Classic Pup 2.14X -- Updated 2 series

[ttuuxxx]

Onto the next release,........... new additions like simple mail, Xfce apps, hardware info, gtkhash, updated gparted, and libparted etc.
ttuuxxx

I still did not see pnethood in this list?

Rgds Mike

Thanks mike, its added
anything else did I miss?
ttuuxxx

[ttuuxxx]

damn damn damn, The power went out for like 2 mins and I've been doing most of this live, well the compiling and keeping some of the stuff, I was in the middle of putting it all together, what I lost was the new 31 band eq, and updated xfce picture viewer that didn't crash because I removed the preferences and the hack to fix the locales, and the extra packages I compiled and didn't post. about 2 gigs worth, lol
damn damn damn damn. man I'm soooo fit to be tied.
Well I'll let the xfce picture viewer stay the way it is for this release, because I would have to recompile all that xfce stuff, but I'll do the fix , hey I was wondering something anyways it might be a good time to ask Does anyone of you know C ? The reason I ask is that it would be really nice if on the top Ristretto user panel where it says
“File Edit View Go Help

[OlddogNewtricks]

Well, after a week away there's a bit of catching up to do.

Yes to a better mixer.

Not bothered about which music player but I'd call the XMMS 31 band equalizer technical bling, impressive to look at but how many people would know how to use it properly.

Image viewers :- Don't forget Qiv is already installed, this & Gqview get my vote. Too late now though it seems.

New screenshot utilitiy excellent but only seems to save as png.

Xfburn also excellent, pity it can't handle multisession.

So generally thumbs up with very minor moans.

[ttuuxxx]

So generally thumbs up with very minor moans.

well glad to have ya back More input the better, sometimes I feel like yelling "Echo, Echo, Echo" in this thread, lol
ttuuxxx

[dejan555]

damn, damn, damn, I was so looking forward to see that V5 today with that 31 eq
Ah, what the heck, don't worry about it, I know it was hard work but there will be time to do that

[ttuuxxx]

Aaa don't worry about it dejan555, it will be on my high list of things to do after this next release

I managed to reduce Gqview by 30kb compressed and made it look better
Still haven't decided what will be the picture viewer/media player/burner yet, lol
ttuuxxx

also included a locales packages.

[OlddogNewtricks]

ttuuxxx, I'm a bit puzzeld, your new gqview executable appears to be 63k larger than the original, and apart from the camera picture on start up, the new looks identical to the old.

[ttuuxxx]

I was comparing the package size, The icons I changed were these
folder_closed
folder_locked
folder_open
folder_up
gqview_logo


The old package was 14-Apr-2007 16:50 312K
the new package is 283kb

ttuuxxx

[esmourguit]

Bonjour à tous,

Hello ttuuxxx,
Except the name, i like very much pornview.

Cordialement

[ttuuxxx]

Bonjour à tous,

Hello ttuuxxx,
Except the name, i like very much pornview.

Cordialement

Yes I do to, but I feel bad using it, lol Man what were they thinking about the name when they made that. I also like the size. Could you imagine it being a default viewer in the main puppy release and Barry making some release notes like

Removed Gpicview
Added Pornviewer
lol
ttuuxxx

[OlddogNewtricks]

I was comparing the package size, The icons I changed were these
folder_closed
folder_locked
folder_open
folder_up
gqview_logo


The old package was 14-Apr-2007 16:50 312K
the new package is 283kb

ttuuxxx

Fair enough but if I make a pet out of the gqview already installed it comes out at 277k, 6k smaller than yours. I presume the installed version came with the original 214R. Still, if you decide to keep gqview then none of this matters. It's nice to have a choice but sometimes there's too much so just to stir the mix a bit more, have you considered Alsaplayer as a general purpose music player leaving XMMS & all the rest as downloads along with all their extras.

[davesurrey]

Hello ttuuxxx,
Was away longer than I thought as my elderly Mother fell ill and I had to take care of everything.

Just read all the new forum stuff and have the following comments FWIW:

1. installed all the pix viewers that you have gathered. Thanks for the choice but it's a tough one. Again, just did a quick look and review.

Gqview is still my favourite as it has a wealth of features, has exif viewer, slideshow, is fast and just works. I believe the newer incarnation geeqie is even better but is only at beta at the mo.

Ristretto is ok but has no exif viewer, seems slow on large images and I have some difficulties (which are non-consistent) in opening some files if the file is hidden. Which has put me off. However I feel you will keep this one so if you can give it a separate slideshow tab that would be helpful.

viewnior is similar to ristretto but no slideshow

gpicview..an old favourite. simple but no slideshow, exif viewer and not very interesting to look at.

pornview.. as you said, it has a pleasing GUI, the slide show is easy to use, but there are few tools. Big issue.. I think it would be unwise to make it part of the standard install due to the name. I'm certainly no prude but I have put Puppy on several PCs/laptops where I know young children have access and IMO it would be inappropriate. But by all means make it a pet for others to choose.

fotoxx ..I have always liked this one. most things there I want plus lots of useful tools; red -eye for example.

My vote is still gqview (or geeqie) followed by fotoxx then ristretto. But of course I only get one vote!

2. hadn't noticed that the new (good looking) screenshot only saves in png. With no tweaks at all I used both current screenshot apps and they gave me files of 40kB (jpg) and 300kB (png) with the latter from the new screenshot prog. That's a shame because it certainly looks good. I guess it's not possible to change the format it saves into??

3. Thanks for the new Gimp. I already had one installed but the new one installs just fine. But not had time to check it out yet.

4. Our favourite subject again!!! MUT and Pmount.
From your jpg it still looks as if MUT will squash the volume label and file format text together. Please see your jpg where for sdc "vfat" and "NO NAME" merge. Did you manage to explain this to Jesse the developer? Is he willing to help fix this?

Whilst with MUT I note that file sizes are in Mb (which internationally means Megabits, not Megabytes). I think it would be best to have MB here.

5. Pmount: it would be great if you can add tabs for the different drives; but if not then I understand. If you do add them then could they be like MUT ie sda, sdb, sdc and not in reverse order as they are in the third picture.

To be honest I am starting to like the green and grey buttons to show mounted or not, but I guess for consistency you need to go with Mount/Unmount as used for MUT.

6. Can't test the equaliser as the audio is not working on this PC at the moment. As someone who has worked in professional TV for many many years and used to lecture in it for perhaps the World's best known broadcaster I can understand what tempestuous means about equalisation being a subtle art. You won't find any tone controls on my main amp.

But... this is Puppy and I imagine there will be many using 214X who don't have pro kit nor even a good hifi connected to their PC/laptop.

In which case a wide ranging equaliser would come in very useful. Perhaps 31 bands is a bit excessive but if that is all there is to offer at this time then I say so be it.

7. I have never seen the logic of strictly adhering to the 100MB limit. I can understand why Barry made that a barrier and agree with his reasoning but if for the sake of a quality app being added it goes a little over then so be it.

But I agree that size-creep from one generation to another would be wrong and it's good to aim for 100MB even if it gets a tad bigger.

Hoping to see x5 soon ??

HTH
Cheers
Dave

[ttuuxxx]

Hi dave thanks for report Here's Gpicview with slideshow, this is one that the puppy user 'HairyWill' added a slide show and options, theres a play button and a configure button where you can specify the time delay etc, he did a pretty good job on it, too bad he's no longer with puppy. The only issue with it is that you can't really have your pictures in /root/ and have a slideshow, lol well thats because it sees the hidden .bmp (music player folder) and thinks its bmp image and tries to load it, lol
but it works fine in any folder and if we change to XMMS then that issue would be gone.
I'm really glad with all the test going on, that's great, its really giving me some hard thoughts about the software inclusion. I must of look at over 100 different photo applications, mostly php web or big libraries (python,QT).
I think I'll put XFCE on hold, I really like the screenshot tool, but like you said,png only, when it should be jpg, Then the image viewer doesn't have exif, and the burner doesn't do multisesson, but I've read somewhere it does, but its not clearly documented. If I can fix even one of those problems, it will be in.
XMMS vs BMP vs AlsaPlayer

XMMS
pros: lots of extra plugins, eq 31 band eq
cons:Larger, eq doesn't work with mad

BMP
Pros: eq works, smaller, some plugins from xmms work,uses winamp or XMMS skins
cons: none really, could be a bit smaller like alsaplayer is

AlsaPlayer
Pros: The smallest out of the bunch, great sound, midi plugins,
Cons: Doesn't use winamp/xmms skins, small amount of plugins.

Conclusion:next release V5, will have BMP and extra plugins, maybe a new skin, Default Image viewer will be Gpicview and I'll also include gqview or fotoxx , The reason why Gpicview as default, simple, its easy to use, has a slideshow, works quick, new users wouldn't be confused with it, I find gqview looks too busy, really Its just a image viewer not a editor what were looking for. Dave if your around you make the call gqview or fotoxx. Both I don't mind, but since gpicview does your exif data stuff and slideshow if you minus those out of gqview it doesn't leave much stuff to offer. Where as fotoxx does have lots of really nice image enhancements.
ttuuxxx

[ttuuxxx]

Ooop here's the Gpicview with slideshow. I just repacked Harry's bin in this one, because when I compiled it and stripped the bin, Harry's version was 1/2 the size,lol So better using his.
ttuuxxx

[davesurrey]

Hi ttuuxxx:

1. Okay I can fully understand why you prefer Gpicview as the default viewer. So I just tried HairyWill's version and it's fine as a basic viewer. Also I had files in /root and they caused no problem at all.

But I didn't see any exif viewer? I guess that's no problem for a simple viewer so long as it's included in the more sophisticated one.

My personal opinion hasn't changed that Gqview is my preference but...for the good of the general user I think it may be better to include Fotoxx instead because of the added value (image enhancements) it has and also it seems to have a cleaner interface. I won't mind either way.

2. I agree it may be best to leave the xfce stuff on hold with these few but niggly issues these apps have. A pity though.

3. I do hope the EQ issue with xmms can be fixed as I much prefer it to BMP. But if it's to be BMP could you work some ttuuxxx magic on it and improve the look. The one in X4 really does look a poor little thing IMHO and not worthy of the rest of 214X.

Thanks
Dave

[clarf]

Hi ttuuxxx,

I also checked your viewers. I can see two main categories for them:

(A) One for large image collection visualization and creation.

(B) for a quick image view in a given directory.

pornivew and GQview are in A category. pornview is very promising (I like the idea to add plugins but there are none installed then I can´t know quality of them), it has good features but seems inestable now (nobody talked about them, but I had some GUI problems testing it ), although I can see videos with pornivew this app always crashed after play some . The navigational window can´t be hide then is difficult to be used in small screen resolutions... I think it´s not ready yet to be included in a Puppy release.


GpicView and Viewnoir are small viewers and are in the same B category, I like GpicView over Viewnoir because it has more features, I can use it to quickly save images in different image formats, it is slight faster than Viewnoir, I could navigate between images without problems and I also liked the full screen controls. With your recent post, Now I Must try the sideshow feature that make it a clear winner in this category

I know there are many other viewers that are more capable and could be included in another categories for image edition, transformation, etc. but for the present options I think we must add one for each category, GpicView and GQview.

[OlddogNewtricks]

HI ttuuxxx, just tried hairywill's gpicview. the 'make default viewer' button in preferences didn't work but thats not critical. Used the new snapshot utility to grab a portion of the screen & saved it as a png, then opened it with gpicview set as default viewer & saved as a jpeg. Very smooth. I'd be happy with this viewer considering it's size & simplicity of operation. Plus, gqview which seems to be getting the votes at the moment.
You say you couln't open pics in /root, I had no trouble.

I still vote for xfburn. The multisession thing would just be the icing on the cake as I've never got Grafburn to do it even though it says it's an option. Up till now I've used a series of my own scipts to handle cd burning.

[ttuuxxx]

I found a command line screenshot utility, it works really well, So I'm going to try to build a basic GUI for it, I'm no genius at code, but I think I should be able to do it, The first version will be included with v5 These are the basic features that I'm aiming to have.
default will be 90% quality (can be changed in the code)
jpg format (can be changed in the code)
7 second delay

select region
select window
select fullscreen

It automatically saves with the date. I might try to get the time working also, so you can save multiple screenshots, since once the one is used with the current date, you have to rename it or delete before it does a second shot.
ttuuxxx

[davesurrey]

ttuuxxx wrote:

I found a command line screenshot utility,

That would be great. And if the delay could be made variable (1 to 60 secs?) that would be even better.
Cheers
Dave

[ttuuxxx]

ttuuxxx wrote:

I found a command line screenshot utility,

That would be great. And if the delay could be made variable (1 to 60 secs?) that would be even better.
Cheers
Dave

That would have to be added after, lol I would have to readup on code for that. What I laid out is real basic stuff,something I can do in about 1hr or less, The reason I picked 7 seconds, its to do with quality, if you tried the other adjustable screenshot apps, it you take the shot straight away and compare it to like a 5 second delay the image quality is better.
Plus I've updated the backend to use imlib2, which will make image quality a lot better, looks like I'll have to recompile Gimp later also, lol
ttuuxxx