What do you think about Rox?

[Pete]

@learnhow2code

Nicely researched post.
Taking an average of the quotes you posted, it's pretty much a 50:50 split.
I see the tally so far here is 61% in favour of Rox but it's early days yet.
It won't surprise me at all if it averages out to somewhere between these two figures.

If one takes into account those that "don't mind it", myself included, I reckon it will be closer to 70 or even 75% for.
A surprising figure.

[bark_bark_bark]

A file manager that can't handle simple copy and paste, is simply a terrible file manager.

[Packetteer]

bark_bark_bark

A file manager that can't handle simple copy and paste, is simply a terrible file manager.

I am confused. If you are talking on copying a file or moving a file from one
directory to another I simply left click the file and drag the file to the directory
that I want to copy or move the file to. When I let go of the mouse a dialog
is displayed asking if I want to copy or move the file.

If the file exists another dialog box is displayed asking if I want to over write
the file.

Just tried to right click a file and then "Paste" it into another directory.

Yes I agree with you. That method seems to be broken. Meaning that once I
clicked on copy a dialog box came up that the only way I could paste the file
was for me to change the directory path in the dialog box.
Not a nice way of doing things.

I never tried to copy and paste that way before but the left drag method
I described above is what I have always used and I like that method.

Thank you bark_bark_bark
for getting me to try something I had never tried before.

Best Regards
John

[SFR]

RE: Copy/Paste in ROX

I agree it can be a PITA in some circumstances, that's why I wrote this right-click app long ago, to at least partially overcome this limitation.
___________

Ever since I switched to Jun7's fork, which, among other improvements, has ability to forcefully overwrite existing files without confirmation (and IMHO it's implemented in a better fashion than in the latest revision of original ROX - via 'Force' checkbox instead of 'Quiet') I use ROX exclusively.
I am simply much more efficient with it than with any other FM.

Greetings!

[amigo]

ROX stands for RISCOS on X. The interface follows a different UI paradigm, where the emphasis is on the users documents and the places where they are stored. The user should drag the desired document/item onto an icon of the program he wants to use the document with or by simply clicking the item which opens the default/configured program with the dragged file loaded.

Under Windows one would instead of open the desired program and then browsing with a file chooser to the place where the item is located. Or, by clicking the item get the same effect as above using ROX.

That said, the two things which would have made the rox interface more palatable to more people are: an expandable tree-based column beside the main display, and a copy/paste from the right-click menu. The thinking under rox is that, you simply open a second window at the desired past location and either copy or move the item depending on whether you left-click-drag or middle-click-drag.

The other big difference between the rox desktop paradigm and other DE's, Window Managers and file managers is that the rox desktop is not a 'location' in the file system. You can't download or move an object *to* the desktop. This is why rox calls it the pinboard instead of the desktop.

[bigpup]

Drag and drop has options.
Ever try using the mouse wheel button?

[musher0]

Hello all.

Never had a problem with ROX-Filer.

If you're used to having multiple panels to do your copy and/or move,
try typing in console:

Code: Select all

rox / ~ /usr/share /mnt

That'll open four ROX windows on your desktop.

From there, you can fine tune the directories, and when the major locations on your
Pup are covered like you want them, you can do all your copy/move activity without
breaking a sweat, just by drag-and-drop.

Really, guys, you're so-o-o-o-o fussy!

[learnhow2code]

Really, guys, you're so-o-o-o-o fussy!

gosh, youre right im just going to be reasonable and use explorer.exe in wine from now on

@learnhow2code

Nicely researched post.
Taking an average of the quotes you posted, it's pretty much a 50:50 split.

id advise against that-- its a better sample of the diversity of opinion than the proportion.

the thing with windows is, people will (most) often just accept what theyre given. even if they dont like it, they will get used to it and gain a "preference" for a known inconvenience over a possible (but unknown) convenience.

this can be used to defend or critique rox really. only in this thread did anyone ever explain the name (pretty cool.)

but what there wasnt room for was posting everyone talking about how to use rox without an evaluation or comment on it-- rox is pretty standard in puppy land, so i found comments that made it less standard quite interesting. many are recent (2015-this year.)

I see the tally so far here is 61% in favour of Rox but it's early days yet.
It won't surprise me at all if it averages out to somewhere between these two figures.

im surprised it isnt doing better already. but if you really want percentages to matter rather than tallies, there needs to be balanced options-- one style of yay matching each of nay. theres a science of good polling we arent following here, and its too late. but we werent going to gain much from doing it scientifically anyway.

If one takes into account those that "don't mind it", myself included, I reckon it will be closer to 70 or even 75% for.
A surprising figure.

not imo. again, people gain a preference for the things they can stand that they are familiar with. this even applies to svsvinit-- although i think most of the alternatives are pretty awful, or not pre-configured enough for people to find the switch one they can be confident about. this is possibly my favorite quote:

I'd add "Rox". Once you're used to it, using another file-manager is a pain in the ass.

i figure a lot of people will never get used to rox. i did, once. within 24 hours i had it configured for my own use. i used it for months or years.

my favorite fm is pcmanfm, though im almost as happy with xfe, which in some ways is superior and in looks, i can imagine someone turning their nose up. thunar is perfectly good, but it has a lot of overhead. and gnome 2 and mate have perfectly good file managers, but thats almost like another os on top of your os, imo.

not that i can really talk about doubling an os, these days

[Sailor Enceladus]

im surprised it isnt doing better already. but if you really want percentages to matter rather than tallies, there needs to be balanced options-- one style of yay matching each of nay. theres a science of good polling we arent following here, and its too late. but we werent going to gain much from doing it scientifically anyway.

Yes, mostly just for fun of course. I think most people who "run away from puppy" wouldn't create an account here also, and with any voting system you can't account for every single person on the planet, and even if you could, you would also have to ressurrect humans from the past to make it accurate, and maybe there are intelligent beings on other planets and dimensions who might have different views based on how cultures in their world are formed. You just can't win I like your posts though!

[learnhow2code]

Yes, mostly just for fun of course. I think most people who "run away from puppy" wouldn't create an account here also, and with any voting system you can't account for every single person on the planet, and even if you could, you would also have to ressurrect humans from the past to make it accurate

we could clone them and raise them in the matrix, then harvest their data. but if only for the ethical costs i agree this would be excessive and horrific. i wouldnt put it past google.

maybe there are intelligent beings on other planets and dimensions who might have a different opinion based on how cultures in their worlds are formed.

its a lot cheaper to just fix the vote like the democratic primaries.

then we get a clear answer without the fuss!

just can't win I like your posts though!

hey, thanks! this is a fun thread, my personal interest is partly from deciding how much rox is a requirement for a new puppy. that points to a question thats probably too much for one thread to handle.

[TyroBGinner]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

I understood very little of that.

[Sailor Enceladus]

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]

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