A MRU[F/D] script to help you recall the apps you ran

[musher0]

My pleasure, slavvo67.

[slavvo67]

Looks like it's not working on 64bit RU Xerus64. It's 32bit only, I'm guessing?

[musher0]

Looks like it's not working on 64bit RU Xerus64. It's 32bit only, I'm guessing?

Yep.

It says so, previous page, 3rd post from bottom, 1st paragraph, here !

vovchik provided the support executables for a 64-bit version last Fall, but a
test on dryfalls' 64-bit "Just Lighthouse" was iffy. I haven't touched that
version since then.

Sorry...

[musher0]

Hello again.

As a reminder, here are the history files this "Recents" script searches
and lists: (Edited July 6 2017)

General:
the recently-used.xbel file at /root/.local/share (with related directories)

Browsers, if installed:
mozilla browser with internal sqlite db (FF, SM, etc.)
links2
Chromium
Vivaldi

Mainstream Apps:
gmplayer (if installed)
geany (with related directories)
mtpaint (with related directories)

DB:
separate sqlitemanager program (if installed)

Personal:
last 10 documents you saved in /root/my-documents

Your Puppy:
last 10 packages you installed with petget

System logs:
/tmp/xerrs.log
/root/.bash-history
/root/.lesshst (history file of the real less from Greenwood Software)
/var/log/Xorg?.log

I hope this clarifies things for those who asked.

~~~~~~~~
Also, if you feel it would be useful to add to this "Recents" list others apps
that have a history file, please let me know. I'll try to oblige. TIA.
~~~~~~~~

BFN

[musher0]

Hello all.

Here is MRUF-lst version 0.9.7.5

This version
-- uses a new horizontal design. It's easier for the eye to follow lines than
to follow columns, IMO.

-- adds a separate sub-menu for the bash scripts in the xbel section. (For
SAFETY, scripts load in geany. You can run them from there is you wish.)

-- you can move the menu on screen from within the menu if you click
on any thin line

-- internally, added extra variables to enable the above.

-- new desktop file and new wrapper script to enable the following feature:

-- the script now starts with the GTK2 theme of your choice -- independent
of your main global GTK2 theme -- when defined in a config file such as
/root/.aewm/ae/aepanel-custom.gtkrc.

The config file that's provided includes some commented-out GTK2 theme
examples. If you don't have them or you don't like them, there are
thousands of GTK2 themes to choose from at:
https://www.gnome-look.org/browse/cat/136/ord/latest

Enjoy.

[musher0]

Hello all.

I just realized that by default Puppy does not have a way to control
"how many days back" for the recently-used.xbel file.

This is how you do it.

-- Check if you have a file named .gtkrc.mine in /root.
------ if you do, insert this line at the very top of it:

gtk-recent-files-max-age = 10

if it's not already there.

------ if file /root/.gtkrc.mine does not exist, open a terminal and
issue the following command:

Code: Select all

echo "gtk-recent-files-max-age = 10" > /root/.gtkrc.mine

~~~~~~~~~~~

The number 10 in the above is the number of "up-to" ("last") days
during which files /events will be recorded or kept in file
/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel.

With "gtk-recent-files-max-age = 10", on the 11th day, the events and
files that were recorded on the original day 1 are erased, the original
day 2 becomes day 1, and so on.

If you want no "xbel" history, indicate 0 instead of 10. This of
course will disable the "xbel" part of the MRUF script. But the other
sections (bash, mtpaint, etc.) will continue to be monitored. (Please
see add'l note below.)

I do not recommend specifying above 15 (days), because the xbel file
tends to get too large for reasonable speed for the MRUF script.

Any questions about this, please ask.

IHTH

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Note for the "entirely paranoid"
------ You can use this MRUF script to erase the histories of bash, less,
mtpaint, geany, etc. Simply click every once and a while on the
"ERASE THIS LIST" entry in the sub-menu for that part.

I say "once and a while" because these lists keep being generated. There
is no safe way to entirely disable them. Please keep in mind that some of
these history lists are needed by the Puppy OS to work properly.

[torm]

how to get:
/root/my-doc...blah-blah.txt
instead of:
/root/my-documents/a_lot_of_folders/somefoldername/file_name_that_cannot_be_any_shorter_blah-blah.txt

so it doesn't go "fullscreen" ?

[musher0]

how to get:
/root/my-doc...blah-blah.txt
instead of:
/root/my-documents/a_lot_of_folders/somefoldername/file_name_that_cannot_be_any_shorter_blah-blah.txt

so it doesn't go "fullscreen" ?

Hi torm.

Good to see I'm not the only one interested in a "history" app / menu !
Thanks for your feedback.

I never had the problem that you mention -- I rename my docs to shorter
names as necessary -- , but I'll see what I can do about extremely-long-
file-names.

Since you are complaining about the lack of a certain advanced feature, I
gather that the rest of this history menu is working well for you?

I don't remember who said this, but you can figure out how satisfied
people are with your product from how specialized their complaint is !

I'll still take it into consideration, but I'll take your complaint as a
compliment!

BFN.

[musher0]

Hello torm and all.

Please find attached MRUF-lst-0.9.7.6.

This version:
1) takes torm's comment about long lines into consideration by shortening
some long directory names (lines 452-454). It's not ideal, I realize that,
but it's the best I can do given the way aemenu works.

2) refines the handling of text, image, compressed and squashed files,
essentially to allow the menu to re-appear after the file is viewed or
processed (for those file types only; I haven't found a catch-all
solution; lines 147-157).

3) includes a revisited script to call sqlitemanager (the Mozilla plugin),
as a stand-alone application. Applies to Mozilla-type browsers only;
original script by BarryK, BTW.

Please let me know if the Chrome / Chromium-type browsers can use
sqlitemanager. If so, I'll add them to the list. I guess that's a question
Mike_Walsh could answer!

4) some touch-ups to the common and language variables in
/usr/local/share/MRUF.

Finally, I have to qualify my previous statement about this script taking
only five seconds to load: after having tested it many times, the truth is
that it takes generally five seconds.

If the "recently-used.xbel" file has changed a lot, you may have to wait up
to 25 seconds for the menu to show. If you browsed a lot of new sites, or
edited many text files, things like that, the script will take longer to build
or refresh the menu.

Constructive feedback welcome. Enjoy!

[musher0]

Hello all.

I'm on a roll!

~~~~~~~~~~

Changes, MRUF-lst-0.9.7.7, 2017/07/15

-- Redid the layout of the description panel (plz see attached pic #1)

-- Added the last name of the devs for relevant apps in description panel
(same pic)

-- Condensed the image and text lines into a for loop

-- Added another replaceit command for /root/my-docs to shorten lines

-- Got Puppus_Dogfellow's nice icon to appear in the refresh panel (plz see
attached pic #2)

-- Hopefully made the choice of the file manager clearer (plz see attached
pic #3)

-- Chose another color set; I hope you like it! (same pic as above)

-- Upped the number of personal docs and packages from 10 to 14

-- Decided to show the menu entry for editing the menu on the fly.
Although this is more of a developer's feature (it's a kind of "recursion"),
some users might find it handy on occasion. Please be light-handed with
this; you may mess everything up real good using it. If you do, don't
come crying to papa! You have been warned.*

~~~~~~~~~~

As usual, constructive feedback or ideas for developing this script further
are welcome.

Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~
* (Solution: if you do mess up the menu with the editing feature, erase
file /tmp/recents and re-start the script; a new menu will be created.)

[musher0]

Hello again, people.

I've been testing the "recall of URLs" section of the MRUF script, and there
appears to be some problems with wikipedia and duckduckgo addresses.
Sometimes the defaultbrowser connects to the address and sometimes it
doesn't. Tests indicate that it could have to do with the syntax of the
address itself?

Connection to a Puppy forum page is fine, however.

I wiggled the MRUF and defaultbrowser scripts a bit, and they don't appear
to be the source of the problem.

I'm investigating. If you have any insight on this, please let me know. I
heard that some major sites have developed in-built protection now
against scripted connections. Maybe that's it?

TIA.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
On the line length front, torm will be perhaps glad to know that I've
evolved a sub-routine to shorten the URL names appearing in the menu.
It should be less frustrating for users with narrower monitors.

Something like this:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
####
H=hippopotamopotamus
if [ "${#H}" -gt 15 ];then
	V=$H;V="${V:0:5}"
	l="`echo $[${#H} - 5]`"
	W="${H:$l:${#H}}"
	echo "$V...$W"
else
	echo $H
fi

To be continued. (Pic of test attached.)

BFN.

[musher0]

Hello all.

Please find attached version 0.9.7.8 of the MRUF list script.

Added in this version :

-- If the size of the geany.conf or .mtpaint configuration files
has changed, the script recycles. This saves the user from manually
recycling the script every time (s)he edits a picture or a plain text.

-- Thorough consideration of torm's remark above about width
of entries:
---- Detection of monitor width: if your monitor has a width of less than
1025 pixels, the sub-menus pile up vertically instead of going horizontal.
---- I generalized a width limitation to:
------ 60 characters for URLs
------ the last two sub-dirs plus file name for other files
(Please see attached illustrations.)

-- I clarified (I hope!) comments here and there in the script. In particular
the one about forced running in English for testing (lines 55-56). Normally
you won't touch line 55, since the script detects the language environment
automatically; but it can be handy.

-- Following BarryK's observation, I put executables aemenu-pango, bcm
and replaceit all under /usr/bin.

-- I refined the call to Vivaldi's history at line 299. It needed an extra
parameter, < --no-sandbox >.

Constructive comments welcome, as always.

Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~

P.S. See post below for 64-bit version.

[musher0]

(Edited July 29 2017.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hello all.

Good news, MRUF-lst-0.9.7.8 works on a 64-bit Puppy derivative!

At least for Quirky-8,2 "xerus" users. Unfortunately, I forgot to note the
glibc version of the Quirky-8,2 "xerus", so it may not work on your 64-bit
Puppy.

Many thanks to BarryK for compiling and including the necessary 64-bit
execs required to make this script run.

So may I present: MRUF-lst-0.9.7.8 64-bit!

-- The script and execs are separate for the 64-bit version
-- A couple of screen shots

Please test on your 64-bit Pup? TIA.

[musher0]

Hello again all.

I just realized that the MRUF won't display an sqlite3 DB if you don't install
its MIME-type:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... ost#961833
So please do? TIA.

It will be included in the next version of the MRUF-lst script.

BFN.

[musher0]

Hello all,

BarryK has chosen to include this MRUF-lst script in his coming
Quirky-8.2.2 "xerus". Please see here:
http://barryk.org/news/?viewDetailed=00622

I am quite honored. Thanks, Mr. Kauler.

BFN.

[musher0]

Edit:
Don't forget to apply the patch in the next post. Sorry about that.
musher0

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hello all.

Presenting version 0.9.7.9

MRUF-lst-0.9.7.9 Changes

Mostly under the hood.

-- Redid the find routines for the browsers, so got rid of the former FinD
function. Because of it, the tree utility is a new requirement.

-- Fine-tuned the MZ browsers section to include light, firefox, mozilla,
seamonkey. Untested for seamonkey and firefox, I don't have them on
this machine. Please report on your use if you have a minute. Thanks.

-- If there is a bookmarks.html file at the 1st level of an MZ browser, you
can access it directly as a page in the browser. This is for convenience.

-- Added a routine to detect if the xbel file exists or is empty. This is
important on a new install, where the machine does not have much
history. We tend to forget those things! If there is no xbel file or if it has
no entries, a reminder is shown on screen to continue chugging along for
a little while longer before using the MRUF-lst. (Illustration attached.)

-- Changed the File handling. xdg-open is still the main guy, but I felt there
was a need to detect some types of files with more precision. Namely all
the compressed formats, since on Puppy we have UExtract and sfs_load.
This task is now done through an if...elif...elif...else structure.

-- About the sqlitemanager loading the MZ browsers' places.sqlite file, I
discovered that sqlitemanager does not have routines to handle command
line positional parameters. So we're out of luck. I tried improving the
sqlitemanager.sh script to get into the file's directory, but it does not
seem to help. Oh, well. Some things in life one cannot improve!*

As a consolation prize, I discovered that there are at least two Firefox
plug-ins for this: "Places maintenance" and "Places to SQL". The latter is
experimental as of this writing, but both may be worth a try to facilitate
history management if you're using an MZ browser.

Interface --
-- I re-re-did the Description and Credits panel drawing on the power of
ANSI-codes and of the native urxvt URL handling. In that panel, you can
now click on its URL to view the text of the GPL3, for instance.

-- sqlite menu and entry moved from the system sub-menu to the apps
sub-menu. (Illustrations attached.)


Forecast --
-- I've been studying Barry Kauler's "condensed directory" version a bit. I
may come up with my own take on a "one-place" version some time.

-- Looking behind, a lot of ground was covered: when I started out on this
project, Puppy had no history app. Looking ahead, still more ground to
cover: a lot of apps have histories, which I don't know exist! Shucks!

That said, MRUF-lst is very, very usable as it is, even if it does not give
access to the history of each and every app that provides one. Even as it
is, for me and hopefully for you too, it has become a tremendous time
saver. So I'll take a breather for now. Thanks to all who gave me a hand
in some form.

Talk with you later. Have a great day!

musher0

~~~~~~~~~~~~

* By comparison, to have Vivaldi display its history directly, you type

Code: Select all

vivaldi --no-sandbox --enable-grouped-history --user-data-dir=profile vivaldi://history

and boom!, you're there.

[musher0]

Hello again.

As of this writing, one (1) person has downloaded MRUF-lst-0.9.7.9.
With me, that makes two (2) users. ROFL

So... for that person... here's a patch for component file vars.GEN1.

I don't know where my head was yesterday evening. I left a "$variable"
in a sourced variables file...

Please download the attached file, unzip, make executable and run.

The skeptics will have to eat crow: with this patch, MRUF-lst will now
actually run.

Until next error! BFN.

~~~~~~~~~~

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
# correctif.sh, 2017/08/03 17:57
# -- Correctif pour le fichier vars.GEN1 de /usr/local/share/MRUF
# dans la version 0.9.7.9 du MRUF-lst. Désolé. /
# -- Edit for file vars.GEN1 of /usr/local/share/MRUF
# in version 0.9.7.9 of MRUF-lst. Sorry.
# musher0
####

cd /usr/local/share/MRUF

replaceit --wholeline --input=vars.GEN1 corps " "
echo "corps=\"/usr/local/share/MRUF/corps\"" >> vars.GEN1

[Pelo]

downloaded once from my side. refused at use because of aewm missing, and other stuff.
And you blaimed me as a user, bad user.
So there is one downloader to find who he is .. Wait for his questions. He will soon appear.
Users are so rare, either they put in they mind to become developers, or they went away.. Like mohicans, soon will come when you will have only one : Pelo

[torm]

As a sidenote, I know it doesn't make all that difference.. then,
does the GTK2 theme "really" need all them Aurora and Rezlooks engines?



.. it does appear in the global theme folder.

[musher0]

Note, Aug. 5 2017, 1h40 -- The "noexecs" pet is new. Please see below.
Sorry for any inconvenience. musher0

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hello again all.

Please find attached version 0.9.8.1. (I did not release 0.9.8.publicly.)

Changes, in a nutshell:

-- Builds / refreshes now in +/- 3 seconds. It may take up to 8 seconds if
you have a big recently-used.xbel file. I'm quite happy about this, since in
an early version, someone reported MRUF taking up to a minute to start.

How do you do that? Simple! You find an imaginative way to replace
slowpoke utilities such as sort, and you put the LC_ALL=C variable nearer
the top of the script.

-- Support for MZ browsers is almost dropped, except if you have a
bookmarks.html file in the directory.

The reason is that it's much simpler for the user to access the history of
his/her MZ browser from within the MZ browser. I touched upon the
complexity of what is happening here in a previous post. (By "MZ
browser", I mean Firefox, Seamonkey,Palemoon & Co.)

By comparison, opening the Vivaldi history in Vivaldi from a script such as
MRUF is easy. This is not a comment about Vivaldi being better. The way
the two browsers work is different, that's all.)

Nevertheless, you can still run your MZ browser from MRUF if you have a
bookmarks.html file in its user directory. Also, if you have a need to
process the places.sqlite database, you can still access it from MRUF, as
before, through the sqlitemanager.sh menu item.

I may revisit this decision later (I read that Firefox will be undergoing
major changes shortly), but for now I think this is the logical thing to do.
MRUF is meant to process histories, not databases!

I added two lines as a reminder of this in the help panel.

-- Small typographic changes: better centering of titles, added tabs
here and there, that sort of thing.

-- Presenting the MRUF in two pets from now on will make it easier
to align the 64-bit and 32-bit versions. This means that you need to
download and install the two attached pets, please. For those who need
them, the 64-bit execs are available here.

Enjoy!

BFN.