Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

disciple

I've been looking into the problem: "there are too many shares on my network so the pnethood window doesn't fit on my screen" (the same problem applies with too many partitions in pmount etc).

It seems to me that it is currently impossible to make a scrollable part of a gtkdialog window to contain buttons and things (except maybe by using the glade interface?). Am I right about this?

I think the solution is to implement the GtkScrolledWindow or GtkViewport container (or whatever you call it) in gtkdialog. It looks to me like it should be fairly easy for someone who knows what they're doing. I wonder if we have anyone confident enough with their C/Gtk...

Are there other programs that would significantly benefit from this? If not I guess you could always say it would be better to rewrite pmount and pnethood in genie or something.

sunburnt · Joined: 08 Jun 2005 Posts: 4006 Location: Arizona, U.S.A.

To my knowledge there is no scroll window for gtkDialog.
Understand... gtkDialog and GtkDialog are not the same thing!!!
gtkDialog doesn`t build GUIs like Visual Basic and other high level IDEs do.

Just write a new gtkDialog GUI for it, one that doesn`t crawl off the screen.
How about having the shares in a list box or combo pull down box?
The list box could be small, 6 lines or so, the combo box is only 1 line!
It`s been years since I messed with this stuff, so I`m vague about it.
Otherwise, yes... Rewriting it with another language would probably be easier.

Puppy`s GUIs waste lots of space, I always make small GUIs myself...
Small and efficient but not very pretty, I prefer this to large with bling.
I made a HD boot mounter GUI that was very small, probably still have it.

Probably a better idea is to just download a better share browser.
Here is a link to the Samba site: http://www.samba.org/samba/GUI/

disciple · Posted: Mon 21 Sep 2009, 02:27 Post subject:

sunburnt · Joined: 08 Jun 2005 Posts: 4006 Location: Arizona, U.S.A.

Puppy`s GUIs are for home use, as you found, they`re easily out grown.
A 2D array of buttons would take less space, but difficult to arrange.

The GUI I made was 2 list boxes, 1 for the hosts and 1 for the shares.
Click a host in list #1 and it`s shares show in list #2. Simple and small...
The important part is that it worked well for large LANs with lots of hosts,
each host could have lots of shares and the GUI didn`t get any bigger.
Only 3 clicks to select from hundreds of shares on any host,
20 hosts with 5 shares each = 100 shares.

disciple · Posted: Mon 21 Sep 2009, 03:35 Post subject:

pnethood and pmount both have 2D arrays of buttons.
Your gui would work well if you know where everything is, but a gui like pnethood would be much better if you don't know where everything is, but it really needs a scrolling window Smile

EDIT - no I was forgetting here what it is actually like Smile

A gui like pnethood is simply better because it reduces the number of clicks needed.

sunburnt · Joined: 08 Jun 2005 Posts: 4006 Location: Arizona, U.S.A.

This is what I did... Ignore the list box displays, it`s just filler.

zigbert · Joined: 29 Mar 2006 Posts: 5241 Location: Valåmoen, Norway

Both Dougal and me rewrote Pmount ages ago, to avoid the size problem. My Pdrive uses the <tree> widget instead of text and buttons. It is dated 17. Feb 2008, and has not been maintained after release 0.27. Teenpup is using Pdrive.

sunburnt · Joined: 08 Jun 2005 Posts: 4006 Location: Arizona, U.S.A.

Looks good zigbert. Have you done a pnethood equivalent?
How about your mounter app. with boot mount ability on a tab panel?
The second tab would be a Samba share mounter with boot mounting.
For the 2 tabs, a [boot] button and another field for the "Boot" notice.
Clicking the [boot] button sets boot, and clicking it again unsets boot.

I suggested this to the maker of MUT ( I forgot his name...) years ago.

A third tab for SFS mounting, immediate and boot should be in it too...
And a fourth tab should mount and boot standard image files also.

This would do all of the mount and boot mount functions in one GUI.
Partitions, Samba shares, SFS files, and Image files... Terry

zigbert · Joined: 29 Mar 2006 Posts: 5241 Location: Valåmoen, Norway

sunburnt
So it's Terry.... Smile

All nice suggestions!!!!
I am amazed that Puppy still doesn't offer a option to mount at boot ?????
I stopped development of Pdrive when I realized that we should have ONLY one mounter-app, and ONLY one maintainer. Since Barry maintains his Pmount, I think suggestions should be targeted to him. Pdrive was made to show how things could be solved. I have no intentions to compete with anyone.

Sigmund

sunburnt · Joined: 08 Jun 2005 Posts: 4006 Location: Arizona, U.S.A.

zigbert; I haven`t seen much in the way of improvements for a long time.
The Puppy core probably improves, so it`s not noticeable on the surface.
Barry works on core Puppy development, and occasionally writes an app.
Most are small and limited to home desktop use, better ones are needed.

Don`t worry about competing at all, there`s no competition at all!

If you would like me to make up a GUI, say so. I build mine in 2 files.
The exec. script has the event code and runs the GUI script with gtk code.
MU showed me it years ago, it`s a better way for a number of reasons.
1) It separates the code types making it easier to write and maintain.
2) The gtk code scripts are easily joined to make a tab panel GUI.
....... The exec. event code scripts stay the same, no modifying needed.
3) A different GUI can easily be written by making a new gtk code script.
....... Again... The exec. event code scripts stay the same, no modifying.

So I could write a gtk script that makes the GUI part of the app. to show...

zigbert · Joined: 29 Mar 2006 Posts: 5241 Location: Valåmoen, Norway

...But Pmount is not written this way. Pmusic are, Pburn are, but not Pmount.

You could make plenty of guis, but if they are not seen in the official iso, it's hard to get testers and feedback. How much bugreports do we have seen for Pmount - Tons. How many times have we seen the same bug reported for Pdrive - None.

You're right that the competition doesn't exist. But trying to get user feedback when the guy who put the iso together has his own code will fail..... Smile

No hard feelings, I just try to learn as I walk...

Sigmund

sunburnt · Joined: 08 Jun 2005 Posts: 4006 Location: Arizona, U.S.A.

zigbert; Bug reports and feedback aren`t the problem, an app like this is easy to verify.
The trick is getting it included in the package repositories so it makes a difference.
There`s lots of apps., so they all can`t be in the std. Puppy releases...

Perhaps a new apps. forum for posting submissions to be added to the Puppy packages?
And a companion forum for getting feedback for the testing of these new apps.
This gives developers a finishing environment and Barry has a source of unique apps.

vovchik · Joined: 23 Oct 2006 Posts: 1230 Location: Ukraine

Dear sunburnt and zigbert,

If anybody attempts to improve gtkdialog, I would also like to see a spinbox implemented, apart from gtkviewport. The more widgets the better. And I would also like to have a refresh for pixmaps in the same manner we get for other elements. Perhaps MU might like to have a look? My C programming skills are not so hot....

With kind regards,
vovchik

sunburnt · Joined: 08 Jun 2005 Posts: 4006 Location: Arizona, U.S.A.

vovchik; gtkDialog should be replaced with something that works well...
Something with Visual Basic style commands, like MU`s gtkBasic...!

I thought HTML sucked when I first looked at it 20 years ago.
Now there`s XML and off shoots (gtkDialog) and they really suck!!!
It`s just a horrible way to describe something that VB style does better.
Visual Basic`s easier to write and read, and takes less code to produce..

disciple · Posted: Fri 24 Jun 2011, 22:13 Post subject:

For anyone that comes across this thread in the future, this is now implemented in gtkdialog - see the new site http://code.google.com/p/gtkdialog/ and examples in the development thread.