What do you think about Rox?

Message

TyroBGinner · #41 Post by **TyroBGinner** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 05:26

Finally, something that sufficiently motivates me to respond.

There is one thing necessary for rox:

The f*cking horizontal scrollbar!

The creators of rox must have been total sadists. The credits list only one creator, though.

Thanks for the tips on modifications and forks.

Since we are discussing other file managers, Eagle Mode must be mentioned.

Sailor Enceladus · #42 Post by **Sailor Enceladus** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 06:07

TyroBGinner wrote:Finally, something that sufficiently motivates me to respond.

There is one thing necessary for rox:

The f*cking horizontal scrollbar!

The creators of rox must have been total sadists. The credits list only one creator, though.

Oh that's one thing that drives me crazy, websites that have a horizontal scroll bar! Like Facebook on a 1024x768 screen, because it needs "1034" or something stupid like that. How hard could it be to fix it to fit on "1024" instead so you don't have to see that horrible horizontal scroll bar? The horizontal scrolling on the Windows 8 "start page" was such a silly gimmick that accomplished nothing positive also, why can't they just put the buttons all on the same screen, or at least have a normal vertical scrollbar. I've been sticking with Pentium M laptops to avoid the "widescreen" trend that started around 2006. I think they just started it so they can say a 15.6" 16:9 laptop is just as big as a 15.4" 4:3 laptop screen to save money because "ha everyone will fall for a bigger number!". It's really a shame that not enough people revolted. /anti-horizontal scrollbar rant

learnhow2code · #43 Post by **learnhow2code** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 07:01

sailor thats the first thing i thought of too, but really in a file manager there is practically no amount of wrapping or rendering that can get you past the need for a horizontal scrollbar. there are ways i could be wrong about that.

suppose you have icons or details that go off to the side-- im in fig os right now, but it now has rox (hidden away in /usr/local/apps/rox) so lets open it... (this is the same rox from puppy) and if you resize the window, it just wraps the icons-- ok, youd expect that.

but suppose you dont have them auto-arranged, you set them up yourself in a layout of your choice. this isnt in style anymore, but it was very possible in win9x. i used it once.

you want a horizontal scrollbar, but only when you personally decided to have height and width in your icon arrangement, and you want (or need) to resize the window smaller, or to fit the screen. now there is no option other than auto-arrange, so why does tyro want a horizontal scrollbar?

ok, list view... resizing the window... ahhh, thats why! yeah, this is a missing feature. its just cutting off the edge of what its displaying, instead of letting you scroll over. this is different than how website design works-- a horizontal scrollbar is definitely justified. you know where else you need one? a photo editor.

mcewanw · #44 Post by **mcewanw** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 10:09

learnhow2code wrote: my favorite fm is pcmanfm, though im almost as happy with xfe, which in some ways is superior and in looks

Hi learnhow2code,

I agree with you on both counts, though I find it important to increase font size in xfe before using.

I typically load pcmanfm as soon as my system boot, and immediately open 5 or six tags ready for copy and pasting between different parts of the filesystem when doing development work - and it is very resource efficient since only one copy of pcmanfm ever appears in task list as far as I recall.

I do have two issues with pcmanfm:

1. If running it as a standard user (not root) it doesn't seem to have the option to open a directory as root, which is a real pain.

2. I can't see how to easily make symlinks (rel and absolute) from pcmanfm windows (perhaps there is a quick technique I don't know about?). So for making sym links I automatically start up Rox, which does that beautifully. Rox is similarly also very efficient and for a while it was my preferred fm, but I needed to open too many Rox windows and hence pcmanfm took over (or perhaps xfe if I had it on my system, which I don't on XenialDog).

Generally speaking though, I've nothing against Rox. It does the job.

William

learnhow2code · #45 Post by **learnhow2code** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 10:17

i think pcmanfm has an option for opening as root, but you have to tell it how to use gksudo or something.

for links, menu > edit > create link. (i had to look it up.)

TyroBGinner · #46 Post by **TyroBGinner** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 11:09

Wow, I was obviously talking about the fact that file names are often far too long for a reasonably sized window, and the window must be widened to reveal the boundary of the file name column which can then be moved in order to reduce the column width. Web browsing is not part of this. And who uses anything but the list view anyway? It is very surprising that no one mentioned this problem above - hence my message.

And why can't rox remember new column widths and new column order arrangements? MS Windows is far superior in these regards.

learnhow2code · #47 Post by **learnhow2code** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 11:24

TyroBGinner wrote:why can't rox remember new column widths and new column order arrangements?

and why cant ascii 9 work like <td> does in html? (other than it being unsupported in vt100.) why do i have to write out the html tags and then open with elinks -dump? of course it should be off by default and something you can change with setterm.

TyroBGinner · #48 Post by **TyroBGinner** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 11:35

I understood very little of that.

Sailor Enceladus · #49 Post by **Sailor Enceladus** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 14:16

TyroBGinner wrote:Wow, I was obviously talking about the fact that file names are often far too long for a reasonably sized window, and the window must be widened to reveal the boundary of the file name column which can then be moved in order to reduce the column width. Web browsing is not part of this. And who uses anything but the list view anyway? It is very surprising that no one mentioned this problem above - hence my message.

lol I actually had no idea that's what you meant, or even considered the possibility that this is what you could have meant, but agree my reply went off on a completely unrelated tangent to Rox.

I usually only switch to list view quickly when I want to sort files by date, I'd say I spend 98% of the time in large icons, and I find it a lot easier to delete or copy groups of files in it as well.

jlst · #50 Post by **jlst** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 16:45

Unlike JWM, rox hasn't been updated to address issues reported by users since 2009 i guess.

JWM has seen some heavy development in the last 3 years. That's why i still use it, it does a good job. Joe knew there was a community behind that was ready to test his work.

A rational, sane person would have discarded rox by now, because of the scandalous lack of development.

However i see there are forks that fixed one or two bugs, users have to pay attention and report issues there, and donate 300 dollars to the developers to give them enough inspiration to fix the remaining bugs, or rox features

I guess i can edit some rox defaults, as starhawk said, the keyboard shortcuts are "too special", the single click behavior is not as common as the double click, and the window autoresizing forces you to keep playing with the pointer like there's no tomorrow

jlst · #51 Post by **jlst** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 17:18

Looking at the sfs_load code, there are about 300 lines to deal with the puppyPin... or rox pinboard or desktop

It would be awesome to see rox use standard .desktop files in /root/Desktop and monitor that dir to automatically add/remove icons just like pcmanfm --desktop... life would be easier

learnhow2code · #52 Post by **learnhow2code** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 17:21

jlst wrote:the single click behavior is not as common as the double click, and the window autoresizing forces you to keep playing with the pointer like there's no tomorrow

yeah thats what i hate about the autoresizing. also, if i put a window somewhere... i prefer single-click in general, but imo roxs handling of single-click... possibly "too responsive." although im using it right now and at least its not as over-responsive as i keep thinking.

jlst · #53 Post by **jlst** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 17:30

learnhow2code wrote: yeah thats what i hate about the autoresizing. also, if i put a window somewhere... i prefer single-click in general, but imo roxs handling of single-click... possibly "too responsive." although im using it right now and at least its not as over-responsive as i keep thinking.

Also people might think that rox+jwm is the only lightweight solution. I have pcmanfm+jwm working just fine, no extra lxde dependencies, just the bare minimun and i think it's faster than rox overall (icon caching disabled), specially when loading directories in the detailed view.

learnhow2code · #54 Post by **learnhow2code** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 18:00

jlst wrote:I have pcmanfm+jwm working just fine, no extra lxde dependencies, just the bare minimun and i think it's faster than rox overall (icon caching disabled), specially when loading directories in the detailed view.

how much effort would it take to get your pcmanfm setup working in say, puppy tahr? what version of pcmanfm do you use, what changes did you make to config? what aux scripts (desktop icon updater, .desktop files-- which are not scripts, etc.) are needed? (is there a .pet or even a .tar.gz?)

Sailor Enceladus · #55 Post by **Sailor Enceladus** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 18:21

learnhow2code wrote:how much effort would it take to get your pcmanfm setup working in say, puppy tahr? what version of pcmanfm do you use, what changes did you make to config? what aux scripts (desktop icon updater, .desktop files-- which are not scripts, etc.) are needed? (is there a .pet or even a .tar.gz?)

I remember SpaceFM was really easy to add to slacko. This was the pet I tried:
http://smokey01.com/saluki/pet_packages-saluki/spacefm-0.7.1-i486.pet

jlst · #56 Post by **jlst** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 18:24

learnhow2code wrote:
jlst wrote:I have pcmanfm+jwm working just fine, no extra lxde dependencies, just the bare minimun and i think it's faster than rox overall (icon caching disabled), specially when loading directories in the detailed view.
how much effort would it take to get your pcmanfm setup working in say, puppy tahr? what version of pcmanfm do you use, what changes did you make to config? what aux scripts (desktop icon updater, .desktop files-- which are not scripts, etc.) are needed? (is there a .pet or even a .tar.gz?)

Definitely not that easy, as it's a complete change of paradigm, i still have my heavily customized precise install where i do almost everything. i haven't ported it to anywhere else, i started with lxpup_by_sfs, something like that, then i gradually changed many things to be able to switch between rox and lxpup, then to switch between lxpup and jwm+pcmanfm... and basically that's the only place i have it working so far haha.

i'm using pcmanfm 1.2.3. My desktop looks like this:https://s33.postimg.org/5it4g6htb/capture29126.jpg

From the puppy tray apps, i only keep retrovol, and i have almost all services disabled (cups, etc). It's really fast, the fastest thing i have, that's why i can't stop using it.

bigpup · #57 Post by **bigpup** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 19:00

Does anyone ever look at the Rox options and see what the options can be set to give you a completely different look to a Rox window and how Rox works.

Rox comes with default settings.
A lot of them can be adjusted in the options.

learnhow2code · #58 Post by **learnhow2code** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 19:08

bigpup wrote:Does anyone ever look at the Rox options and see what the options can be set to give you a completely different look to a Rox window and how Rox works.

Rox comes with default settings.
A lot of them can be adjusted in the options.

yes-- ive made that point in the thread that inspired this poll, and probably in this thread too.

not all of the gripes about rox can be fixed by changing defaults-- though many of the most common gripes absolutely can, which is why its beneficial to point this out again and again.

jlst · #59 Post by **jlst** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 19:57

I reported 3 important issues at the jun7's rox git repo.

Copy and paste facility (right click menu)
https://github.com/jun7/rox-filer/issues/136

Use standard .desktop files in ~/Desktop for ROX pinboard #137
https://github.com/jun7/rox-filer/issues/137

Horizontal scrollbar
https://github.com/jun7/rox-filer/issues/138

--

That's all i can do, and i must admit that somehow i want rox to remain as the default file manager/desktop, so that many users don't see the full potential of puppy, somehow i feel like i'm special or part of a elite squad

Sailor Enceladus · #60 Post by **Sailor Enceladus** » Sat 30 Jul 2016, 20:11

jlst wrote:That's all i can do, and i must admit that somehow i want rox to remain as the default file manager/desktop, so that many users don't see the full potential of puppy, somehow i feel like i'm special or part of a elite squad

I think that's sort of akin to saying "people on Windows 7 don't know what they're missing on Windows 8". Some of them DO know what they're "missing" and are happy not to have it.

I don't understand what the first git request is for. The right-click menu works? But you talk about keyboard shortcuts, same as what starhawk did. I click on copy, then change the name, and it works. Or I drag the file into another window to copy and it works. I'll have to read starhawk's post in more detail I guess.

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

What do you think about Rox?

What do you think about Rox?

7