Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[josejp2424]

Openbox Plus 64

It is simply openbox with the option of installing tint2 panel or lxpanel.

It is running on dpupbuster64 and Bionicpup64.




tint2 and tint2-config
tint2-config has many settings.



Lxpanel



You can change the panel at any time, just by going to the menu and opening the panel changer.




openbox_plus_64.

# MD5
e61d0da31dbce2f89531992d2aba34a3 openbox_plus_64-030819.pet

[josejp2424]

If any user uses tint2 and wants to share their settings. will be welcome

[mikeslr]

Thank you josejp2424 for the Openbox plus64 pet. It works reasonably well. You can add Xenialpup64 to the Puppies it can be used in. As that is currently my default operating system I tried your pet under it first. But as some problems with the Start-Menu appeared, have switched to and am posting from BionicPup64. The problem with Menus remained.

The problem with Menus is that Openbox is very particular about how the Categories argument of /usr/share/XXX.desktop is written. It must end with a ";" otherwise the application will not appear on the menu. Many applications created to run under the more forgiving JWM do not include the ending ";". Such, for example, is the case with pfind.

Examining and shamelessly stealing from peebee's Lxpups' technique, I had developed a different way of solving the problem under xfce, http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=961426#961426. But my attempt to modify and apply it under openbox did not work OOTB and created other problems. I don't have the time now to figure out why. So, for now the only thing I can advise is to examine each of the /usr/share/desktop files and make certain the ending ";" exists in the Categories argument.

Shutdown calls /usr/sbin/logout_gui. There's also a /usr/local/PupControl/Shutdown file, The latter provides several more options, including Suspend. It works fine under Openbox. To employ it as the default shutdown gui:

Rename /usr/sbin/logout_gui as /usr/sbin/logout_gui-old > just in case.
Drag /usr/local/PupControl/Shutdow into /usr/sbin; select Link(relative); then rename it "logout_gui" without the quotes.

Window Manager Switcher appears to work fine. I just had some trouble finding it so I thought it worth mentioning. To switch from openbox to jwm click Menu>Preferences>Change Openbox Panel. To switch from jwm to openbox, click Menu>Desktop>Change Openbox Panel.

[Terry H]

[quote="mikeslr"]
The problem with Menus is that Openbox is very particular about how the Categories argument of /usr/share/XXX.desktop is written. It must end with a ";" otherwise the application will not appear on the menu. Many applications created to run under the more forgiving JWM do not include the ending ";". Such, for example, is the case with pfind.
/quote]


Mike, This is not my experience. I have installed the openbox pet and using lxpanel, an save2flash.desktop file I use is displayed and also have added a launcher to lxpanel using Add / Remove Panel Items.

I copy the save2flash.desktop to /usr/share/applications. I edit it to add Categories= Utility to the file so it will show in menus. The current entry shown below works correctly with the openbox pet. In this instance there is no ';' (semicolon). I have in the past used a ';' as a seperator, but generally not at the end. This similarly works when using radky's FbBox.

There is no Utility menu entry, this entry is displayed under the Accessories Menu heading when using openbox/lxpanel via the pet. Maybe being the last item negates the need for a ';' .

[mikeslr]

Well, Terry, you're right. But,

After installing Openboxplus64 with lxpanel into Xenialpup64, Bionicpup64 and dPupBuster64 pfind did not appear anywhere on the respective Openboxplus Menus. In each case, the Categories= argument in /usr/share/applications/pfind.desktop was X-Filesystem-find (or -Find, can't remember which). Accepting your example, rather than adding anything I merely deleted the "-find", leaving Categories=X-Filesystem; no ";". Under each OS, it now shows up under Menu>Accessories>Filesystem.

As I'm currently posting from dPupBuster64, I'll note that that is where, on the Menu, Partview, pmount and Rox-Filer show up whose Category arguments are, respectively,"=X-Filesystem-storage", "=X-Filesystem-mount" and "=FileManager". [The arguments used in Partview and pmount gave me the idea that "X-Filesystem" without any ending term had been defined].

My current guess is that the "X-Filesystem-find" Category is not defined under Openbox64. I'd rather have an application "improperly" Categorized, than not show up. I don't know if there are any other applications with problem category arguments. Of course, if you know an application exists you can start it with "find-and-run" under BionicPup64 and Menu>Run under dPupBuster64; or (if you know the name of the executable) via a terminal. But that's not very helpful to newbies. Hopefully --and I suspect-- there aren't too many applications like pfind.

[What I did when developing xfce-panel/Whisker-Menu was open each /usr/share/applications desktop in geany and add every category used to the file defining recognizable categories. As I recall, that was a time-consuming PITA. On the other hand, it generated a Menu whose Categories imitated those under JWM.

P.S. But, although using peebee's structure in LxPups as a guide, I was working with xfce. A short-cut would have been to just copy peebee's work. I don't currently have a running LxPup to examine].

[josejp2424]

[mikeslr]

[Terry H]

Just a minor issue when using openbox with either lxpanel or tint2, there are 2 pasystray launchers in the notifications panel.

[josejp2424]

[Colonel Panic]

This looks really good! I use Openbox almost exclusively when I'm in Debian and my answer to the menu problem would be to install a dynamic menu program such as DMenu, which reads arbitrary text (from stdin) and creates a menu with one item for each line.

You can then select a program, either through the arrow keys or by typing a part of the name (or a combination of the two), and the program will then load. It's a bit more effort than just selecting a menu item from a vertical list with a mouse click, but in my experience it's pretty much foolproof.

For me, Openbox offers a good balance between configurability, on the one hand, and yet not having so many options that you get lost in them all and get stuck (as I did with fvwm more than once). It's also lightweight and quite elegant-looking.

P.S. Thanks to the Arch wiki for the technical information;

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dmenu

[01101001b]

[Colonel Panic]

The combo that works for me (bearing in mind that I have an old computer and need to conserve resources, and memory in particular) is Openbox + tint2 + Dmenu + SpaceFM or PCManFM (file manager) + Gkrellm (system monitoring). If I need a panel, which I don't very often, I use Plank.

Fluxbox works too in that combination, though I think OpenBox has the edge in both configurability and elegance. Just one small gripe; I wish it would use text instead of xml for the configuration files.

LXPanel isn't bad either and nor's LXTask, LXDE's task manager. In the end it probably comes down to individual preference.

[Smithy]

I wonder if the (parsing?) problem can be fixed by the Puppy community?

I had a go at it by downloading and installing JUST OpenBox via Scottman’s PKG (nice app btw).
It then checked the install and there were no dependency problems.
I deleted the jwm trays temporarily from root.

Starting X with xwin openbox command brings the desktop up okay.

Fixmenus in the terminal only parses JWM. Should be also parsing OPENBOX?
And the fixmenus script in Jose’s Buster has the lines to facilitate this (usr/sbin/fixmenus).

I also copied over a root/config/openbox folder from a previous puppy.
Also etc/xdg/openbox for good luck .

This did bring up a decent menu, BUT it is kind of static, relating to entries from the previous pup.
Which is okay if there are similar apps in Buster.
It should really be parsing realtime what is in Buster pup though.

I wonder if the Dogs have this problem, or they build the menu properly like jwm does.

I noticed Fred has put at least one dog together with openbox but not actually tried one..yet. Just saw the screenshots a few months ago.

[mikeslr]

Hi Smithy,

I'm sure you know that peebee's Lxpups use openbox as Window Manager. Puppies have long been created using jwm as Window Manager. The /usr/share/applications desktop categories of applications created for these Puppies do not strictly conform to openbox categories. I ran into that problem creating an xfce panel with Whisker Menu. What I did was sneak into one of peebee's LxPups and steal his work, then modify it for the xfce environment.

I don't recall exactly what peebee did, or how what is necessary under openbox differs from what is necessary under xfce. Both are supposed to be xdg compliant. At any rate, you can find what I did with instructions here, http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=961426#961426

[Smithy]

Hi Mike, thanks for the link. And good detective work.
So, can we slip the xfce-applications.menu somewhere into the openbox plus 64 pet? Openbox has menu_bottom.xml, menu_top.xml, menu.xml, rc.xml.
Peebee, if you are around, would you know what needs to be done to parse the menu properly?