Background the same for all 3 desktops? Disappointment.

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dbd400@gmail.com
Posts: 31
Joined: Wed 26 May 2010, 18:35
Location: Silver Spring. MD 20901

Background the same for all 3 desktops? Disappointment.

#1 Post by dbd400@gmail.com »

Although I am quite a newcomer to Puppy, I have worked upon quite a large number of Operating Systems, and Unix/Linux derivatives which support multiple desktops. Now I am here, running Slacko 5.5. Mostly I have things set up more-or-less the way I want them thanks to the excellent advice I've received in response to my various posts.

But now I've encountered a disappointment. Noting that Slacko offers multiple desktops, I blithely assumed that they were independent. In all other desktops I've encountered, they were. This was fortunate because it encouraged me to form the habit of setting each to a distinctive color or picture, providing instant recognition of where I was.

In puppy, after a bit of confusion between theme, background color, and Wallpaper, I finally located the 'Nathan Wallpaper setter', and proceeded to set the wallpaper for desktop 3, believing that I was leaving desktop 1 unaltered. It was a great surprise and disappointment to find that desktop 1 had the same now-altered wallpaper.

Am I missing something? Is there a way to do what I want without altering any system code? I would have thought this was a feature universally useful since desktops, at least upon my machine, often switch inadvertently. And the only clue is that the screen suddenly goes back to the just-started state. When it first occurred, it took a while to understand what had happened. Separate wallpapers or colors can aid in the recognition. I would advocate that even the released .iso behave that way by creating 4 wallpapers, each with subtly differing colors based upon the initial blue screen.

Thank you.

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`f00
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#2 Post by `f00 »

Hi - not so much 'missing something' as that's mostly the standard rox pinboard used (same image on all desktops). Some advantages but like you say..

Jwm (and a few other wms) offers a method to set unique desktop backgrounds - fairly simple to do in jwm, here's an example-snippet from my ~/.jwm/jwmrc-personal file using the more versatile command type.

Of course it helps to disable the usual rox pinboard if you don't need or want it (comment out all those PuppyPin lines in ~/.xinitrc and make a menu entry for an on-demand when you want it, I even did a small script to kill the pinboard as an icon on the pinboard so it's handy). A rox pinboard will 'cover' an ordinary set background - something to be aware of.

Another option may be to have jwm do a separate roxpin for each desktop as a command.. haven't tried that, but it's likely to work if you wish drag'n'drop or driveicons (or a unique set of icons as well).

Custom roxpins - copy ~/Choices/ROX-Filer/PuppyPin to ~/Choices .. rename it to something like roxpin-a (repeat for as many roxpins as you'd like or one for each desktop).

Using that example/snippet as a guide for the tags to use in jwmrc-personal, make the command for each desktop background "rox -p ~/Choices/roxpin-*" with * being a, b, c.. (leave out the "s). Restart jwm.

Easy way to change roxpin bg is r-click on an icon and set backdrop (drag'n'drop an image file from /usr/share/backgrounds for example), default radiobutton is stretch but you can play with the others as appropriate. Since the roxpin is different for each desktop, you can customize each one (remove or add icons, change the layout and so on) and the changes will stick.

Having a separate roxpin for each desktop may be horribly inefficient (check with htop to see) if all you want is different backgrounds. In that case, simply use your preferred bg setter. hsetroot is my usual since it has a nice variety of options in an easy-to-use binary but it's generally not included in pups :|

As to inadvertently switching desktops - that's a feature where rolling the mouse scrollwheel (on empty area of desktop or in the pager part of the tray) will switch desktops. Perhaps a bit too convenient with a sensitive mouse, but now you have an idea why it may happen. You can also switch desktops directly with a kybd shortcut, Alt+<number-of-desktop> (one of the standard kybd binds in jwm).

hth

dbd400@gmail.com
Posts: 31
Joined: Wed 26 May 2010, 18:35
Location: Silver Spring. MD 20901

#3 Post by dbd400@gmail.com »

Its a lot to think about. I will try some of these things. Thanks much!

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`f00
Posts: 807
Joined: Thu 06 Nov 2008, 19:13
Location: the Western Reserve

#4 Post by `f00 »

Just tried the multi-roxpins option in slacko 5.5 4G. It does work and htop only shows the initial roxpin-a as a process, so there's no more of a performance hit than with a single pinboard. Also there's some oddness with driveicons for removeable media like usb sticks on alternate desktops (likely an effect from an old fix somewhere along the line of evolution).

For me, an on-demand rox pinboard works fine for if/when I need the extra capabilities - mostly I use pmount if not doing lots of mounts. Pmount is evolving nicely in the recent incarnation, almost worth it to mess a bit with the new gui for a more compact look :lol:

yvw, that's what we're here for

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