Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[MochiMoppel]

Very odd: ROX has a nice feature, but makes great efforts to hide it under the rug.

To start with, ROX hasn't even a proper name for it ("group selection"?). I call them speeddials. The user stumbles on them when he accidentally hits a single number key. Dressed-up as an error message he sees a short explanation how to use this feature. I assume most users close such messages before reading them.

The user manual hides the information in Chapter 4. ("Saving and restoring the selection"), after a somewhat unrelated explanation how to copy path names. What I regard as the main purpose is mentioned as a kind of side-effect:" Saving is also useful even if there is no selection, since it still saves the current directory." In other words: They are bookmarks. Shouldn't be confused though with the "official" slow and clumsy ROX bookmarks. These max. 10 bookmarks assigned to speeddial keys 0-9 are bookmarks on steroid. One keystroke is all it takes to open a bookmarked directory - can't get any faster than that. And as a bonus file selections in the directories are preserved.

However there is one thing that makes them hard to use: How to remember which key is assigned to which directory? There is no hint or list in the GUI. What good is it to be able access a directory in a split second when it takes half a minute to try all keys to find the right one?

To solve this problem I've created a little script that opens a list showing all key assignments. Though the list is clickable and can be used without ROX running, it is not meant as a replacement for the "real" thing used from within ROX.

Features:
- Script can be opened/closed with same desktop/keyboard shortcut. This makes it easy to shortly take a glimpse.
- Can be closed with Esc key or with Close button
- Can be used like a menu ("Keep window open" unchecked). Window will close after selecting a speeddial link.
- Can be used as launchpad ("Keep window open" checked). Window will stay open
- Links always open in new ROX window (vs. in ROX speeddial keys open directories always in current window)
- State of the "Keep window open" checkbox will be remembered (script updates itself. No extra config file needed)

Dependencies:
Requires gtkdialog4

Issues:
Let's see...
EDIT1: Changed <tree> attributes format to conventional syntax (see discussion below)
EDIT2: Now, 3 months later, the script has changed quite a bit and and progressed far beyond ROX speeddials. It now supports 5 different bookmark sources and goes beyond what I consider a HOWTO topic. I therefore moved the script to the Additional Software forum: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=95656

The new SpeedDials script

[Keef]

I'd always wondered what that meant, and yes, I never really read what it said either. Thanks.

[Puppus Dogfellow]

i have gtdialog version 0.8.3 (a long way away from 4 it seems) so no surprise the script didn't work for me, but this is a cool feature. i've never come across that error box before and was completely unaware this even existed. thanks for the heads up, Mochi. very convenient.

[RSH]

[Puppus Dogfellow]

[RSH]

The latest gtkdialog4.
The script should definitely run with this version installed.

[Puppus Dogfellow]

[MochiMoppel]

[RSH]

Tested and didn't work here also.

The cause is:

[MochiMoppel]

That's funny. I know it should be a single line, so I was surprised to find that splitting the line into multiline chunks, which makes the code much more readable and maintainable, also works - at least for me. I just did this on a pristine Precise 5.6. Copied the code from the post into a new script template...and it worked! What do I have that others don't ?

Anyway, I edited the code.

[Puppus Dogfellow]

edited code works (confirmed in precise 5.6.1; the earlier version failed to run on 5.5 and 5.7 as well as this installation).

thanks for this--it'll help proliferate windows for the other script to close.



[now confirmed for 5.5]

[musher0]

Hello, mochimoppel.

Before I "officially" thank you , I need to know where and how to populate the entries of this
"speed dial". As it is, it is a good piece of code, no doubt, but it is useless!

"Un-official" thanks in advance.

musher0

[MochiMoppel]

If you've never used "groups" before, i.e. you never pushed Ctrl+<number>, then ROX hasn't yet created a file /root/.config/rox.sourceforge.net/ROX-Filer/Groups.xml. If you run the script before Groups.xml exists, all the slots will show --FREE--. Create some speeddials and run the script again.

[musher0]

I can now issue "official" thanks!

[MochiMoppel]

I humbly offer my official "You're welcome". But please stop editing Groups.xml manually. Look closely at your screenshot and find the mistake...