Puppy 4.2 - Desktop and Artwork

Message

disciple · #81 Post by **disciple** » Sat 08 Nov 2008, 00:48

1. Am I dreaming, or are you actually fixing the default font rendering?
2. Please keep the default settings for desktop widgets and things as simple as possible. It looks good with just the calendar, and lets people know that the widgets are there without making the desktop really busy.
3. Have you considered putting the cool lineart icons on the desktop as well?
4. I can't help thinking the wallpaper would look much better without the yellow - just grey.
5.

On low-powered systems these can easily be turned off

Tray-apps can easily be turned off as well, although I've never found a need to turn them off on my relatively low powered machines. I haven't tried REALLY slow machines, but they are a special case. I HAVE found that while I play audio on some machines (even quite fast ones) torsmo and conky cause a glitch in the audio every time they update, which is so annoying that I abandoned them completely.
Tray apps have a significant advantage over desktop widgets - they are more of a tool instead of just decoration, as you can SEE THEM without minimising everything

So IMHO it is important to at least keep the clock in the tray. I am in favour of keeping everything though

Or maybe having an option to turn everything on.
Sooo, I'm not saying "Don't use Conky", but I am saying "keep the tray applets please"... at least keep them in Puppy and easy to turn on.

smokey01 · #82 Post by **smokey01** » Sat 08 Nov 2008, 03:25

Zigbert, not sure why you would leave the connect icon on the desktop,
Normally it would only be used once.

I think the current trash icon (clear waste paper bin) looks better and would suit your professional looking desktop.

Looks great so far.

#83 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Sat 08 Nov 2008, 06:21

Here's a start of an Orange GTK2 them that I'm working on, The Orange bits are with the scroll bars and progressbar, I based it on Barry's Gradient Grey, added some code, reused the top and bottom arrows from another theme, changed the button/hover look,.
I didn't want to over do the Orange, but any ideas/views would help.
ttuuxxx

Ps the scrollbars are black by default and on hover its orange, I could change it to default orange and black on hover, its upto you.
I can change/alter/add any aspect of a Gtk2 theme, but just remember the more you add the quicker it gains in size.
ttuuxxx

disciple · #84 Post by **disciple** » Sat 08 Nov 2008, 11:27

Does anyone have any idea why Puppy's menu is generated like it is?

Every time I install a package it takes a loooooong time to generate the menu, and then I have to restart JWM anyway. I have JWM installed in Grafpup104, which uses some system I think Nathan concocted that reads directly from the .desktop files when starting JWM. It still starts nice and fast, and if we had something like this it would eliminate the need for the `fixmenus` nonsense, including the petget lag... although I guess it would be even better to go to a WM with proper dynamic menus that don't need to be restarted. I seem to remember icewm in Grafpup104 had dynamic menus?

#85 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Sat 08 Nov 2008, 12:38

disciple wrote:Does anyone have any idea why Puppy's menu is generated like it is?

Every time I install a package it takes a loooooong time to generate the menu, and then I have to restart JWM anyway. I have JWM installed in Grafpup104, which uses some system I think Nathan concocted that reads directly from the .desktop files when starting JWM. It still starts nice and fast, and if we had something like this it would eliminate the need for the `fixmenus` nonsense, including the petget lag... although I guess it would be even better to go to a WM with proper dynamic menus that don't need to be restarted. I seem to remember icewm in Grafpup104 had dynamic menus?

With icewm all you have to do is "restart icewm" no "fixmenus" needed

ttuuxxx

disciple · #86 Post by **disciple** » Sat 08 Nov 2008, 20:47

Why on earth does `fixmenus` build an icewm menu as well as a jwm menu then?
Do you mean after installing a .pet you just have to restart? - that is the same as jwm. But if you edit a .desktop file, or install from source or something, you need to run fixmenus.
Anyway, my point was that you can even use JWM without the fixmenus.

zigbert · #87 Post by **zigbert** » Sat 08 Nov 2008, 21:59

disciple wrote:Tray apps have a significant advantage over desktop widgets - they are more of a tool instead of just decoration, as you can SEE THEM without minimising everything

You have a good point about the positive side of tray-apps. But IF a message shows up (like the one when pupsave gets full), there shouldn't be necessary to keep info in the tray. I was wrong when I wrote earlier that freemem-applet makes the red message. I have now killed freememapplet, and the message is still there. I'm searching for it, but still haven't found the script hosting it ....

With your input as inspiration, I have made a new battery-widget. I also made a battery-check that returns a similar red message when battery gets low. This widget shows only 3 blank lines if there is no battery, so if this widget is put below others, it could be default.

Now there is a possible choice of what to use. I compared conky widgets against the tray-apps on my Pentium 450, but I can't say I noticed much difference on use of resources. Also I tried to play music, but couldn't hear any ticks as disciple noticed. Have you tried it on the latest Puppy. Could it be a kernel/alsa issue ???

I suggest that we keep the clock, blinky and volume in tray, and go for calendar, pupsave as widgets. Battery could be both. We skip Xload, since Pwidgets has a better cpu-meter.

I have made a second round with the Pwidgets code. The gui is now cleaner, and the config-button opens geany with the widgets config files.

smokey01
I want to keep the connect button, because I presume that the majority that boots Puppy for the first time are going to the web. What I hope for is that after connection is established, this button can be used as browser-button.

ttuuxxx
Why not your freaky sliders you brought to us earlier. Those with arrows. I thought they were really cool. But then ... if you want my gtk vote, you have to deliver a really good gtk-theme that is not considered as bloat. Remember that Grey-gradient is 4kb and Stardust is 10kb.

Sigmund

WhoDo · #88 Post by **WhoDo** » Sat 08 Nov 2008, 22:14

zigbert wrote:

I love what you are doing here, Sigmund. As far as I'm concerned it is a brilliant development for Puppy usability. I just have a couple of small suggestions, though.

* I'd like to see a clear red or green contrast between the two halves of your actual meter displays, not just the descriptive text. It would give greater clarity to what resource was remaining.

* In the battery meter, does "charging 11%" mean that there is 11% of battery used or 11% of battery left?

Keep up the great work, mate!

#89 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Sun 09 Nov 2008, 00:02

zigbert wrote:
ttuuxxx
Why not your freaky sliders you brought to us earlier. Those with arrows. I thought they were really cool. But then ... if you want my gtk vote, you have to deliver a really good gtk-theme that is not considered as bloat. Remember that Grey-gradient is 4kb and Stardust is 10kb.

Sigmund

Stardust extracted is 30kb on puppy 4.1 in has 29 tiny graphics, did you like the one I posted above with the orange if so I could reduce the size probably in half if not more, really what I would like to is get something that works first before I go optimizing 50+ graphics. It would be a time saver issue. Once I get the "Ok, it works" I'll reduce the size/optimize it.
Also If I had an orange Icon or a colour code I could make it match 100%
ttuuxxx

#90 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Sun 09 Nov 2008, 00:46

The popup is in /sbin/pup_event_frontend_d.

In the battery meter, does "charging 11%" mean that there is 11% of battery used or 11% of battery left?

It is 11% charged. 0% is empty, 100% is full.

technosaurus · #91 Post by **technosaurus** » Sun 09 Nov 2008, 06:12

Does anyone have a need for new xorg drivers - I know some of them that are included are a little outdated - especially the geode driver which I already made a .pet for since Puppy only includes the deprecated amd driver.

Xorg vs Xvesa makes such a huge difference in the desktop experience I felt I should offer my services.

For binary only drivers you are likely on your own, but if anyone has a video card that is not fully supported I can give it a run.

disciple · #92 Post by **disciple** » Sun 09 Nov 2008, 06:46

You have a good point about the positive side of tray-apps. But IF a message shows up (like the one when pupsave gets full), there shouldn't be necessary to keep info in the tray.

Yes. Something should be in the tray if the user wants to see it all the time. For me I really only need a clock and volume control, but different people want different things - if we had a proper CPU meter I think that would be popular

I brought it up mainly because someone suggested turning off the tray clock

but I can't say I noticed much difference on use of resources. Also I tried to play music, but couldn't hear any ticks as disciple noticed.

It seems to be a weird issue with some hardware (with on-board graphics) where doing a lot with the graphics or something interferes with the sound. It would be nice to have the tray applets around anyway, even if turned off by default. They're not big are they?

WhoDo · #93 Post by **WhoDo** » Sun 09 Nov 2008, 07:29

Pizzasgood wrote:
In the battery meter, does "charging 11%" mean that there is 11% of battery used or 11% of battery left?
It is 11% charged. 0% is empty, 100% is full.

Ok, but that's not really intuitive for newbies, is it? Instead of saying "charging" why not say "Battery 11% Full" or something similar? No ambiguity there.

#94 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Sun 09 Nov 2008, 07:47

disciple wrote:Why on earth does `fixmenus` build an icewm menu as well as a jwm menu then?
Do you mean after installing a .pet you just have to restart? - that is the same as jwm. But if you edit a .desktop file, or install from source or something, you need to run fixmenus.
Anyway, my point was that you can even use JWM without the fixmenus.

What I meant by that is you could easily add "fixmenus" to the restart IceWM with a small delay, probably could do that with JWM also.
then you wouldn't need the command line at all for fixmenu or a new entry called "Refresh Menus" that would basically fixmenus wait and then restart Jwm or icewm which ever.
ttuuxxx
P.s I'll give it a try

disciple · #95 Post by **disciple** » Sun 09 Nov 2008, 09:15

I was thinking that by eliminating fixmenus we would get rid of the huge delay while it claims to be updating menus when you install a .pet though.

But now I think about it, it can't just be running fixmenus, because fixmenus doesn't actually take long. I might take a look at the code to see what it IS doing. Petget does need work anyway - the list of missing dependencies needs to be selectable, or saved to a file or something (so you don't have to write them down), the lists need to expand when you make the window bigger, and it needs to work on shorter screens (people complain about that every now and then). Someone also suggested the other day the ability to save a local copy of a package when installing it, so you can reuse it - that would be VERY useful.
I guess I'm well off the topic of "Desktop and Artwork" now, but these are relatively cosmetic things that would make Puppy seem a lot more user-friendly

#96 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Sun 09 Nov 2008, 12:16

I'm no genius when it comes to code, But I managed to get it going
basically this pet I made up will
-make a new menu item-Menu/Shutdown/Refresh Menu
when you click "Refresh Menu", it does a few things
1st - "fixmenus"
2nd - "Restarts JWM"
3rd - Restarts Freememory applet so it goes back to the taskbar where it belongs:)
I also made a quick icon for it but if people like this new option, I'll spend more time on the looks
I've tested it many times and checked for extras left running behind by using Pprocess and all looks well, Sure probably my code needs fixing, but It does work just fine. Anyways have a test

oh ya the nice thing about it, when you refresh, you don't close any applications or web pages, Because its not using restartX Server. I also made one for Icewm if anyone wants it

It should work on all puppy 2-4 series but not 2.14r

Lobster · #97 Post by **Lobster** » Sun 09 Nov 2008, 13:10

basically this pet I made up will
-make a new menu item-Menu/Shutdown/Refresh Menu

good idea - well done

disciple · #98 Post by **disciple** » Sun 09 Nov 2008, 22:40

Looking at this petget code maybe the delay is in the indexgen.sh - I didn't even realise Puppy indexed help files for installed packages now. But has anybody tried it? If you go to help and then select a package (even a livecd package), usually it looks it up on wikipedia or goes to its homepage, even if there is a local help file installed. What is the point in that?

Code: Select all

     yaf-splash -font "8x16" -outline 0 -margin 4 -bg orange -text "PETget package manager
Updating menu, please wait..." & #9x15B also looks okay.
     MENUPID=$!
     #master help index has to be updated...
     #to speed things up, find the help files in the new pkg only...
     /usr/sbin/indexgen.sh ${WKGDIR}/${APKGNAME}
     #Reconstruct configuration files for JWM, Fvwm95, IceWM...
     /usr/sbin/fixmenus
     kill $MENUPID

#99 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Mon 10 Nov 2008, 11:52

I tried the new seamonkey 2 and well I liked the theme

For a Mozilla default theme its kind of nice compared to the verrrrrrrry old Seamonkey theme, anyways I managed to make it work on 1.1.11 on puppy 4.1, It needed the code and icons to work. So if your using 4.1.11 try it out:) Also if our using a different seamonkey, Just install the pet, then go usr/lib/Seamonkey1.1.11 and rename or copy the seamonkey1.1.11 to what ever version you have installed, Or extract the pet and rename the usr/lib/Seamonkey1.1.11 to what ever version your running. and repackage it
ttuuxxx

disciple · #100 Post by **disciple** » Mon 10 Nov 2008, 14:23

YEs, that looks nice, instead of ugly

But can I turn off the button labels? How?

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Puppy 4.2 - Desktop and Artwork