What do you think about Rox?

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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.

TyroBGinner · #61 Post by **TyroBGinner** » Sun 31 Jul 2016, 06:01

Thanks for trying, jlst. It is nice to see from someone.

It is also good to see that people are maintaining good, popular, relatively recent programs like rox. Another example is grub for dos, which now accommodates GPT-type partitioning since being revived.

The lack of the scrollbar is an egregious oversight. It is surprising that was not the first complaint for this topic. I was also very surprised that some here claim not to use the list view in a graphical file manager. One would think that is the only view worth having. It would never occur to me to use otherwise. Different strokes, I guess...

Of course, of the three items jlst mentioned, only mine was the one rejected by jun7. Truly, I get no respect...why is competence always surrounded by incompetence.

A context menu for the copying and pasting of files is also obvious since it allows copying a group of files to the "clipboard". It is far superior to dragging and is another feature in MS Windows. The Windows file manager is hard to beat.

foxpup · #62 Post by **foxpup** » Sun 31 Jul 2016, 08:59

musher0 wrote:
Code: Select all
rox / ~ /usr/share /mnt
That'll open four ROX windows on your desktop.

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

Nice tric!
I sometimes miss the fixed double panel, commander style, though. Would that be possible in rox too?

Rox is really quite powerful. One should take time looking through the manual. I just took a look myself, i must admit

I was surprised my wife likes rox too, because she didn't know anything besides windows before 'our' puppy.

bigpup · #63 Post by **bigpup** » Sun 31 Jul 2016, 14:31

Roxset
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=45771
Open two Rox windows side by side.
creates two Rox windows - one with the / directory on the left and one with the /root directory on the right. The windows are placed near the top of the screen and do not overlap. This creates a much better starting platform for drag & drop work.

Sailor Enceladus · #64 Post by **Sailor Enceladus** » Sun 31 Jul 2016, 16:29

TyroBGinner wrote:The lack of the scrollbar is an egregious oversight. It is surprising that was not the first complaint for this topic. I was also very surprised that some here claim not to use the list view in a graphical file manager. One would think that is the only view worth having. It would never occur to me to use otherwise. Different strokes, I guess...

I understand what you're saying. Sometimes when you switch to list view, it cuts off the end of of the date, and you have to expand it to see the year. I would think a better solution would just be for it to correctly expand the length of the window each time (it seems like more of a glitch that happends sometimes and not others) than having a horizontal scroll bar, but having a horizontal scrollbar appear if you force the window size shorter afterwards (if the glitch is corrected) would make sense too.

learnhow2code · #65 Post by **learnhow2code** » Sun 31 Jul 2016, 17:19

Sailor Enceladus wrote:Sometimes when you switch to list view, it cuts off the end of of the date, and you have to expand it to see the year. I would think a better solution would just be for it to correctly expand the length of the window each time (it seems like more of a glitch that happends sometimes and not others) than having a horizontal scroll bar.

this is never true.

(actually its true if you make your own file manager and just want to be weird. its never true if you want to design the interface properly.)

the reason its never true is that you dont know the size of the screen.

true story: puppy has ui guidelines. i dont know if theyre official or binding, but one (very wise) guideline half my argument rests on is that the window should never (unless the USER resizes it) be more than 800x600 pixels.

p.s. if you install pygame, the only .pet ive built has a window just over 800x600, by a handful of pixels. its a graphical window and i just found the guidelines yesterday-- and the .pet is not part of woof (its woof that has the guidelines.)

i have a small screen, plus some people may want to run puppy on a phone someday. but another matter is fonts-- you increase font size, you decrease text that fits across a straight line.

so you resize the window, and now you have to move THE ENTIRE WINDOW as a kind of surrogate, pseudo horizontal scroll.

in terms of ui design, a horizontal scroll is THE proper solution for this. YES: for site design, we both would prefer wrap, reflow, possibly even cutting off the edge (which is what rox does now. thats almost unheard of for a file manager!)

go load a 4000x4000 image in gimp, and youll see that sometimes the horizontal scroll (while a bane in a website) is the only reasonable solution. people abuse it online, but we dont ban model airplane glue just because some people sniff it. horizontal scroll does have its place in ui. it should be avoided whenever theres a reasonable alternative-- but auto-resizing the window isnt reasonable.

rox already resizes, which many of us hate-- but it doesnt resize itself off the screen, as your solution may need to do (or fail to fix the cutoff issue.) at the very least if you you turn off auto-resize, you should get a horizontal scrollbar when the window contents dont fit. when its icons, they simply wrap.

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What do you think about Rox?

What do you think about Rox?

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