Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[MochiMoppel]

This recent thread about the undocumented chooser widget brought up the question: What can it be used for?

Not much, as it seems. Among the only 7 scripts in Slacko 5.6 which use it, only Nathan's wallpaper app uses it for image previews. All others use it as a simple file picker.

I take this as a challenge to build something more useful.
Ever since I used TotalCommander, a 2-pane file manager, I liked the Quickview feature: A file list in one pane and the content of the selected file in the other pane. For image files it would be a representation of the image, for text files it would be the file content, for zip files the content of the zip container. With add-ons other file formats may be readable/viewable.

Main Features of MMview
Supports common text formats
Supports most image formats, incl. RAW formats
Supports common audio/video formats (displays metadata, requires ffprobe or avprobe)
Supports common file compression formats
Supports eBook format EPUB
Supports directories (displays disk usage, sizes of subdirectories)
Supports executables (displays usage message)
Supports virtual files in /proc and /sys (for geeks!)
Search function
Command line interface
File create/rename/move/copy/delete
Horizontal or vertical layout
Fullscreen mode
Line wrapping
Line numbers
Can display file properties, MD5 checksums, ID3 tags of audio files
Can display image metadata (Exif, IPTC , XMP)
Can play audio files (requires ffplay or avplay)
Can play video files in separate window (requires ffplay or avplay)
Displays full paths, MIME types and charsets
Starts with last used directory and last used window size
Provides keyboard shortcuts for most actions
ROX-Filer compatible: "Open With ..." menu
ROX-Filer compatible: Shift+! opens shell command box
ROX-Filer compatible: Dblclick or Enter/Space key opens file in its default application
ROX-Filer compatible: Selecting file sends its full path to PRIMARY buffer

Built-in standard features (but nevertheless noteworthy)
Drag'n'drop from Chooser to Desktop: Creates desktop shortcut
Drag'n'drop from Chooser to ROX-Filer: Copies file (while pressing Shift: moves file)
Drag'n'drop from ROX-Filer to Chooser: Jumps to the file in list (changes chooser's directory as needed)
Entering first letter of a file name jumps to the file in list

Changelog
 2019-08-29
 Added: Support for busybox v1.30 or newer
 Changed: Various keyboard shortcuts
 Fixed: Several minor incompatibilities with new distros

 2019-07-02
 Added: "Convert text string" dialog now also generates each character's Unicode UTF-16 codepoint
 Improved: MMview can start with a specific file selected and not just with a file's directory (requires xdotool)
 Fixed: When text displayed in fullscreen mode tooltip may stay on screen even after closing fullscreen mode

 2019-04-09
 Added: Support for binary files (display of hex values)
 Added: Tool to convert text strings into UTF-8 character codes
 Changed: Menu layout

 2018-11-01
 Added: Support for ROX-Filer's "Open With..." actions (aka Right-click actions)
 Changed: MiddleClick now opens "Open with..." dialog

 2018-09-20
 Added: Support for RAW and many other image formats (see update post)
 Added: Support for image metadata (Exif, IPTC , XMP)
 Added: Option to disable Instant View mode
 Changed: "Fit images to viewer size" now default mode, previous "Original size" mode removed

 2018-08-03
 Improved: Properties view now largely compatible with ROX-Filer's Properties dialog
 Added: "Count" display for directories, compatible with ROX-Filer's Count dialog
 Added: Menu item "Compress/Decompress" (Ctrl+G)
 Changed: Location of config settings
 Improved: Various features (see update post)

 2018-05-19
 Added: Menu item "New". Creates new file or directory
 Added: Menu item "Properties". Displays file properties
 Added: Toolbar button "Properties"
 Added: Menu item "MD5 checksum". Displays MD5 checksum and checks file against MD5 history

 2018-04-19
 Added: Optional line wrapping
 Changed: Menu layout

 2018-01-17
 Added: Support for eBook format EPUB
 Added: Support for image formats ANI and PCX
 Added: Toolbar
 Removed: Shift+Click functionality (open in default editor)
 Improved: Various features (see update post)

 2017-11-09
 Added: Toggle text fullscreen
 Fixed: Some issues re. multiuser and alternative window manager support (thanks SFR)
 Removed: Ability to save last window position
 Improved: Various features (see update post)

 2017-10-20
 Added: Toggle images fullscreen (size 100%)
 Added: Toggle images fullscreen (size fit to screen)

 2017-09-13
 Added: Better command line compatibility
 Added: Open commandbox with last command
 Added: Command line history
 Removed: VTE (terminal) support

 2017-08-07
 Added: Basic file management functions Rename/Move/Duplicate/Delete
 Added: Support for Lucid 5.2.8 (and probably other older Puppies)

 2017-06-22
 Fixed: Compatibility issue with Fatdog

 2017-06-21
 Added: Support for HTML (*.htm/html), Abiword (*.abw), Notecase (*.ncd) files

 2017-05-24
 Fixed: Removed a comment that caused a buffer overflow error on some systems

 2017-05-22
 Added: Shell command box
 Added: Terminal pane
 Added: Tooltips for all menu items in "View","Commandbox" and "Terminal" menus
 Added: Shortcut for start/stop of audio/video play (Ctrl+Z)
 Changed: Menu structure

 2017-04-16
 Added: Menu item "Show line numbers" ; Shortcut F2
 Added: Menu item "Refresh" ; Shortcut F5
 Added: Menu item "Find ..." ; Shortcut Ctrl+F
 Added: Menu item "Find again" ; Shortcut F3
 Added: Support for initrd.gz images (thanks SFR)
 Added: Support for .iso images and .zip , .7z archives
 Changed: Shortcut for "Execute selected file in console" from F5 to Ctrl+F5
 Changed: Shortcut for "Open in default editor" from F2 to Ctrl+E
 Removed: Display of disk usage for symlinked directories and directory /proc

 2017-04-06
 Added: Display of archive contents (supported formats .tar, .pet , .txz, .gz , .gzip, .bzip2, .deb). Experimental!
 Added: On-demand info for directory disk usage. Includes subdirectories (first level only, largest first). Shortcut F1
 Added: Run menu
 Added: Option to run selected executable in console. Shortcut F5
 Improved: Displaying directory size now times out after 1 sec. to prevent stutter. F1 can be used instead.

 2017-03-20
 Added: Vertical layout option (Preferences menu)
 Added: Support for audio/video files in Tahrpup
 Improved: Better use of available viewer area
 Improved: Better support for SVG files
 Various minor improvements

 2017-03-10
 Added: Preferences menu
 Added: Option to scale images to viewer size (thanks some1)
 Added: Option to autoplay video files
 Added: Support for *.mkv and *.wma files
 Added: Support for "iso*" and "unknown-8bit" charsets (requires iconv)
 Fixed: F2 now works
 Improved: Autoplay option for audio files can now be set from menu
 Improved: Several performance optimizations

 2017-02-12
 Added: Menu bar
 Added: Keyboard shortcuts
 Added: Display of usage message for executables (on demand)
 Added: Display of directories' total size (disk usage)
 Added: (Invisible) refresh button. Used by chooser widget. Prevents repeated file inputs of same file.
 Improved: Compatibility with various Puppies ( 'x-' prefix removed from MIME types)
 Improved: Performance when killing audio streams

 2017-02-09
 Added: scrollbars for images larger than viewer pane (thanks dejan555)
 Fixed: selecting files didn't preserve "accessed" and "changed" timestamps, causing ROX to mark files in bold

 2017-02-05
 Changed: 'pkill' to 'busybox pkill'. Some Puppies seem to miss the busybox symlink (thanks dejan555)
 Removed: Some redundant code in fill_statusbar function

 2017-02-04
 Added: Shift+Click support for text files
 Added: Support for ID3 tags and audio/video encoding info; Requires ffprobe
 Added: Autoplay support for audio/video files (experimental and disabled by default); Requires ffplay

 2017-01-30
 First version

Newest gzipped version

[greengeek]

Nice. Looks handy. I will give this a workout over the next few days. So far a couple of comments:

1) I navigated to a .wav and clicked it - it played in pmusic but then the "NAD5" theme of pmusic disappeared and returned to a default theme. I guess this is nothing to do with navigating via mm_quickview - just some peculiarity of my system but thought I would mention it anyway. Will post back if I find the trigger for this behaviour.

2) I felt it would have been nice to have an "up" arrow or "back arrow". Of course it is possible to click on the directory titles shown above the "places" pane, but it would have been more natural to have an arrow if poss.

Looks good!

EDIT ps: I did not understand what is meant by "Drag'n'drop Chooser => ROX-Filer: Copies file " (will try more tomorrow)

[zigbert]

This is a great initiative. Maybe we will for the first time see a workable filemanager based on gtkdialog.

[vovchik]

Dear MochiMoppel,

Brilliant idea and already working nicely. Yes, many tweaks and enhancements may follow, but it is already a great idea and functioning thing. Thanks.

With kind regards,
vovchik

[belham2]

Wow, mochi, this thing is something! I am always fooling with simple scripts and/or setting up *.desktop files w/ them, and Quickview lets me see all this stuff immediately. Plus, upon re-opening, it remembers where I left off. That is awesome! What would be incredible is what I wrote in the pic I put below (the highlighted). Still, Quickview is already good, and I am in the process of replacing ROX (I usually have 2 file mgrs always, usually PCManFM or Thunar along with ROX). Now ROX is getting removed and replaced by this! I love it. I hope it keeps moving forward and more new features are added. Thank you, Mochi!!

Here it is working in X-tahr-2.0:

[keniv]

@MochiMoppel
I have it working in the latest version of Lucid 5287 s2. Very fast. However it does not work in Wary 5.5. I used the same file for both and put it in the same place in both. Here is the output of running it in Wary in a terminal.

[Rattlehead]

Tested in Tahr605, works flawlessly.

Impressive. Kudos. Additionally, in this case, considering GTK-Dialog's syntax, that looks like freaking barb wire. Whenever I try to come up with something myself I have to take an aspirin later...

[slavvo67]

Very nice... ahhh but those pesky pdf files...

[drunkjedi]

Hi MochiMoppel,
Great coding again friend.
Thanks mate.

Great thing about these simple codes, they work on both 32 and 64bit...

[zigbert]

[MochiMoppel]

Thank you all for the unexpected feedback. I hope not to raise too high expectations with this little exercise. After all gtkdialog's toolkit is quite limited, and so is the chooser widget.

My intention is to keep it simple and fast. Speed benchmark: Scrolling through chooser's file list with the UP and DOWN keys on my old Atom netbook. This requires a lot of refreshes and calculations. If scrolling stutters and doesn't feel snappy anymore, I don't implement it - at least not for this auto viewing mode. On demand viewing options for processor intensive tasks may come later.

@greekgeek: I'm sure you will figure it all out when you play with it

@zigbert: I have no intention to turn this into a file manager. I have to be careful not to let it head too far into that direction. My conscience forbids me to build something even less feeble than ROX-Filer .

Playing audio files is not a problem. The problem is chooser's event handling. You will not care and not even notice when text in the viewer pane is refreshed twice, but you will be utterly annoyed when audio is refreshed repeatedly.

@vovchik: Thank you for your kind encouragement.

@belham2: Good idea. Text in the viewer can be edited, so why not save it? This was one of the first thoughts that came to my mind. 2 reasons why I gave up on it:
1) Conceptually this should remain a viewer. The user should have confidence that no action will change the source data. Allowing saving or even auto-saving would not fit into this concept.
2) Theoretical it would be possible only for smaller files. There is a limit of ~128K for variable size, which will cause chooser to freeze when you attempt to read files bigger than that. I avoid this limitation by setting the variable to export="false", but his makes saving impossible.

Of course you are right that there should be an easy way to edit and save a script that you see in the viewer. One way that already works: drag&drop the file to a Leafpad desktop icon or whatever you want to edit it with (it is not possible to "embed" Leafpad into the viewer pane).

ROX-Filer has a nice solution: When you Shift+click on a text file, the file will open in the default editor. I like that. Gtkdialog does not support mouse+key combinations, but I will implement it somehow. Maybe I should give this priority.

@keniv: Looks like an old bash version in Wary 5.5. Try to steal /bin/bash from a newer Puppy and copy it to Wary 5.5.

@Rattlehead: Aspirin is not good for you. A glass of Rioja Gran Reserva works better!

@slavvo67: Trying to view PDFs in anything else than a dedicated PDF viewer is a waste of time. This goes for many other formats.

@drunkjedi: Thanks for testing in 64bit Puppies.


[Edit] Removed reference to bash with regard to 128k variable limit.

[slavvo67]

Acknowledged. One note, at least in 64 bit, the viewer seems to zoom jpg photos at maybe a 200 % or more. Not sure if it was intended to view photos but just a comment. In that light, it also doesn't adjust with the window size of the file viewer so it will look like maybe a 300% zoom when the file viewer is not full screen and maybe 200% when the file viewer is maximized.

I used something similar in Windows quite a while back. Has anyone tested this with files like .eml for example?

[keniv]

@MochiMoppel

[Rattlehead]

[MochiMoppel]