Modifying and Improving the ROX-filer

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amigo · #16 Post by **amigo** » Fri 15 Jan 2010, 16:52

Unfortunately, upstream development of ROX has slowed to a crawl after years at a frantic pace. Dr. Leonard has had real-life encroach upon him, apparently.
BTW, for those that don't know it, he was/is one of the chief architects of the freedesktop.org standards.
i have hacked around on rox overthe years, but on the gtk1 version. It would be great if one of the forum members who are proficient in C and GTK would take an interest in making even small changes to ROX. However, the source code is pretty large, so dipping in there is no casual matter.

disciple · #17 Post by **disciple** » Sat 16 Jan 2010, 05:16

One feature I think would be good is a checkbox in the copy/rename/link dialogues, to show the target afterwards... I often find that I copy or move something somewhere and then immediately navigate to where I put it, so I would have been better off to open another window and drag-and-drop.

mikeb · #18 Post by **mikeb** » Sat 16 Jan 2010, 15:27

I forgot to mention that double clicking in a blank part of the window resizes it if it fails to do it automatically...

mike

aarf · #19 Post by **aarf** » Sun 17 Jan 2010, 12:28

there are many annoying and could be done better things about rox but just one for now:
i have to save all internet pages twice. first to save and second to see if it has saved. why because when there are certain special characters in the title of the page the page wont save and rox wont tell you that it hasnt saved. example try and save this page with the default title. under opera10.10 in puppy to a FAT partition it will be

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Puppy Linux Discussion Forum :: View topic - Modifying and Improving the ROX-filer

and it wont save to the FAT partition because of the

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opera10.10 in windows will give the title as

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Puppy Linux Discussion Forum __ View topic - Modifying and Improving the ROX-filer

and will save.
cant we have this simple improvement
other non-save characters are the vertical line used in so many titles and also the question mark(?).

mikeb · #20 Post by **mikeb** » Sun 17 Jan 2010, 16:06

Thats a FAT and browser issue surely

mike

just tried it....it saves as viewtopic.php.html in firefox

disciple · #21 Post by **disciple** » Mon 18 Jan 2010, 06:12

Yes, definitely nothing to do with Rox.

mistfire · #22 Post by **mistfire** » Tue 19 Jan 2010, 01:45

Okay, i found that there is a double click options in Rox-filer (thanks to tttuxxx). But i wish that the puppy developers enabled it by default. And optionally disabled by the users. Oh by the way, how large does the source code of rox-filer have?

disciple · #23 Post by **disciple** » Tue 19 Jan 2010, 19:14

The rox source is only about 1.8MB IIRC.

mikeb · #24 Post by **mikeb** » Tue 19 Jan 2010, 20:44

Hmmm...multiple and endless clicking is a windows thing...my finger likes linux better.

mike

disciple · #25 Post by **disciple** » Wed 20 Jan 2010, 05:46

Yeah, but the gtk file open and save dialogues require double-clicks, so using single-clicks in rox is inconsistent and confusing as a default setting.

#26 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Wed 20 Jan 2010, 06:21

Sounds like a GTK problem to me. GTK is also open source.

Also: Two wrongs don't make a right.

disciple · #27 Post by **disciple** » Wed 20 Jan 2010, 07:01

Sorry, I didn't actually mean that "Yeah".
I much prefer Rox with double-click... without it is simply too annoying to select several items at once... or for that matter just to select one item to see how big it is.

...
It is true that two wrongs don't make a right, but single vs double-click is about user preference not right or wrong.

mikeb · #28 Post by **mikeb** » Wed 20 Jan 2010, 08:04

GTK with a problem...I am shocked

mike

ps no click should be the norm...all this technology should know what you want...

pps scratch that...windows and the autoclick that won't go away with touch pads drives me insane...

disciple · #29 Post by **disciple** » Wed 20 Jan 2010, 08:09

pps scratch that...windows and the autoclick that won't go away with touch pads drives me insane...

Yes, I'll second that.

abushcrafter · #30 Post by **abushcrafter** » Wed 20 Jan 2010, 14:55

I like the default single click setting as I spears my hand form being restrained

. It did take time to get use to it but it was so worth it. I don't have problems though of not double clicking when I should. For example: when I am on windows.

#31 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Thu 21 Jan 2010, 02:05

When I want to select stuff I just press the ctrl key, or do the lasso with the middle button (aka scroll wheel) to select/deselect things. (Clicking with the middle button, OTOH, is equivalent to left clicking the file and then closing the window.)

I am aware that it's preference. I was making a joke.

aarf · #32 Post by **aarf** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 09:59

The next thing that annoys me about ROX. also to do with file names. an we are nowhere near the end of the annoyance list yet.
In my storage armada I have variously formated partitions these being FAT, ext3, ext2 and reiserfs. each partition type chosen for various reasons at various past times. so now I want to backup data from one partition type to another, and this is where the next annoyance comes about. FAT, being write-able from windows, supports file names written in non-English characters. I have these non-English file names littered through my various systems from past backups and distant past usage. do i need to go on? some of the linux file systems or rox itself will not transfer the non-English file names correctly and so i end up with large numbers of errors in the file transfer dialog window which i the have to wade through to weed out the problems. gradually i am removing the problem files through time and persistence but for those whose primary language is not supported this makes ROX virtually useless

disciple · #33 Post by **disciple** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 13:16

Odd.
I've never had any problems actually dealing with foreign characters using Rox, although a tooltip does say that they are not valid UTF filenames and I should rename them. I wonder if your FAT partitions are mounted differently.
What I do have problems with is renaming a file on a fat partition and changing the case of letters, or even moving a file to the location of one that was just deleted and had the same name but in a different case. Usually in either of these cases the case of each letter ends up the same as in the original file.
But then for all I know this could be fixed in newer versions of Rox.

mikeb · #34 Post by **mikeb** » Fri 22 Jan 2010, 19:48

I thiought that was more to do with puppy not using unicode and then some characters do not transfer well from windows to linux such as $ (Moving $AVG meant it was trying to copy the partition rather than the folder (since $AVE for linux meant "") but that was using cp. Another quirk is that the case often changes even going from ntfs to fat32.

More serious to me is whilst making a backup of a clients windows system using cp I wanted to look in a folder to see what needed copying and rox + rox pinboard crashed...fortunately the copy continued unharmed but once again involving rox and large file systems seems to fall in a heap...puppy 4.12 running from CD with plenty of ram. And having rox crash like this is not an isolated incident....fortunately the client did not see it. If it don't work for me they certainly ain't gonna want it.....

mike

Q5sys · #35 Post by **Q5sys** » Sun 18 Apr 2010, 00:48

aarf wrote:supports file names written in non-English characters. I have these non-English file names littered through my various systems from past backups and distant past usage. do i need to go on? some of the linux file systems or rox itself will not transfer the non-English file names correctly and so i end up with large numbers of errors in the file transfer dialog window which i the have to wade through to weed out the problems. gradually i am removing the problem files through time and persistence but for those whose primary language is not supported this makes ROX virtually useless

Ive experienced the same with foreign characters. I have a hell of a time with french accents.
If that along with a proper 'back' button and the lack of a 'cut' 'paste' could be addressed, id like rox.
Sometimes I accidently hit the home button and of course cant hit back and go to where I was... no i have to re-navigate back to whatever folder I was in with a dozen or so clicks.
Also the lack of a cut/paste feature baffles me. Yea I know you can rename things to another directory... but you can only do that 1 file at at time, if you're trying to cut multiple things... it gets tedious.

And come to think of it... where is the force feature for overwriting things? I know you can quiet most processes... why cant you quiet that one? If I can over-ride the dialog question for deleting things, why cant I over-ride the dialog question for overwriting them?

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