of effort unless you are going to spend time creating a better way to add many icons in a better way. I think the best person to suggest what would work better from a workflow standpoint would be Moddit, and yes there isn’t much point putting effort into it if anticapitalista isn’t good with it.
Xecure, I agree with using Gitlab and a package, but don’t know how. I’m willing to learn, and that’s as good a place to start as I can think of. As Moddit found, the icewmcc package needs help if it is to be what it could be.
Hi beta 2 of T.I.M. v1
Code over at:
https://pastebin.com/raw/c21E3BahFixed: “antix” folder .desktop files where not shown in the add icon selection window (it was a tiny but difficult rewrite, because I had to redo the way the script read the .desktop files… 🙁 )
Added: a check to confirm the user is running an IcwWM desktop
In the next version I’ll remove, following Xecure’s advice, the useless “Quit” button
If no one finds Bugs or Regressions, I think this is very close to the “final product”
P.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
