Puppy 4.2 - Desktop and Artwork

Message

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Does anyone have a need for new xorg drivers - I know some of them that are included are a little outdated - especially the geode driver which I already made a .pet for since Puppy only includes the deprecated amd driver.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

2byte · #101 Post by **2byte** » Mon 10 Nov 2008, 15:05

In 4.1 and 4.1.1, freememapplet no longer appears in the taskbar if ezpup or icewm is installed. It isn't listed in the process manager either. If run from the terminal it shows up as a teeny application on the desktop so I suspect that it was compiled without eggtrayicon. Although this isn't an issue with jwm it would be nice if this was fixed in 4.2 since icewm is one of the most popular additions to Puppy.

Vern

zigbert · #102 Post by **zigbert** » Mon 10 Nov 2008, 17:19

I think ttuuxxx's refresh-menu-idea is good, but then the petget message must be changed from telling to restart jwm. The main reason why I think so, is because my hacked fixmenu script that reformating the menu (see picture in main post) is much slower than the original.

WhoDo
The Stardust desktop is getting closer to something for public. As I see it there are several ways of releasing it.
- Upload piece by piece on the forum.
- Make a Ezpup-like package that installs on top.
- Release it with a 4.2 alpha. You get all scripts, packages, artwork and info.

There are negatives and positives about all of them, so I thought you could make the best decision. I'm not at all finished, but the base seems rather settled. The status:
- Icons (50%)
- Wallpaper (80%)
- Menu (100%) ???
- Widgets (80% version 0.1) this will of course be a never ending story
- Gtk-theme (100%, else we want another one)
- Jwm-theme (50% should it be blue or orange?)
- Add icon/program to desktop (70%)
- Utility bar (20%)

Sigmund

WhoDo · #103 Post by **WhoDo** » Mon 10 Nov 2008, 18:20

zigbert wrote:The Stardust desktop is getting closer to something for public. As I see it there are several ways of releasing it.
- Upload piece by piece on the forum.
- Make a Ezpup-like package that installs on top.
- Release it with a 4.2 alpha. You get all scripts, packages, artwork and info.

There are negatives and positives about all of them, so I thought you could make the best decision.

I'm determined to include your work in 4.2alpha and beyond, Sigmund. I'd like 4.2 to be as easy to use as possible and professionally integrated in look-and-feel terms as well.

There is plenty of time to refine and polish, if we want it. I'm not planning a particularly hectic schedule for 4.2 - the push for a quick release cycle was the source of repeated bug problems when developing 2.15CE - every change presents a new set of issues to be sorted out. We should take our time with 4.2 and polish, polish, polish.

Let's settle on the brushed silver/orange-black theme for the desktop and menus. An orange version of Stardust would be good as a Gtk theme, too. Ubuntu is ample evidence that many users find orange a reasonable alternative to blue and green, where red is probably too harsh for most.

I have attached a Gtk-2.0 theme called myubuntu, which may be a good starting point for modifications. Let me know what you think.

Keep up the good work, mate.

#104 Post by **ttuuxxx** » Mon 10 Nov 2008, 18:52

WhoDo wrote:
zigbert wrote:
I have attached a Gtk-2.0 theme called myubuntu, which may be a good starting point for modifications. Let me know what you think.

I tried it and it didn't work on 4.1, CHtheme just disappears, But thats ok, when I looked at the package it had lots of goodies, So if you want when I get home from work tonight in about 12hrs, I'll rip it apart and tryout somethings

ttuuxxx

zigbert · #105 Post by **zigbert** » Mon 10 Nov 2008, 19:41

Please look at these 2 wallpapers. They are both stretched from the master-image. One to ratio 4:3 (640x480), and the other to widescreen, - ratio 16:10 (640x400). The master-image has a resolution of 1750x1200, which is something in between (the same ratio as 640x440).

The question is: Can we use this ONE wallpaper for all kind of screens?

nic2109 · #106 Post by **nic2109** » Mon 10 Nov 2008, 20:04

Looks good to me on an eyeball-test - but if you could attach the actual image for downloading then we could tell you for sure.

I'd like to see something like 'Puppy 4.2' somewhere below the "face" (in a discrete intensity) so we show the world just what we are running. When you have something this good you really want to brag about it. This could be present in the iso file, but not in the image if made available separately. Just a thought.

Best wishes.

smokey01 · #107 Post by **smokey01** » Mon 10 Nov 2008, 21:20

Zigbert, How difficult would it be to make the connect process part of the initial startup configuration like keyboard and graphics?
It would probably be better to make it fully automatic but then that limits your choice if you have eth, modem or WLAN.

The desktop icon is not biggie as it's easy to delete. Simplicity is what Puppy needs. The less a new user has to do to get the OS working the more popular puppy will become.

DaveS · #108 Post by **DaveS** » Mon 10 Nov 2008, 21:31

smokey01 wrote: The desktop icon is not biggie as it's easy to delete. Simplicity is what Puppy needs. The less a new user has to do to get the OS working the more popular puppy will become.

As a new user, it might be interesting for me to say that I prefer having a readily accessible route to setting stuff up, like the 'connect' icon, rather than having it all fully automated. It kinda seems easier to figure it out if it does not work straight off that way. The problem with automation is, it has to be bullet-proof.

disciple · #109 Post by **disciple** » Tue 11 Nov 2008, 00:30

The problem with automation is, it has to be bullet-proof.

That's right - Puppy now has several automated things that need work because they aren't bullet-proof - e.g. the automatic hardware detection can be very bad if you have on-board sound but use a separate sound card - every time he boots he sets up the first sound card he finds, and you have to run the alsa-wizard to fix it. Until you know to blacklist the module.

#110 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Tue 11 Nov 2008, 01:45

I'd like to see something like 'Puppy 4.2' somewhere below the "face" (in a discrete intensity) so we show the world just what we are running. When you have something this good you really want to brag about it. This could be present in the iso file, but not in the image if made available separately. Just a thought.

I'm all for having the version number visible, but not on the wallpaper. Putting it on the wallpaper messes up people who want to use it for other versions, and requires modifying it for every new version. Using a graphics editor that has layers and posting the "raw" formatted file for that editor so that anybody can update it for their needs would help, but I still wouldn't call that ideal.

I think a better solution is to include it in the Conky display, along with kernel version. That way it can be totally automatic - Conky can just read it from /etc/puppyversion and automatically insert the decimal point.

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Puppy 4.2 - Desktop and Artwork