How to open Rox Panels at startup/as toggles? [Solved]

[Puppus Dogfellow]

[...]

Do you think you can provide an illustration of a desktop with all 4 ROX
panels enabled? It may be educational to show a picture of "a case of
acute panelitis" to newbies!

BFN.

musher0

here's one i just started to show comparative panel widths. keeping the name of a file gives it more space, and you can play around with icon size and occupiable space to suit your tastes. it can run scripts (the panel toggle script itself is at the upper right, along with three other scripts, one the rox bookmark speed dial cheat sheet Mochi came up with, ...), including "launch this website with this browser" type stuff--folder speed dial, file+preferred application speed dial--whatever you want.

taking it further, you can make four or so versions of the script, give them an icon, make the set a slot and roll out on the jwm menu (or is that still just a pipe...).

to move around an icon, middle click or you will end up just duplicating it. you load up the panel by dragging items to it. you're not limited to the screen space as it auto scrolls past the physical border, but it will only place icons towards the middle when the ends fill up. you can drag desktop items or folder items to the panel and off the panel as if it were just an extension of the desktop--it follows those rules i.e. it's a link to a directory, not the directory itself--deleting it deletes the link, not the folder and its contents.

[greengeek]

<chuckle> Man thats funny - you've really gotta keep that cat off the keyboard

I've never seen any puppy quite like it. Breaking new ground that's for sure.
Dunno what you had for breakfast but I want some.

[musher0]

@greengeek.

Forget the cat, can't you see Puppus is entering a Mondrian phase!
(Great artist, Mondrian, great artist!)

[musher0]

@Puppus,

(Sorry for the Mondrian comparison!)

What's that black "belt" at the bottom of you screen? That's not a ROX panel, is it?

Thanks in advance.

À+

musher0

[Puppus Dogfellow]

<chuckle> Man thats funny - you've really gotta keep that cat off the keyboard

I've never seen any puppy quite like it. Breaking new ground that's for sure.
Dunno what you had for breakfast but I want some.

no cat, just some primate who can't seem to leave well enough alone.

@Puppus,

(Sorry for the Mondrian comparison!)

What's that black "belt" at the bottom of you screen? That's not a ROX panel, is it?

Thanks in advance.

À+

musher0

i'll take the mondrian comparison--quite fond of ol' Piet myself. (covered by the top rox panel (knew i should've dragged it to one) is my applications folder, the icon of which is a clay sculpture of a Munchish contorted face painted over with Mondrian lines and blocks--i think the original was supposed to be some sort of play on Abstract Expressionism.

)

As to the black bar across the bottom, you mean the JWM taskbar? the buttons are all custom, the xload thing is missing, and it's packed with minimized windows, but i think it's still pretty identifiable. anyway, is that what you're asking about? it's running a slightly modified tema aurora theme. (just the pop up backing color is changed on this one, i think. i usually change that from yellow to light blue-green and make the active window's icon more visible with purple and flatness, an unnecessary step on this particular computer because my head's practically against the screen when using it).

[Puppus Dogfellow]

6 panel toggle sets as a menu item in JWM; a before and after shot of a fresh toggle set with its default setting intact except for the identifying/activating/deactivating P5 that can be seen on two of the panels. panels will expand to fit 96 pixel icons and shrink to accommodate 16 pixel choices--the largest current icon determines the the upper limit (i think the smallest dot-icons actually shrink it to less than 16, but 96 is the upper limit--long titles can make it exceed this in width, though; you can have some pretty enormous buttons and/or some pretty miniscule ones.

details on how to do this here

(scroll down in that thread for updated version).

every time a panel script (/desktop icon/menu item/panel icon) is clicked, it covers the previous panel set. any script clicked twice in a row closes all the panels. dragging the Puppy Panel Pack folder to a panel in each set provides an easy way to switch between them.

[Jasper]

Hi guys,

Having tinkered and failed I would like to know how to change
the background colour of one or more Rox Panels.

My regards

[musher0]

Hi, jasper.

Here's a quick answer. (I'm at work.)
You work it from a /root/.gtkrc.mine file such as this one:

Code: Select all

# template for a /root/.gtkrc.mine file

## at the top you would have gtk proper stuff, such as :

# gtk-recent-files-max-age = 20
# maximum number of filenames recorded by xbel

# gtk-can-change-accels = 1 # gtk accelerators, buttons and stuff.

#####
# The following comes from the ROX-Filer site.
# First, you have to specify where the pictures you are going to
# use for this are located.

# I put mine at:
# pixmap_path "/usr/share/backgrounds/gtkrc-mine"

#####
# This is to color the background of the ROX-Filer file manager.
style "rox" = "default"
{
#  bg [ NORMAL ] = "#CFB98E"

# You can't have both. You choose a color (above),
# or a little (not big) *.png (not *.jpg) picture (below).
# You comment out with a number sign ("#") the line you do not want.

# Long thin *.png pictures (1000x3 pixels, for ex., with vertical shading),
# work best as backgrounds in the ROX-Filer proper, IMO. I've tried "real" pictures, # but they're a distraction more than anything in this context, and the bigger or
# more intricate they are, the slower ROX gets.

 bg_pixmap[ NORMAL ] = "Septemtriones-sable-48x1400.png"

# You cannot specify a font in this section. The font here is
# controlled by the gtk-theming utility.
 
}
widget_class "*Collection*" style "rox"


#####
# This is to color the ROX panels.
style "panel-style"
{
# bg[ NORMAL ] = "#687584"

 bg_pixmap[ NORMAL ] = "rapides_inuksuak1204b-haut.png"
# This is the top strip (52 pixels wide) of my background picture.
# Gives an illusion, somewhat, of transparency when you do that. 
# You do this in mtpaint, and save it in *.png format, in the special
# folder you created for these pictures.

# Again, this is either or. You specify a small picture or a color.
# In this part you can also specify a font to use that's different from
# the one for your menu. 
 font_name = "Liberation Sans 13"
}
widget "rox-panel.*" style "panel-style"
# End of code imported from ROX-Filer site.

#####
# You can have other gtk-specific code here. 
# Some gtk-apps need to put their own stuff here.

~~~~~~~
If you already have a .gtkrc.mine file, make a back-up, eh?
Then try to blend in the items in my template into what's already there.

Another quick note: the color or picture affects ALL panels. That may be tricky for
pictures. A nice *.png pattern for horizontal panels may be ugly on vertical panels.
If theres' a way to re-initialize this gtkrc.mine configuration on-the-fly, I haven't
found it. Meaning: you may have to use only vertical or only horizontal panels with
certain patterns. (2, not 4.)

Additionnally, you can use transset-df to make your ROX panels somewhat
transparent. transset-df is still available at : http://forchheimer.se/transset-df/
Please see illustrated result and included *.pet archive of transset0df.

Also, this old thread may give you ideas (mutatis mutandis!):
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=19251

BFN. Gotta go.

musher0

[Jasper]

Hi musher0,

Success - thank you very much for your help.

I presume you are now home from work as I see you have now added extensive advice - which I'll study later this morning - as I'm off to bed now.

My regards and thanks again

[musher0]

My pleasure, jasper!

Here is the link for ROX theming that I seemed unable to find earlier:
http://rox.sourceforge.net/desktop/node/181.html. The horse's mouth !

BFN.

musher0

[greengeek]

Is it possible to make a rox panel which stays on top of programme windows and/or on top of the jwm taskbar? I cant see rox panels being useful to me if the windows cover them. cheers!

[Jasper]

Hi greengeek,

I like some flexibility; so I have a fixed centred top tray with a chosen depth of 21 pixels.

Thus I always have screen access to both my jwm left-click and right-click desktop menus. Also, in the particular case of SeaMonkey, I adjust its FullSceen width and placement so that its right-hand edge is one or two pixels short of my screen's right edge.

Now, when I move the mouse cursor to the top right of the screen (to where the red rose icon is highlighted in the screen shot) my rox panel is available for use. Moving the mouse cursor left will again show SeaMonkey in full (including its vertical scrollbar).

SeaMonkey is the only app, I can recall, where anything extra has been needed to reveal and use my rox panel.

My regards.

PS As an aside - which is your current version of jwm?

[MochiMoppel]

Is it possible to make a rox panel which stays on top of programme windows

Yes

and/or on top of the jwm taskbar?

Yes, if the JWM tray is at the top of the screen (panel at top edge, tray below), No if the tray is - as by default - at the bottom edge. But you can have both tray and panel at the bottom (panel at the very bottom, tray above). In any case maximized windows will not cover the panels.

I cant see rox panels being useful to me if the windows cover them

But the ROX pinboard is being useful to you although windows can cover it? Panels are nothing else but additional, size restricted pinboards, on top of the main pinboard (aka desktop) with the advantage of being potentially off-limits to windows.

Since this thread is marked 'Solved' by the OP, covers a different topic and strayed already into an OT formatting discussion I suggest that you open your own thread, preferably in the Users forum

[greengeek]

As an aside - which is your current version of jwm?

Hi Jasper:

Code: Select all

# jwm -v
JWM vgit-895 by Joe Wingbermuehle
compiled options: confirm fribidi icons jpeg nls png shape svg xft xinerama xpm xrender 
system configuration: /etc/system.jwmrc
# 

But the ROX pinboard is being useful to you although windows can cover it?

In fact, no. I almost never use desktop icons any more as they are covered by open windows.

Since this thread is marked 'Solved' by the OP, covers a different topic and strayed already into an OT formatting discussion I suggest that you open your own thread, preferably in the Users forum

Ok. I will do some more research and tinkering to flesh out my questions then will open a new thread. cheers!

[greengeek]

ps: Jasper, what is this?

[Jasper]

Hi greengeek,

it's

[greengeek]

Jasper - I don't have that in my menu. Is it this one?

[Jasper]

Hi again,

Yes: it's 7 items times 24 pixels = 168 pixels

my top tray 8 items x 21 pixels = 168 pixels
(because I like symmetry)
and that's SFStray from seaside
just click an sfs icon to load it
and close the app to unload it.
Note, as far as I remember:
only for jwm, but not for Full installations.

[Puppus Dogfellow]

just discovered you can give yourself swappable keyboard shortcuts by assigning them specifically to panel or pinboard items. since this thread deals with panels exclusively, i'll focus on that, but it's really the same thing--when you right click on a pinboard or panel item and give it a shortcut, the shortcut goes to that specific icon, not the program or file(s) the icon represents--the key combo will work on what's in the panel--swap the panel, you swap keyboard shortcuts. to fully use this feature, you'd probably have to keep your shortcuts away from your main windows manager as that may override or conflict with the newer keycuts.

in short, you could toggle keyboard shortcuts when you toggle panels/toggling panels is also a way to have an enormous amount of context-specific (or not) keycuts. this is possible because in rox, you assign cuts to an icon, not a program.

[rufwoof]

Is it possible to make a rox panel which stays on top of programme windows and/or on top of the jwm taskbar? I cant see rox panels being useful to me if the windows cover them. cheers!

Necro bumping a old thread ... I used to include program icons/items in the main jwm panel, but have since opted to use a rox panel instead. I don't launch a rox pinboard at all now, have no need for desktop icons as program icons in a rox panel can have files dragged/dropped onto them to launch them. I also like how middle mouse drag/drop can be used to rearrange the rox panel icons, along with drag/drop new items into the panel.

Bottom panel is the jwm panel that also acts as the tasklist, tray, pager ...etc. and where the clock is used instead of a MENU button. Left edge is the rox panel, that I launch in .xinitrc/.xsession just before starting the window manager

rox -l $HOME/.panel &
exec jwm

Guess I could really include the panel being launched by jwm itself along with other commands such as

<StartupCommand>sleep 7;osmo</StartupCommand>
<StartupCommand>sleep 7;libreoffice --quickstart</StartupCommand>

and background wallpaper setting

<Background type="scale">$HOME/.wp.png</Background>

A nice feature of rox is that AppDir's can be used as the icons in the rox panel, for instance I have a few that do multiple operations such as uploading files to my server, so that a rox filer window multiple file selection can be dragged/dropped onto the relevant rox panel icon and the file uploading of those files to the server starts.

In my case both the rox and jwm panels remain visible at all times (maximise a window and both remain visible). If I drag a window however it will cover the rox panel but not the jwm panel, but perhaps if I also had rox pinboard running and set the margins that might not be the case - but I'm not sure about that.