2.15CE - My Gripes

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WhoDo
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#16 Post by WhoDo »

Springer wrote:WhoDo:
Point taken. I did listen when you made it the first time, but I've been too wrapped up in internal infrastructure and bug squishing to get the time to fix it for you. I will have it right for Puppy 2.15CE Office Edition.
Thanks, and sorry if that sounded like griping - I really appreciate the work, and feel bad I've offered only feedback rather than code - I wish there was more I could do to help, but the UI stuff, although important to me as a desktop Puppy user, is not my area of expertise.
No apology necessary. I just didn't want you to think I had ignored your earlier request. As a look-and-feel issue, it didn't get my top priority for RC1, but your feedback and support is still greatly valued. It will be fixed for RC1 Office Edition, you can count on it. :wink:
Springer wrote:(BTW - how are you quoting other messages in your posts? Not like me, obviously...)
Yep. Pizza's post has the answer by example.
Springer wrote:Not sure I'll make the meeting (that's 4AM in Texas!), but my argument boils down to this: right-clicks, by general convention, usually bring up a context-sensitive menu. If a right click on the desktop brought up desktop setup menus or basic admin tools I wouldn't complain, (these need some consolidation in a "control panel" or the like in nearly all Linux distros, anyway), but bringing up the main menu seems both redundant and wrong...
I don't like it much either, from the perspective of user-friendliness for refugees, but I can see how valuable it is to the young lions who rip and tear their way around the desktop at a great rate of knots. :P It will always be there. Only question is should it be on or off by default. The jury is still out on that.
Springer wrote: If we decide we don't want to ship prop. codecs with Puppy (IMO, we should ship them anyway in Viz/Office), then at least we should make it "automagically" possible to download and install them.
If I had the multimedia squash file built, then they would ALL be in there. It wouldn't be a problem because it wouldn't be an integral part of the distribution, but an individual user download/add-on. That gets around the problems, AFAIK. If someone - anyone - would build that file then I could take multimedia out of Standard Edition and make it smaller; under 100Mb which was the original target.

Hope that explains things a bit better.
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WhoDo
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#17 Post by WhoDo »

MU wrote:Look if you have:
/usr/local/MU-rox-traybuttons/resource/mutray.rc

If yes, delete or rename it.
Yes, Mark. My bad. It will be the NEW version in RC1 Office Edition and later.
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#18 Post by WhoDo »

GuestToo wrote:
What would be cool is another submenu that let you access the entire filesystem
Icewm can do exactly that ... in preferences, set this:

OpenCommand="rox"
I hate showing my ignorance like this, but what does this do for the user? The command is in the preferences file for 1.2.30 Icewm, so it can be adjusted as you say. I just don't know precisely what it does. :oops:
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#19 Post by GuestToo »

just uncomment OpenCommand="rox", restart Icewm, and see what it does ... comment the line again to disable the feature

what it does is put a / and a $HOME section in the Start menu ... you can navigate through your file system using the Start menu ... clicking an item will work the same as clicking the item in a Rox window ... for example, clicking a text file will probably open the text file with the defaulttexteditor

i think this is exactly what Pizzasgood had in mind

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#20 Post by WhoDo »

GuestToo wrote:what it does is put a / and a $HOME section in the Start menu ... you can navigate through your file system using the Start menu ... clicking an item will work the same as clicking the item in a Rox window ...
Ok, that's why I didn't see anything different. With XDG menus it doesn't appear to do that. :?
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#21 Post by Pizzasgood »

More gripes, sorry :oops: :

Ugly icon for .html. How about /usr/share/midi-icons/www.png?

:!: defaults-wizard CANNOT be in /usr/local/bin. It breaks that way (it sees itself :shock: ). Put it in /usr/sbin instead. Then it will work correctly, and the funky entries will disappear.

You have two .desktop entries for the defaults-wizard (it came with it's own, maybe you didn't see that?)

I found another extra directory (/usr/share/applications1)

Finally, Rox needs an "Open With Geany" option.



As for the root-menu vs. no-root-menu argument, in the case that "no" wins out, how about if you disable the "Pass all backdrop mouse clicks to windowmanager" option of ROX-Filer. That way you get the option to set the backdrop, and you can drag-select desktop icons. To see what I mean, right-click on a desktop-icon and go to ROX-Filer -> Options -> compatibility, and it should be the second from the top.

I still prefer the root-menu right-click, but the ROX menu is better than nothing, and much closer to what Windows does. And it's still pretty cool, just not as cool as a root-menu.
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#22 Post by Previously known as Guest »

i also miss the right click bringing up root menu. I always set task bar to auto hide to get it out of the way, it becomes tedious to move mouse until task bar appears, when I could right click & be on my way. Maybe redundant, but much more efficient & logical to me. Maybe a simple wizard to change to ones preference with a couple of clicks. But to right click desktop and have nothing happen isn't very intuitive.

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#23 Post by Nathan F »

At this point, why not have a poll about the root menu issue?

Nathan
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#24 Post by GuestToo »

that's why I didn't see anything different. With XDG menus it doesn't appear to do that
it should not make any difference whether xdg is being used to generate menu files or not ... the Open Command menu is just an extra section to the Icewm menu that Icewm displays, if you configure preferences that way ... whether you enable the Open Command or not does not change the menu file at all

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#25 Post by cthisbear »

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i also miss the right click bringing up root menu. I always set task bar to auto hide to get it out of the way, it becomes tedious to move mouse until task bar appears, when I could right click & be on my way. Maybe redundant, but much more efficient & logical to me. Maybe a simple wizard to change to ones preference with a couple of clicks. But to right click desktop and have nothing happen isn't very intuitive. )

I agree with the above. Annoying no right click. This is CE but based on the official release. Puppy 2.16 Experimental still has the right click function.
Have a simple script to turn off or on..happy little vegemites all round.

Mozilla is back and fast...Hooray!..Good Puppy...
Barrys 2.16E has opera....bad dog. Back to the kennel.

The desktop backgrounds or icons for those of us with poor eyesight are a
pain...personally I would like the blue lightened up.

No internet connected by default...
Hello can't anyone ask Hacao how he did it? Although as I have stated before I don't know if he enabled the firewall by default at boot.

Startup announcement is pretty good.

One glitch and I don't mean to be vague...was I tried choosing location?? by mistake, as I was just giving Viz a quick onceover look. I chose Au-English?
and then cancelled and went to the Black Scream Of Gloom...ha! ..ha!
waited for a goodly amount of time but had to reboot. Velly interesting.

Once again I ask why just about the majority of releases of Puppy not originating from Barry himself.... do not run Xvesa when it is selected...and then annoyingly goes back to the prompt.
Barrys 2.16E still runs Xvesa with no hiccups. Hail to the chief.
I loathe Xorg and only choose it for laptops.

I will state the obvious once again.
If you want Windows refugees to use Puppy.....they don't want a problem at bootup...forget it...all that work...all the pretty pics...all the hard yakka...all the whingeing and or requests by myself or others went down the gurgler.

Irritating pissant things at boot will not cut it.
Personally I know quite a bit about computers...but only a tad about Linux.

Diplomacy...I obviously know stuff all about.

But one thing I know is that people are Bone Lazy.
I don't have an XBOX or Playstation etc but one reason customers buy that stuff in droves is that after they plug it in...It Just Works.
Instant gratification and forget what most people pay for the titles.
Some pirate copies and modify the chips etc but the majority pay...
and they don't have 3 titles...the skies the limit.

But we are giving out a Freebe
A great Freebie... but who gives a hoot when the gratification =Zero.

As an aside to this I took your latest Puppy Viz to a Harvey Norman store which will remain nameless. They had some Toshiba Tecra Pentium 111 laptops with 256ram and 1.3Gig chips ...that were refurbished.
So being my usual cheeky self I asked the salesman could I boot Puppy up.
This bloke is a Mac fiend...so forget about converting him to Linux.
He was a bit wary because he didn't want the laptop stuffed up or to get a virus etc. Gee do I see a paralell here with Windows users....
So I booted up.. chose Xorg (only with laptops) and Puupy rushed to the screen. This bloke still won't personally try Linux.
But he was impressed with the speed and how to setup the Internet/Firewall etc. He knows straight away that those laptops would go out the door faster if, as an option, Puppy was on there as well as XP Home.
I left him the CD to give to his Windows friends.

yes Puppy will always sell itself..after the bloat of Windows.
But the Linux salesman has to get the foot in the door first.
All the pitches mean zilch if his product fails to start etc.

So there you are. Maybe we could initiate a bitch of the day gripe on the Puppy forum.
All the barbs, wit and diatribe could be directed at this fiend of the day, allowing everyone afterrwards to just get on with the good work.
So all hail to the Lake Macquarie chief!
All is not lost, unwanted or unhelpful. Some is even great mate'

Now that I have partaken of this feast..this beast hastens back to his kernel
Oh! me of little wit...regards Chris

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#26 Post by mbutts »

i guess one thing i noticed was with the dark blue theme the minimize, restore, and close buttons being black are hard to see up in the right hand corner. might be better if they were white. it is cool that they change color when you mouse over them.....

myself i could do without the right click root menu. ive been working on customizing this edition for my mom but what ever the majority wants is fine with me as long as i can figure out how to disable it.

the seamonkey theme is ok i guess.
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#27 Post by WhoDo »

Pizzasgood wrote:Ugly icon for .html. How about /usr/share/midi-icons/www.png?
Beat you to that one. Already changed for next release.
Pizzasgood wrote: :!: defaults-wizard CANNOT be in /usr/local/bin. It breaks that way (it sees itself :shock: ). Put it in /usr/sbin instead. Then it will work correctly, and the funky entries will disappear.
Done.
Pizzasgood wrote: You have two .desktop entries for the defaults-wizard (it came with it's own, maybe you didn't see that?)
Nope, but fixed now. Thanks.
Pizzasgood wrote: I found another extra directory (/usr/share/applications1)
Consider it goooonnnnneeeee!
Pizzasgood wrote: Finally, Rox needs an "Open With Geany" option.
Fixed.
Pizzasgood wrote:I still prefer the root-menu right-click, but the ROX menu is better than nothing, and much closer to what Windows does. And it's still pretty cool, just not as cool as a root-menu.
Yes, it's certainly an option. I will keep it in mind, depending upon the community vote.

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#28 Post by WhoDo »

GuestToo wrote: ... the Open Command menu is just an extra section to the Icewm menu that Icewm displays, if you configure preferences that way ... whether you enable the Open Command or not does not change the menu file at all
Ok, I've got it now. I won't explain what I did wrong :oops: , but it was definitely me and not Icewm or XDG that caused the problem.

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#29 Post by WhoDo »

Nathan F wrote:At this point, why not have a poll about the root menu issue?
Yes, I think we've already had one in this thread. Those interested enough have nominated their preference and at this point the ON's have it over the OFF's in my reckoning.

I have asked Tronkel to add the option to his Icewinconfig utility, so that it can easily be turned on or off depending upon user requirements and without editing the preferences file directly.

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#30 Post by WhoDo »

mbutts wrote:i guess one thing i noticed was with the dark blue theme the minimize, restore, and close buttons being black are hard to see up in the right hand corner. might be better if they were white. it is cool that they change color when you mouse over them.....[snip]
the seamonkey theme is ok i guess.
The control buttons have been modified for RC1 Office Edition and beyond. They are now a dull color until mouseover, when they go bright. That should resolve that issue, I hope.

Mind you, I have only done this for the default Velvet-Azul theme so far. Other themes will have to wait a while to get the treatment.

BTW, which Seamonkey theme? There are 3, including the original, Venerable Modern (default for RC1) and Skypilot.

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#31 Post by Lobster »

Where is Puppy find (pfind)?

That game selection is - how can I put this politely . . . unworthy of a dustbin.

The existing selection was OK, xglaga (not perfect) and another sideways shoot them up were OK. The one I am thinking of may need extra drivers so might not be feasible. One card game is OK but . . .

Originally in the Alpha we had a 14MB game (ahem) That is gone (good thing too). Now it seems you have found the tiniest games possible. Can we compromise here. Two or three games or no games but . . . [Lobster gripes off into the distance . . .]

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#32 Post by TonshA »

I just want to chip in on the "right-click on the desktop" discussion.

I'm for right-click bringing up the main (icewm) menu. Not the Rox menu.

...chipping out...

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#33 Post by amish »

Maybe we could initiate a bitch of the day gripe on the Puppy forum.
i would have one every 3 months, it purges the blood, but a lot of devs take it personally. mu comes to mind, which is a pity because he's done so much wonderful stuff and it's not easy not looking up to him.

i'd try to have a little variety in my griping, since it's too easy to talk about how cdrecord isn't ever going to be a reliable solution for burning .iso files ever again, and since i've been trying to get linux on the internet since 1999 :D

maybe puppy just isn't for you... no, that i don't believe, OVERALL, it's the best os i've ever used, but then, the latest versions (2.12 .13 .14) i cannot use, 2.14 scripts still aren't lgpl (afaik), (maybe 2.15, i mean .16?) and then there are gripes for people that DO NOT, as you pointed out, like fiddling around in dos or the cli just to get something "on the screen."

still, i find i difficult NOT to sympathise with frustrated users, and i don't agree totally that there is a correlation between bitching and ingratitude. you do not have to be grateful for bugs, they happen, we're human, but it's okay to be annoyed when things DO NOT work, and as long as no one is being demonized a little bitching... well... like i implied, it's not good to hold it in :)

i started the "complaints and concerns dept." for this reason. by all means, you can always pm me and complain, and what's more, since other people are either possibly a. too shy b. too undiplomatic to succeed in being taken serious (sometimes i am too!) c. too pissed off to be diplomatic or d. too Polite to say anything, i am collecting complaints, "bugs" and anything like that, and the ones that are common (and yet go unnoticed) do not go unnoticed by me.

then it's my task to point them out at the right time, sometimes at the wrong time, but ultimately, i care about it too. the "puppy team" as barry affectionately calls them is responsible (in some versions anyway, and others in the future) for making the best damned os ever made. that doesn't mean you have to be happy when it pees the rug. (sorry for the analogy.)

we all love puppy, we'd all like it to be better, and ultimately if someone (like a complaints and concerns dept.) can turn gripes into useful suggestions (WELL SOMETIMES!) :) useful suggestions are not a bad thing. but then you do have to tell someone willing to listen. there is also the "if you don't like ____ just learn to hack the kernel and init scripts" argument, although i must say, your mac friend will never go for that. i code for fun, but i think the "learn to fix linux code" argument makes less sense when i can't even get the damned thing online after years of trying. would i have more luck coding in a sadistic language like c? no, i think not.

at the time that you're still migrating from windows, coding shouldbe the least of your concerns. as for the greatest of your concerns, by all means, let's hear them. on the forum, or pm me.

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#34 Post by WhoDo »

Lobster wrote:Where is Puppy find (pfind)?
Menu>Utilities>Pfind - and before you complain about the choice of location, I didn't choose that, the author did. It can/may be changed, but we'll see.
Lobster wrote: That game selection is - how can I put this politely . . . unworthy of a dustbin. [snip]...One card game is OK but . . .
I consider it a bargain! They are all games for which I have had community requests, and which didn't eat too much space. Anyone who wants more/different games should try out Puppy Software Installer as it now has ALL of the old dotpups and dotpets available in one application.

How about we part on a Latin note? "et tu Brute?" :P
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#35 Post by WhoDo »

cthisbear wrote:Have a simple script to turn off or on..happy little vegemites all round.
Tronkel is working on adding that option to his new Icewinconfig utility. Have you seen that yet?
cthisbear wrote: The desktop backgrounds or icons for those of us with poor eyesight are a pain...personally I would like the blue lightened up.
We can't please everyone. If you don't like it, then you change it to something you DO like. Puppy 2.15CE must use what the majority want - that's democratic. Personally I prefer coloured icons, but this isn't MY distribution, it's the community's distribution.
cthisbear wrote:No internet connected by default...
Hello can't anyone ask Hacao how he did it? Although as I have stated before I don't know if he enabled the firewall by default at boot.
Did you see the charter for Puppy 2.15CE? Specifically it is to be a CONSOLIDATION edition. That means no really new or cutting edge features, just updating, firming up and making reliable what is already there. The cutting edge stuff will be in Barry's next release ... Puppy 2.16
cthisbear wrote:One glitch and I don't mean to be vague...was I tried choosing location?? by mistake, as I was just giving Viz a quick onceover look. I chose Au-English?
and then cancelled and went to the Black Scream Of Gloom...ha! ..ha! waited for a goodly amount of time but had to reboot. Velly interesting.
Hey, at least you got as far as choosing a location. Before Puppy 2.15CE you had to create a complete directory structure under /root before it would even offer you a choice! Not every problem will be resolved in a single release cycle. On Puppy's past record, miracles usually take at least two! :P
cthisbear wrote:Once again I ask why just about the majority of releases of Puppy not originating from Barry himself.... do not run Xvesa when it is selected...and then annoyingly goes back to the prompt.
Beats me. The Xvesa that goes into a new release like 2.15CE comes straight out of Unleashed, where Barry put it! I have changed NOTHING about Xvesa from Barry's 2.14 release.

UPDATE: Your complaint piqued my curiosity, so I went back to see if Xvesa would run, and if not why not. I have resolved the issue. The file /etc/TZ needs to be made world writeable, and the file /etc/videomode doesn't exist so it needs to be created and also made world writeable. That fixes the problem. I have implemented that solution for Puppy 2.15CE Office Edition - due for release this weekend.
cthisbear wrote:If you want Windows refugees to use Puppy.....they don't want a problem at bootup...forget it...all that work...all the pretty pics...all the hard yakka...all the whingeing and or requests by myself or others went down the gurgler.

Irritating pissant things at boot will not cut it.
Personally I know quite a bit about computers...but only a tad about Linux.
Ahem! That's precisely WHY this was a consolidation edition. We want to iron out those annoying "irritating pissant things at boot", and we are certainly trying. And yet you still want us to add AutoDHCP by default and risk all of the bootup glitches doing that might subsequently present? Consistency, Chris ol' stick, is the hallmark of quality.

You are not the only kennel occupant to have griped all over Puppy 2.15CE. That might be MY fault, as I did set the bar rather high for expectations. All the same, I'm not in the least bit unhappy with what has been produced so far, or with the mammoth effort behind the scenes from the likes of Pizzasgood, NathanF, PkaG, Tronkel, rarsa et al, and as the only puppy with access to Puppy 2.15CE Final at this stage, I am more than satisfied that we will soon have achieved most, if not all, of what we set forth to do with our first Community Edition for some time.
Last edited by WhoDo on Fri 23 Mar 2007, 12:34, edited 1 time in total.
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