Idea: adopt ROX-Filer

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Iguleder
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Idea: adopt ROX-Filer

#1 Post by Iguleder »

Hey guys, at the moment I'm messing with ROX-Filer. I took a look at the git repo and it seems that development is kinda ... dead. The last commit dates back to August.

So here's what I was thinking about - why don't we set up a git repo and adopt ROX-Filer? The mtPaint maintainer is a puppian and it's great - he fixed many bugs and made mtPaint both a better application and a better application for Puppy. Having the ROX-Filer maintainer on the Puppy side of the force could be a great addition to the Puppy developers team.

Well, here are some examples for improvements I already made. They're very easy to implement because the ROX-Filer code is well-documented and in good shape.

- I replaced "Send To..." with "Open With...", that's something Barry does too.
- I removed the message you see when you run ROX-Filer as root - again, something Barry removes.
-A fix for the squashed log problem:
:Image
-I replaced "Set Run Action" with "Set Default Handler" to make it easier to understand:
Image
- ... And I bumped the version number, of course:
Image

The future prospects of a Puppy-maintained ROX-Filer are endless. I believe it's the best file manager around and definitely the best choice for the Puppy 6.x series (PCManFM and Thunar fans, please don't kill me) ... because it's the fastest and smallest file manager in the solar system. And hey, ROX-Filer is more than a just file manager, it's tradition! :)

So ... post your ROX-Filer patches and tweaks here, maybe we can make ROX-Filer even better together :)
Attachments
patches.tar.gz
My ROX-Filer patches
MD5: 5955e4a2e3099fcc073e5639d9f76613
(1.58 KiB) Downloaded 1018 times
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Dougal
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Re: Idea: adopt ROX-Filer

#2 Post by Dougal »

Iguleder wrote:- ... And I bumped the version number, of course:
Image
You forgot one simple thing: rename it. I don't think Dr. Leonard and friends would appreciate being asked about rox-filer-2.11 bugs.

And your "open with" patch is even worse than Barry's. Done properly (like Nathan did with 2.6.1) it is two orders of magnitude bigger.
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Re: Idea: adopt ROX-Filer

#3 Post by Iguleder »

Dougal wrote:You forgot one simple thing: rename it.
I'm pretty sure he won't mind that. Moreover, I'm pretty sure he won't mind letting someone else maintain ROX-Filer.
Dougal wrote:And your "open with" patch is even worse than Barry's.
Wow. My intention was to change the string, that's all ... and the patch achieves that goal.

And by the way, let me quote Barry (from here):
Edit ROX-Filer/src/menu.c:

change "Send To..." string to "Open With..."
Now tell me why (and how come) it's "worse than Barry's.".
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oui

#4 Post by oui »

Hm

I would prefer a small browser making both (have a look to BASIC linux baslin please: links does it, is fast, little and discret: no advertising and other terrible new thing that Google likes) so Puppy would always have an integrated browser but let free for users to install the prefered big brother they would prefer for her graphical satisfaction and amusement

it would be better to develop on the trio jwm+links+didiwiki making a real good basic file and internet browsing small graphical environment as well as a good basic writing system able to be used in both console and graphic windows (including cups) in standard, bold, italic and underlined writing (better than other writing systems for console!), directly available in a lot of languages (reduces the need or demand of translations in the basic version of Puppy) etc... Please output of didiwiki directly in /root/documents as open text! Perhaps it would be possible to renounce also to install Abi. a lot of user really prefer LibreOffice and the use of both as *.sfs is very simple and good! text processing don't often need really speed... how can write as fast in new computers!

the idealists interesting to produce puplets can decide after that to add or interchange this basic equipment and make her puplet different and more attractive in optical view and perhaps performance.

this would contribute to let the basic and main distro of puppy be as slim as possible and not to grow and grow and grow

second choice and eventuality would be a konqueror embedded but actualized (I know, there is no konqueror embedded in the new KDE4 and the part file browsing is now matter of an external program)

(KDE applications have often a better adaptation for more effective working with the ability to divide the only one screen to view and process 2 different point of a document and / or of 2 different documents to mix or compare)

a good thing would be a puppy with no texts and all in symbolic in the menus... only one version for all the planet!

bye

PS: see also here ideas concerning the not very useful use of CD to install and reinstall puppy: we are producing more unused plastic rests als we use really and it would be easy to avoid it!

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#5 Post by BarryK »

ROX-Filer has one annoying bug with GTK > 2.16. I reported it to the ROX bug-reporter recently.

I also reported this bug in my blog:

http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=02053

One of the focus problems was fixed by the founder of ROX, Thomas Leonard:

http://repo.or.cz/w/rox-filer.git/commi ... b9e1cf64b9

The same principle could probably be applied to the remaining focus problem.

Here is where I posted my bug report:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_i ... tid=107023

...I have found in the past that it takes a very long time before anyone responds to bug reports. Perhaps Thomas Leonard needs to be contacted directly.
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#6 Post by Lobster »

I'm messing with ROX-Filer
Hope your cold gets better Igu :)

There was a time Puppy did not use ROX
What on earth did we do? I remember we had file managers?
Thunar has been suggested but is not as powerful as Rox
(from every implementation I have seen)

Oui may well be right
just type file: into the URL bar of a browser
and you have a file manager
GooGall to increase its reign and quest for cyber exclusive advertising rights
is creating its owned franchised browser + cloud selling

By all means improve Rox, with dual location
creating links to desktop and whatever Puppy integration you can think of . . . sounds good to me

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#7 Post by Flash »

For what it's worth, there's a feature I'd like to see included in all file managers. It seems to me that a file manager ought to be able to show a tree view of the subdirectories in a directory, without showing any files. Like Tree does, only with a better looking font. :lol:

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#8 Post by Puppyt »

I very much agree with you, Flash -
ROX needs at least a Directory Tree option - not primarily for, but at the very least incredibly helpful for users from different OS backgrounds. (Multi-panels would be nice too but perhaps overdoing it.) Indeed, within Puppy my main turn-off always has been ROX's "babied-up" icon-default display as it strikes me as patronizing to users new to Puppy and Linux as a whole. I do appreciate what ROX has hidden under its hood. However, for my part, without tree view ROX frequently has me barking up the wrong sub-directories and I am much happier using Thunar or Konqueror.
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#9 Post by Iguleder »

BarryK wrote:The same principle could probably be applied to the remaining focus problem.
Maybe this? :)

Code: Select all

diff -rupN rox-filer-orig//ROX-Filer/src/menu.c rox-filer//ROX-Filer/src/menu.c
--- rox-filer-orig//ROX-Filer/src/menu.c	2011-03-04 10:38:34.000000000 +0200
+++ rox-filer//ROX-Filer/src/menu.c	2011-03-04 10:38:51.000000000 +0200
@@ -1674,7 +1674,7 @@ static void show_send_to_menu(GList *pat
 
 	send_to_paths = paths;
 
-	g_signal_connect(menu, "unmap_event", G_CALLBACK(menu_closed), NULL);
+	g_signal_connect(menu, "selection-done", G_CALLBACK(menu_closed), NULL);
 
 	popup_menu = menu;
 	show_popup_menu(menu, event, 0);
I also attached the vanilla sources from yesterday and my arsenal of patches:
- A version patch - 2.11 instead of 2.10
- A fix for the squashed log window problem
- "Open With..." instead of "Send To..."
- "Set Default Handler" instead of "Set Run Action"
- A default settings patch, makes all the traditional Puppy settings the default
- A patch that removes the warning when you run it as root
- The experimental focus problem fix

EDIT: the patch fixed one small problem, grrrr. But when you right-click the desktop and right-click a window that lost focus, the window manager menu appears, still.

EDIT 2: here's another attempt ...

Code: Select all

diff -rupN rox-filer-orig//ROX-Filer/src/menu.c rox-filer//ROX-Filer/src/menu.c
--- rox-filer-orig//ROX-Filer/src/menu.c	2011-03-04 10:58:49.000000000 +0200
+++ rox-filer//ROX-Filer/src/menu.c	2011-03-04 10:58:56.000000000 +0200
@@ -1674,7 +1674,7 @@ static void show_send_to_menu(GList *pat
 
 	send_to_paths = paths;
 
-	g_signal_connect(menu, "unmap_event", G_CALLBACK(menu_closed), NULL);
+	g_signal_connect(menu, "selection-done", G_CALLBACK(menu_closed), NULL);
 
 	popup_menu = menu;
 	show_popup_menu(menu, event, 0);
diff -rupN rox-filer-orig//ROX-Filer/src/pinboard.c rox-filer//ROX-Filer/src/pinboard.c
--- rox-filer-orig//ROX-Filer/src/pinboard.c	2011-03-04 10:58:49.000000000 +0200
+++ rox-filer//ROX-Filer/src/pinboard.c	2011-03-04 11:01:11.000000000 +0200
@@ -1382,6 +1382,9 @@ static void forward_to_root(GdkEventButt
 
 	XSendEvent(gdk_display, xev.window, False,
 		ButtonPressMask | ButtonReleaseMask, (XEvent *) &xev);
+	/* Iguleder: send a button release event */
+	XSendEvent(gdk_display, xev.window, False,
+		ButtonReleaseMask, (XEvent *) &xev);
 }
 
 #define FORWARDED_BUTTON(pi, b) ((b) == 2 || \
I think the problem is the root window hack - it doesn't send a release event so it remains in focus.
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Re: Idea: adopt ROX-Filer

#10 Post by Dougal »

Iguleder wrote:I'm pretty sure he won't mind that. Moreover, I'm pretty sure he won't mind letting someone else maintain ROX-Filer.
Have you asked??
Rox development is slow, but then it's a "mature" project and people are generally happy with it. And assuming things about a person you have no idea about is idiotic.
My best advice would be what Amigo said to people when they talked about "taking Puppy apps to the world": don't embarrass yourselves.
It's been years since Barry announced his retirement, yet the "community" still maintains a kindergarten mentality and keeps hanging onto his coat-tails, expecting him to take care of everything, and you talk about taking over something like Rox (which is used by many distros)?

And just for the record, Dmitry (Groshev, aka wjaguar, MtPaint maintainer) is not a "puppyan", just keeps an eye on the forum for bug reports, just like Enrico (Tröger, aka Redeye, Geany developer) used to do. And the amount of MtPaint development was probably the result of Dmitry taking over the project and adding all kinds of things he wanted (MtPaint development is also minimal these days, Dmitry probably spends his time taunting PJ over at Groklaw or something...).

And I find it laughable to talk about taking over a project when your patches amount to a bunch of little changes of the kind distros make to most of the packages they ship.
Even if you were to take over development, those changes might warrant bumping the version to 2.10.0.1
(and I wouldn't try sending the log-viewer patch to the developers... setting an arbitrary size is not too sensible)
Dougal wrote:And your "open with" patch is even worse than Barry's.
Wow. My intention was to change the string, that's all ... and the patch achieves that goal.
And where, pray tell, will the user find the configuration/customization files for "Open With"?? Why, in the SendTo directory, of course!
And if they look at the documentation and see mention of a "Send To" menu option and don't find it?
Great way to fill the forum with more confused users.
And by the way, let me quote Barry (from here):
Edit ROX-Filer/src/menu.c:

change "Send To..." string to "Open With..."
Now tell me why (and how come) it's "worse than Barry's.".
When I looked at Barry's patch I seem to recall him changing two lines, while you changed only one (when in fact 142 lines should be changed).

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#11 Post by zigbert »

I am one of those who think even a small idea can lead to something good.
Sometimes we makes mistakes, but I find it better that you actually do something.... instead of stay away in fear of doing something wrong.


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#12 Post by Flash »

Dougal and Iguleder get into a spat and the forum loses two of its more competent developers. Why does this apparently have to happen? :?

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#13 Post by puppyluvr »

:D Hello,
Perhaps this is an issue of "terminology"
To attempt to "take over maintaining" a mature project like Rox, which is a mainstay for like 1/3 of the distros around, would indeed, be an insane challenge..
However, to release and maintain a "Puppy customized" version, like Patriot did with JWM, (WITH Joes permission and co-operation) could be an asset to some users...
That said, remember: Small changes, even those that just seem "cosmetic" ie changing "Send to" to "Open with" can have reprocussions down the road.....

Edit: BTW...IMHO Rox is severely under-rated, and has unmatched functionality, (Much like MTpaint)
If you just work with it a bit....The right click menu eliminates the need for the "Tree`s" for me, and using cloned windows, batch renaming, and a host of other functions, make Rox the one for me...And for Puppy I hope....

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#14 Post by Dougal »

Flash wrote:Dougal and Iguleder get into a spat and the forum loses two of its more competent developers.
What spat? I was merely informing him he's talking nonsense.

Distros always patch apps to make little fixes (that's why the Debian sid package for rox is rox-filer-2.10-2 -- the "-2" means it's the second version of the Debian patch for rox-2.10), but that has nothing to do with forking -- and they certainly don't assume that the developer will just hand the project over to them.

And the fact is that the patches above do things technically wrong. Nathan did a proper job of patching rox -- all that was needed was to look at what he did and adapt it to the new version.
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#15 Post by amigo »

Yeah, Thomas Leonard has spent a good portion of his life on ROX, so don't be too cavalier about what his intentions might be. If I understand correctly, most of that work was done while he was a student. Now, real-life issues have intervened -and his contributions to Open Source are now mostly in his important role at freedesktop.org.

I agree totally with dougal in that maintaining a patchset for Puppy's ROX is a much better idea -much less likely to step on anyone's toes. Even there, I already see a penchant to destroy a lot of what is good about rox by over-doing it with puppy-specific (read 'poorly-thought-out') hacks -using the latter word in its' worst sense. I'm pretty sure that T. Leonard would not want to turn over his 'baby' to someone with such tendencies...

Long ago I decided to hack around on the old GTK1 version of rox and I still use the result exclusively. Every once in a while I fix some warning or error or back-port a feature from later versions. I've even thought about backing up to a still older version (rox-1.0-ish) because back then it was using imlib for graphics instead of gtk-pixbuf. The idea would be to use it primarily as the pinboard a and not necessarily as the main file manager. Very lightweight -even compared to the 1.2.2 version my patches are based on.

Unfortunately, rox has never been widely-adopted by the main distros(in contrast to what was said earlier), so high-quality bug-fixes and fearure patches are hard to come by. Fortunately, there are still a couple of the main rox developers who are still active on the mailing list. One of the big problems with the whole project was that it got 'diluted' from trying to implement some really big changes in the way software is delivered - zero-install and others.

The tree-view idea is, of course, not new. Thomas always resisted that as it is not RISC-like. I would also have like to see it as an option, but my gtk skills are still not up to doing that myself.

In contrast to the way that puppy uses rox, I have concentrated on using it, and developing AppDirs for it, the way it was intended --as a super drag-n-drop environment. And, even though I have created many AppDirs which are like the original rox AppDirs which include their sources right in the app, it is quite a chore to create them and one could never keep up with active projects with this approach. Still, sophisticated AppDir wrappers for normally-packaged programs are easy to produce and keep the changes in the source code isolated from the AppDir wrapper..

The other concept that is key to rox is the idea that the user knows best where his files are and not his programs. What I mean is this: normal OS usage has you find and open a program, then use the programs' file-chooser to find and open the file that you want to work on. This means that the user must know well how to navigate that dreaded underlying directory structure. A proper rox desktop can easily isolate the casual user from that directory structure -the user already knows where his files are since they are in his $HOME -right where he created, downloaded or saved them. It's a snap for him to find the file he wants to work with and then drop the file on the application he needs for that file. Of course, the mime-types-to-actions associations are nice for many cases --I mean being able to just click the file to have it opened by the desired app. But there are many cases where you need to do different things with the file -like an html page that you might either view or edit. Same with image files. This is where an AppDir wrapper can provide a more intelligent alternative. As an example, I have an AppDir which is for creating and extracting archives. If you drop an archive on it, then it executes commands which de-compress the arcive. If you drop a file or a directory on it, then it executes commands which let you create an archive or compressed file. Doing this using mime-helpers would be more awkward, and avoids me having or needing to create arbitrary file-to-program associations.

I welcome seeing any patches which fix anything, or create other possibilities for rox -I might even get around to adapting them for my old version -it's still getting better after all these years!

One more thought and then I'll shut up (for the moment LOL). When you create patches, limit each patch to a single bug-fix or feature instead of rolling a bunch non-related changes together. Espcially if you start doing whie-sapce-only or coding-style changes. This means a little more work for you, but it will make your job much easier when adapting the patch for later versions or trying to merge changes from other patches. It also makes them more instructive for other who might use your patch to figure out how to create another patch for a similar fix or feature.

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#16 Post by sc0ttman »

why not just fork it? to a new project called "PuppyROX" or something...

I'm sure if iguleder, amigo or others post a few HOW TOs on using git, finding, making or applying patches, etc, then there would be a number of Puppy users who would contribute what they can, as usual.

IMHO, it would be nice to have a thread on this forum about updating "PuppyROX" - showing the patches that had been applied, the patches that are still in testing (needing improvements), etc..

There's no reason we couldn't also keep pace with the standard ROX, as iguleder says updates are sparse....

If "PuppyROX" is good, it will probably go into Puppy, to be used instead of ROX, if not, it won't. What's the controversy?

My personal preferences for ROX:

I'd like to see ROX produce a nicer set of desktop icons - without that border which appears when you click on an icon, maybe a translucent mask instead? This would match the way other, 'prettier' desktop systems work (thunar, etc)..
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#17 Post by Dougal »

sc0ttman wrote:My personal preferences for ROX:

I'd like to see ROX produce a nicer set of desktop icons - without that border which appears when you click on an icon, maybe a translucent mask instead? This would match the way other, 'prettier' desktop systems work (thunar, etc)..
From pinboard.c:

Code: Select all

/* The size of the border around the icon which is used when winking */
#define WINK_FRAME 2
and later

Code: Select all

	gtk_container_set_border_width(GTK_CONTAINER(pi->win), WINK_FRAME);
	g_signal_connect(pi->win, "expose-event", G_CALLBACK(draw_wink), pi);
and later on you have

Code: Select all

/* Put a border around the icon, briefly.
 * If icon is NULL then cancel any existing wink.
 * The icon will automatically unhighlight unless timeout is FALSE,
 * in which case you must call this function again (with NULL or another
 * icon) to remove the highlight.
 */
static void pinboard_wink_item(PinIcon *pi, gboolean timeout)
and also

Code: Select all

static gint draw_wink(GtkWidget *widget, GdkEventExpose *event, PinIcon *pi)
{
	gint x, y, width, height;

	if (current_wink_icon != pi)
		return FALSE;

	x = widget->allocation.x;
	y = widget->allocation.y;
	width = widget->allocation.width;
	height = widget->allocation.height;

	gdk_draw_rectangle(widget->window,
			pi->widget->style->white_gc,
			FALSE,
			x, y, width - 1, height - 1);
	gdk_draw_rectangle(widget->window,
			pi->widget->style->black_gc,
			FALSE,
			x + 1, y + 1, width - 3, height - 3);

	return FALSE;
}
So I'm guessing white_gc and black_gc are the colours you care about (defined in struct _GtkStyle in /usr/include/gtk-2.0/gtk/gtkstyle.h), while /usr/include/gtk-2.0/gdk/gdkdrawable.h tells us:

Code: Select all

void gdk_draw_rectangle (GdkDrawable      *drawable,
			 GdkGC            *gc,
			 gboolean          filled,
			 gint              x,
			 gint              y,
			 gint              width,
			 gint              height);
So it will appear you only need one rectangle and you just change the third variable from FALSE to TRUE in order for it to be filled.

All written in the Queen's English...

So you probably end up with something like

Code: Select all

--- rox-filer/ROX-Filer/src/pinboard.c	2010-08-21 20:55:22.000000000 +0800
+++ rox-filer/ROX-Filer/src/pinboard.c.mod	2011-03-11 22:08:43.686079623 +0800
@@ -1164,12 +1164,8 @@
 
 	gdk_draw_rectangle(widget->window,
 			pi->widget->style->white_gc,
-			FALSE,
+			TRUE,
 			x, y, width - 1, height - 1);
-	gdk_draw_rectangle(widget->window,
-			pi->widget->style->black_gc,
-			FALSE,
-			x + 1, y + 1, width - 3, height - 3);
 
 	return FALSE;
 }
Or so I presume (this is untested).

Note that you might want to replace white_gc with something else relating to the gtk theme. You might want to look here and here. ('Though you might as well just change from the deprecated gdk_draw_rectangle to using Cairo... look here for an example.)
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#18 Post by Makoto »

Hmm... is there, perhaps, an easier way of selecting a large group of files without Ctrl-clicking (or middle-mouse button-clicking) on each file, one by one... or in those rare instances when I'm at the end of the list and can draw a rectangle around the files?

I wouldn't really know how difficult it would be to implement if the behavior isn't already there, though. :(
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#19 Post by Flash »

Makoto, if the list of files is contiguous it is easy to draw a rectangle around them. Just switch to ROX's "Extra details" view first. Is that what you mean? Or do you mean where there are unwanted files and folders mixed in with the list as it is shown in ROX's "Extra details" view?

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#20 Post by Makoto »

I have Extra Details as my normal view, though I don't really care much for the draw-a-box method - I usually have mediocre luck with it. Most of the time, I'll end up accidentally carrying a file around, instead. :) (It only works every time for me if I start drawing the box off the bottom of the file list, really. Unless I'm doing something wrong... and probably am.)

Of course, I'm also long since used to the Windows Explorer way of doing it, too (didn't care for the box-drawing method there, either :oops: ) - click on the first file, scroll down to the end file, hold down Shift and click on the ending file to select all of the files between them. :|
[ Puppy 4.3.1 JP, Frugal install ] * [ XenialPup 7.5, Frugal install ] * [XenialPup 64 7.5, Frugal install] * [ 4GB RAM | 512MB swap ]
In memory of our beloved American Eskimo puppy (1995-2010) and black Lab puppy (1997-2011).

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