Xfce in Puppy 1.09?

[Lobster]

Just tried a file called 1234Xfce.pup with 1.09 and only just managed to return to the desktop

(it required the command "xwin jwm") and the taskbar was slow at appearing. May have to remove my pupoo1 (a frequent occurence for me as I try new software)

Is Xfce available for 1.09? Anybody got it working? Which link to Xfce did you use? What procedure? What about the XDG menus?

[rarsa]

Is Xfce available for 1.09? Anybody got it working? Which link to Xfce did you use? What procedure? What about the XDG menus?

I'll try it tomorrow and I will let you know.

I had the impression that Nathan had created the XFce xdg menu. if not I'll do it tomorrow, it'll take me a few minutes after I install xfce.

[Nathan F]

I have XFCE installed using the trimmed down version, and also have an xdg 'programs' menu in place in my install. I could package it, but have a lot of other things going on right now. I can tell you that it does work for me, and quite well at that.

I did plan to release a more official Fluxbox package pretty soon, along with a WindowMaker package. Probably in dotpup format but registering themselves with Pupget. Please feel free to get XFCE put together because I'm pretty swamped right now (read the news page at grafpup.com for a few of the details, and all that on top of getting 109 out the door).

Nathan

[Dougal]

The old xfce (1234) has to be restarted with "xwin xfce4" or "xwin xfce4-rox" (for running with pinboard).

When it was posted a separate xinitrc file was supplied, to replace the one that comes with Puppy.

However! Since that file is from an old Pup, I'd suggest you copy the relevand parts from it to your xinitrc.

It's not anything fancy, even someone with their head deep under water can do it...
Just find these two code blocks:

Code: Select all

CURRENTWM="`cat /etc/windowmanager`"
if [ "$CURRENTWM" = "xfce-rox" ];then
 exec "/root/.xinitrc-xfce-rox"
fi

Code: Select all

CURRENTWM="`cat /etc/windowmanager`"
if [ "$CURRENTWM" = "xfce4" ];then
 exec "/root/.xinitrc-xfce"
fi

I'd suggest you stick them somewhere at the end, maybe before the line:

Code: Select all

xsetroot -cursor_name top_left_arrow

[mjg]

I must have my head deep under water, because it took me a while to figure this out.

xinitirc is a hidden file in the root directory. Changing it as Dougal suggests does work.

I don't know about others, but my font sizes don't carry across from JWM and IceWM and look really small in xfce.

[Pizzasgood]

Start > Control Panel > Xfce Settings

Then you can do all kinds of stuff.

EDIT: I don't know if this version is the one that has that entry. If not, the same thing might be able to be done by running
xfce-setting-show
in a terminal.

[slvrldy17]

Awhile back if memory serves me AlienX (?) posted a cut down version of Xfce that has worked flawlessly for me in all versions of puppy 1.x.x including 1.0.9 - I can't find my note right now but he gave a start command in his post that is/was quite different than what is posted here. Not sure if this will help or confuse matters. The post might have been in the additional software forum. One thing it doesn't do is register to pupget so if you upgrade you lose it and have to reinstall.

Edit to add - Start command for Alienx's version is "startx xfce4-session" which is only needed for the initial start - after that Xfce comes up automatically in place of JWM.

[Nathan F]

Yes, the AlienX version is the one I was using. It works flawlessly with one exception-it doesn't register any files with Pupget. This fact earned me a few terse PM's when people upgraded to 109 and saw their XFCE installation vanish, which was of course my fault.

I think though the AlienX package is a good base for a new one, which should have the Puppified XDG menus right from the beginning and should also register with Pupget. I considered turning it into a Pupget for 109 but didn't have the time, and didn't want to go filling out the Pupget repo too much.

Nathan

[rarsa]

The good news

Is Xfce available for 1.09? Anybody got it working?

I tried both versions of XFCE. The "less than 1 MB" and the other one in the main XFCE tread (XFce.pup). Both worked flawlessly following the instructions.

The bad news

What about the XDG menus?

XFce has just a partial implementation of the XDG menus standard.
It does not support the <Layout> hints or Merged menus.

It was OK when I created the first test that was a partial menu (the applications menu) but when I created the full menu It looks awfull.

XFce actually chokes when it finds the <Layout> tag or the <MergeFile> tags. It just does not render anything.

The <Layout> hints tell the menu generator where to put separators and how to group the entries in submenus. When to in-line a sub menu and the order of the entries.

The <MergeFile> is just a way to organize the submenus in different files to simplify readablilty.

The hope
There are work arounds
- I am posting a version of the Puppy 109 XDG menus for XFce. It does not look pretty but it works. To get the icons you must symlink all the icons from /usr/local/lib/X11/mini-icons into /usr/local/lib/X11/pixmaps

- I will create today a XFce menu generator that will work outside XFce. It will generate the menu when starting X. Other than that it will be transparent for users.

[Dougal]

The bad news

What about the XDG menus?

XFce has just a partial implementation of the XDG menus standard.
It does not support the <Layout> hints or Merged menus.

I was wondering about that while making the xfce dotpups yesterday...

In my experience xfce seems to manage ok with .desktop files as they come, but doesn't recognize the trimmed down ones used in Puppy.

Which got me wondering: Why couldn't we leave the .desktop files intact and have the Puppy menu thing only use the relevant lines (using grep or something)?

Someone asked what to use to start AlienX's xfce: xwin xfce4-session

[Dougal]

I must have my head deep under water, because it took me a while to figure this out.

I wasn't trying to be offensive. It was a jest referring to our crustacian friend...

You seem to have your head in a much better place than deep under water...

[Nathan F]

Okay lets do some clarification here. The .desktop files in Puppy109 aren't really trimmed down so much as they were created by hand, one at a time, by Rarsa. This was a HUGE task for which he deserves a lot of thanks. I knw because I'm currently doing the same for Grafpup.

What you said does have some merit in it though. Especially if you consider menu translations, which can be done pretty automatically with xdg. Using grep would not be required though, because it's all parsed automatically by the gnome-menus so and menu generation utilities. If we were to go and start collecting the ones that come in the source tarballs of the programs we're using they usually contain at least a few translations already, then we would just have to recategorize them to match better with what Rarsa has already done.

I've not looked into doing this too much in XFCE, but did get a working menu with most of the Puppy applications by adding a 'system' submenu to the XFCE menu. Not all applications were listed and the categories were a bit off, but it's a way to get it going. I can tell that XFCE itself needs a bit of work to fully comply with the standards, but then again most of the desktops and WM's out there aren't even as far along as XFCE in this regard.

Nathan

[rarsa]

In my experience xfce seems to manage ok with .desktop files as they come, but doesn't recognize the trimmed down ones used in Puppy.

Which got me wondering: Why couldn't we leave the .desktop files intact and have the Puppy menu thing only use the relevant lines (using grep or something)?

Huu?? What do you mean '.desktop files as they come' and 'trimmed down ones'?

The problem I am referring to has nothing to do with .desktop files but with XFce's implementation of the XDG standard. XFce provides a partial implementation as I explained in my previous post. Period.

The XDG implementation used in puppy (gnome-menus) correctly handles any compliant .desktop file.

The .desktop files included in Puppy are a workaround to the fact that we didn't have the original .desktop files and that many apps included in Puppy do not even have an 'original' .desktop file. Have I had the developer provided .desktop file I would have included it.

I created some scripts to create and categorize the .desktop files based on the pre-xdg JWM menu. Those files are 100% compliant, not trimmed down.

This was to break the chicken and egg problem where people would not include the .desktop files in the packages if Puppy didn't support XDG and XDG would not be implemented because there were no .desktop files.

The idea is to start replacing those with the 'original' .desktop files provided by the application developers.

In theory, the puppy-xdgmenus package should not include any .desktop files. All the .desktop files should come from their respective packages. Including them was just a temporary workaround.

I hope this clarifies the purpose and the intended direction of the XDG implementation in Puppy.

[rarsa]

Oh, and another thing...

I had intended to upload a menu file for XFce but that's when the forum problems started and then I completelly forgot

Here it is. As I said, this menu does not look pretty but that's mainly due to the XFce implementation of XDG.

I'll post the true workaround later.

The package includes two files.

- xfce4.menu: put this file under /etc/xdg/menus
- menu.xml: put this file under /root/.config/xfce/desktop (I think this is the right path but I don't have puppy with me. In any event, it should go under the desktop directory that's somewhere under the /root/.config directory )

And don't forget to create symlinks under pixmaks to all the files under mini-icons for the icons to show.

[Dougal]

Oh, there seems to have been a bit of a misunderstanding:

Rarsa asked a while ago that when people make dotpups, they should add .desktop files built like the template he showed.

So when I make a dotpup of a program that already has a .desktop file, I move it to /usr/share/applications and trim it down- which in turn seems to cause it to not be recognized by the xfce system menu... (at least for me it wasn't)

My idea was that the XDG thing would look for what it wants in the file, ignoring everything it doesn't need.

[rarsa]

Oh, there seems to have been a bit of a misunderstanding:

Rarsa asked a while ago that when people make dotpups, they should add .desktop files built like the template he showed.

You are absulutelly right. The post is not clear. It could be interpreted both ways. I'll edit the request to clarify the instructions:

I'm changing from this:

If you are just repackaging an existing application, just make sure that the .desktop file gets copied to the appropriate location (/usr/share/applications).

The format of the file is very simple. Use the following example as a template. (Note that this file is Case sensitive)

To this

If you are just repackaging an application that already has a .desktop file, just make sure that .desktop file gets copied to the appropriate location (/usr/share/applications).

If you are packaging an application that does not provide its own .desktop file, then create one. The format of the file is very simple. Use the following example as a template. (Note that this file is Case sensitive)

I hope this is clearer.

Thank you

[rarsa]

Dougal
Do the files I posted work for you?

[Dougal]

Rarsa: I don't have 1.0.9...

I tried the xfce menu alone and it didn't work. I tried adding a "system" menu to my xfce menu but it wouldn't recognized my trimmed down .desktop files, only the full ones of the xfce utilities...]

BTW: xfce comes with a bunch of .desktop files that aren't relevant in other WMs, so people might encounter some serious bloat in their menus after installing it... (I removed all the "settings" part of the menu, since they all exist in the settings manager...)

[rarsa]

Rarsa: I don't have 1.0.9...

I thought this thread was XFce under 109. What are you doing here? ... (I'm just kidding )

I assume that you installed the puppy-xdgmenus package. The package depends on an updated version of the fixmenus script, but that's only relevant when you are installing pupgets.

In any event. the XDG menus were implemented as a go-forward. Installing them in previous versions of puppy require a couple of extra steps.

I tried the xfce menu alone and it didn't work. I tried adding a "system" menu to my xfce menu but it wouldn't recognized my trimmed down .desktop files, only the full ones of the xfce utilities...

I tested XFce and it works with the files I provided, which are NOT trimmed down.

BTW: xfce comes with a bunch of .desktop files that aren't relevant in other WMs

I should play a little bit more with the "OnlyShowIn" property and see how the gnome-menus library handles it.

[Dougal]

Rarsa, just one request:

Could you add to the message with the .desktop file info a list of available categories?

I tried looking through the xfce xml file and finding the right section;subsection;subsubsection can be a little hard (that's for when an application doesn't come with a .desktop file and I need to create it myself)