Workflow Aesthetic Continued...

[geo_c]

@JASpup , @MochiMoppel, @bigpup, @mikewalsh. @williams2, @wizard, @666philb, @puddlemoon

As a continuation of the Icons & the Desktop, creating a workflow aesthetic thread found here: viewtopic.php?t=3839 - I decided to continue the thread after thoroughly implementing everything I've learned about desktop, theme/window/icon manipulation, and about how to place those elements in the system in a way that gives me the most bang for the buck during the course of my normal business computing day (or puppy hobbyist experimentation sessions as the case may be.)

We all have our own sense of style and priorities when it comes to how the computer looks and is organized, and although my sense of 'monochrome' darkness is certainly not for everyone, or even a significant number of people's cup of tea, I think it might be an interesting subject to share just to show what can be done with a pup by a 'lay user/hobbyist' such as myself with a little help (or lot of help actually) from the more experienced puppy computing community.

The development of Fossapup, and my personal implementation of it this year allowed me to confidently erase anything remotely microsoft from all my devices and go 100% puppy linux. Any attempts to be productive on a windows machine in the past six months at my places of business have been a frustrating experience at best. There's a fairly long list of tools you all have shared that have given me the ability to make puppy a versatile powerhouse system that runs on any machine I own, including a Toshiba laptop with ONE, count 'em (or it), one single 1.6ghz Celeron processor and 2GB of RAM. That computer was totally useless with it's factory installed 32bit Windows 10 OS, but with Fossapup64 is downright productive.

Among the tools in my arsenal are:

• wmctrl scripts

• MOUNT_drv script

• portable apps

• nicOS utilities/PaDS-1.17 for creating portables and sfs's

• JWM Theme Maker

• confidence manipulating ROX's capabilities

• jackalpup's pro audio applications

• close window/desktop scripts

• xcharm panel script

• and I'm sure I'm forgetting some others

All of those tools were given to me and taught by the community, and that's pretty cool.

As I've gained more and more of a handle on where everything is located in puppy and how it works, at least on the theming desktop side of things, I had to go the extra step and figure out what GTK, JWM, and Rox were all doing and how they fit together. In the past month I've been able to transfer themes between systems by copying all the necessary directories and config files. I went the extra step and began editing pre-existing themes to the point of editing the graphic elements of GTK-2 themes. And below is the result, a completely black and more or less mono-chrome theme.

Recent discussions with @JASpup about GTK, JWM, and ROX found here: viewtopic.php?t=4585

Here's a quick demonstration of how this all works for me, and it doesn't cover everything, but gives a good idea of where I'm going with it all.

Last night I found another gtk black theme to modify. It was a much simpler organization structure than other themes I modified. It's call Boomerang Blackout downloaded from gnome-look. It was all stark white foreground on black backgound. I hate white on black, but green on black is another story. I re-did all the graphic elements in gtk-2.0, edited gtkrc files, and combined it with the Trinity-Green gtk-3 theme, and I have a new fully functional and sharp theme. It took about 4 hours.

These gifs demonstrate how starting from a clean desktop, panels, docks, apps and file managers can be opened and their positions set with scripts launched from the panel. The gifs change the color of some of the apps a bit, but they get the point across.

Opening the panel, running the MOUNT_drv script, mounting an sd card.

Opening notecase, popping up the Cairo dock.

Shutting down and opening three ROX windows placed and sized with a wmctrl script.

Opening screen graphics wizard and multi-monitor from a right click to the menu on the desktop.

Opening fully sized and arranged MOUNT_drv and grsync from the panel, unmounting sd card.

Opening Xfe and LibreWolf from the panel, setting them with a wmctrl panel script.

Shutting down Libre and Xfe, opening geany and showing the gtk-3 Black theme menus.

[Duprate]

Hi! A beautiful job that gives your system its own identity. You have talent! Congratulations!

[wiak]

makes me wish you would set up my desktop for me.

[geo_c]

makes me wish you would set up my desktop for me.

Well, if you like the GTK theme, there's no reason I can't package it up. You'd have to set your JWM colors to complement it using JWM Theme Maker. The wmctrl scripts to place windows take a lot of fiddling with display pixel numbers, and of course the windows and app launch commands have to be named according to your applications. @MochiMoppel helped me a lot with how to use those commands in the above mentioned previous 'aesthetic' thread. The window scripts take a lot of work, but once done they take all of the 'fighting the windows' frustration out of getting things done during the day. Basically whatever task I need to do, communicate through email and browser sites, file manage, etc... those tasks are all setup now with a few clicks and everything is set to go. So it pays off in the end, if you're willing to do the tedium of trial and error window placement and number entry in simple scripts.

Here's a sample of a script in my panel that sets any of the included applications windows that happen to be open exactly where I want them:

Code: Select all

wmctrl -r LibreWolf -e 0,2868,-24,976,1050
wmctrl -r Xfe -e 0,1920,-24,942,1052

wmctrl -r Pale Moon -e 0,2870,-21,968,1060
wmctrl -r Chromium -e 0,2872,-22,968,1052
wmctrl -r GNU Image Manipulation Program -e 0,1428,40,1800,1014
wmctrl -r MuseScore -e 0,1427,32,1796,1024
wmctrl -r Tor Browser -e 0,2230,-10,998,1053

wmctrl -r Sylpheed -e 0,255,6,1060,994
wmctrl -r Message View -e 0,1926,36,935,1022
wmctrl -r Compose -e 0,2877,25,972,1022
#wmctrl -r QuiteRSS -e 0,268,24,1620,940
wmctrl -r Notecase -e 0,255,4,1058,994
wmctrl -r Geany -e 0,1922,21,939,1035
wmctrl -r Ardour -e 0,1430,16,1784,1048

And the wmctrl command is probably already built in to your pup.

[bigpup]

Well, if you like the GTK theme, there's no reason I can't package it up.

Yes, please give us a package !

[geo_c]

Yes, please give us a package !

Here's a link to a zip of the GTK-2.0/3.0 theme: https://mega.nz/file/TGo00LRA#eC0MM1bDw ... 6aBbv4QgS8

This needs to placed and unzipped in /usr/share/themes/ and then it should appear as an option in GTK theme chooser from the JWMdesk 3.3.

In order to make this theme unified with the rest of the desktop however, one would need:

• my matching icon set

• my ROX mime-icons and perhaps most of the /root/.config/rox.sourceforge.net/ folder

• JWM theme settings from /root/.jwm/jwmrc-theme

• the panel script if desired

The GTK theme is at the above link, and I'll begin assembling the rest for anyone who would like to give this a test run. I would make a pet, but I don't really understand how to do it as of yet.

One should note that this theme may be counterintuitive for some as it lacks things most are used to seeing, like window borders. However if the desktop background is not set to black, one could then see the window edges, though crude and probably quite ugly. I personally want my applications to display only the necessary information on a black field. In the gif above that shows 3 ROX windows opening, the scroll bar troughs are the only thing actually separating the windows. otherwise the folders are more or less 'suspended in space.' One can see that the JWM title bars don't appear, but that's because I am placing the top of the windows underneath the Menu tray to hide them. I also use wmctrl to place most of my other applications in a similar way.

[geo_c]

The matching desktop icons can be found here: https://mega.nz/file/HC5yhTiC#Lone9TVjy ... 6Rq0tPmPBg

This should be unzipped and placed in /usr/local/lib/X11/themes/

They won't be associated with any applications though. There are commonly used browser and pup application icons, along with some generic ones. Inside the /console directory is another directory called /midi, and these are desktop drive icons. To use them they should be copied to /usr/share/midi-icons. If you don't want your current ones written over, then rename the current icons to something like: drive48-OLD.png, or simply copy them to another location to restore at a later time.

[geo_c]

Here is the script to bring up the panel. I didn't write it, and honestly don't fully understand it, but it creates a panel on the right side of the screen, and when it's run again shuts the panel down. It can be placed in /root/my-applications/bin/. Drag it to the desktop to create a launcher and assign an icon to launch the panel from the desktop.

Applications can be drug into the panel to add a launcher in the panel and then a custom icon can be assigned just like in a ROX window. In my theme the panel is set to a width of 28 pixels. That can be adjusted by right clicking on empty space in the panel and choosing panel options.

I have a launcher on the desktop pointing to the script in /root/my-applications/bin. The script can be created by opening a blank text file, copying the code into it, saving it with whatever name you like, and making it executable. It needs to be made executable to be used. That can be done by right clicking the script in ROX, choosing >file 'script-name'>permissions and choosing yes to the make executable/searchable option.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
f=/tmp/flag
if test -f $f
then
  rox -r=
  rm -f $f
else
  rox -r charm
  touch $f
fi

[geo_c]

And here are the MIME-icons I use in ROX.

https://mega.nz/file/PPhk1BAZ#JiLaaxESj ... 0FXzGrY2ac

My ROX icons are set in ROX options to pmaterial, but I assign every mime-type I encounter to one of these icons using the right-click>set icon>For all files of type '_' option, and dragging one of these icons into the dialog. I see next to zero pmaterial icons in my ROX windows.

Rename your /root/.config/rox.sourceforge.net/MIME-icons folder to MIME-icons-OLD and unzip this file into /root/.config/rox.sourceforge.net/ and you might get most of your files assigned to them. They look great on a black theme.

[geo_c]

Lastly the JWM theme needs to match the GTK-theme. I would recommend setting the colors using JWM Theme Maker. The colors I am using are actually a much different green than the rest of the theme, and that has a lot to do with the fact that my JWM font is bold, which means the same green as GTK would come up a lot brighter and more obnoxious. Here's what my /root/.jwm/jwmrc-theme file looks like, and it might work to simply copy it, but I'm not sure that's the best approach. You can see that it's all black background and #0C720E foreground.

Code: Select all

<?xml version=1.0?>
<?xml version=1.0?>
<JWM>

  <WindowStyle>
    <Font>DejaVu Sans-11:style=Bold</Font>
    <Width>4</Width>
    <Height>22</Height>
    <Corner>4</Corner>
    <Foreground>#0C720E</Foreground>
    <Background>#000000:#000000</Background>
    <Outline>#000000</Outline>
    <Active>
      <Foreground>#0C720E</Foreground>
      <Background>#000000:#000000</Background>
      <Outline>#000000</Outline>
    </Active>
  </WindowStyle>

  <TrayStyle>
    <Font>DejaVu Sans-11:style=Bold</Font>
    <Foreground>#0C720E</Foreground>
    <Background>#000000</Background>
    <Outline>#000000</Outline>
    <Active>
      <Foreground>#0C720E</Foreground>
      <Background>#000000:#000000</Background>
    </Active>
  </TrayStyle>

  <PagerStyle>
		<Outline>green</Outline>
		<Foreground>#000000</Foreground>
		<Background>#000000</Background>
		<Active>
		<Foreground>#000000</Foreground>
		<Background>#000000</Background>
		</Active>
	</PagerStyle>

  <PopupStyle>
		<Font>DejaVu Sans-11:style=Bold</Font>
		<Outline>#000000</Outline>
		<Foreground>#0C720E</Foreground>
		<Background>#000000</Background>
	</PopupStyle>

  <MenuStyle>
    <Font>DejaVu Sans-11:style=Bold</Font>
    <Foreground>#0C720E</Foreground>
    <Background>#000000</Background>
    <Outline>#000000</Outline>
    <Active>
      <Foreground>#0C720E</Foreground>
      <Background>#000000:#000000</Background>
    </Active>
  </MenuStyle>

</JWM>

[TerryH]

What a stunning desktop! Your efforts to produce an aesthetically pleasing desktop is very admirable. Well done and thanks for sharing.

[geo_c]

I still have one big thing to do to make this theme comprehensive, and that is figure out how to get a complementary icon set into the JWM menu. It's my next endeavor.

[geo_c]

@bigpup

One more link. Here is my complete set of icons stored in /usr/local/lib/X11/themes. It consists of the icons already posted, and a couple of other color sets: https://mega.nz/file/mPYgkLqZ#j257khfzT ... Sf3JI8qu1g

• blue-in-green

• cayan-bright

• cayan-dark

• green(currently same as 'console')

• random color-icon archive

• icons for my launch scripts (like panel) - located in system-script/mono/

• and Fancy-Dark-MIME-types

My plan was to be able to use the /usr/local/lib/X11/themes/geotheme-drk/console/ directory as the active color set that my desktop launchers link to, and then change color schemes by copying the other color sets into it with a script.

Maybe I'll get to that in the year 2022, when we all have flying cars.

[Clarity]

How does this behave with touchscreen systems?

• Touch for applications listings?

• Touch for navigations?

• Multi-touch & gestures for right-click and the likes?

Curious if you have tested with 'touch' AIOs/Laptops?

[geo_c]

How does this behave with touchscreen systems?

• Touch for applications listings?

• Touch for navigations?

• Multi-touch & gestures for right-click and the likes?

Curious if you have tested with 'touch' AIOs/Laptops?

Interesting question, because one of my laptops is a touchscreen. I never use it, but I seem to recall that it might of worked in Fossapup. Let me boot it up and see if it works. Is there a setup dialog in Fossapup somewhere?

[geo_c]

• Touch for applications listings?

• Touch for navigations?

• Multi-touch & gestures for right-click and the likes?

Curious if you have tested with 'touch' AIOs/Laptops?

Well the touch screen works, but it seems a little clumsy. I don't have any experience with it though. So I'll have to play around with it more. It opens files on a double touch. Don't know how to do the 'right-click' thing. So I'll need to explore it.

Basically I think the answer to your question is this works like any Fossapup64 install when it comes to touch screens, and this theme shouldn't change anything. As far as I know the GTK theme doesn't have an effect on input, but if I'm wrong about that please educate me!

[geo_c]

@bigpup

Here are some better window buttons, they go in usr/share/pixmaps/jwm_button_themes

Drop them in that directory, restart the window manager and they should appear on the windows.

[wizard]

@geo_c

Drag it to the desktop to create a launcher and assign an icon to launch the panel from the desktop.

You might want to consider making a simple .desktop file for the script, then drag and drop the .desktop file to the desktop. The advantage is the icon is then automatic and will not be broken if you rename the desktop link. The .desktop file can be placed anywhere, but if you put it in /usr/share/applications it can also appear in the Puppy menu.

wizard

[geo_c]

@geo_c

Drag it to the desktop to create a launcher and assign an icon to launch the panel from the desktop.

You might want to consider making a simple .desktop file for the script, then drag and drop the .desktop file to the desktop. The advantage is the icon is then automatic and will not be broken if you rename the desktop link. The .desktop file can be placed anywhere, but if you put it in /usr/share/applications it can also appear in the Puppy menu.

wizard

Well I tried this using Add a Program to the Rox Desktop and that didn't work out. What's the real way to add a desktop file?

[wizard]

@geo_c

Just open /usr/share/applications and drag one to the desktop.

If want to make your own take a look at this howto by @mikewalsh :
viewtopic.php?t=3420

wizard

[geo_c]

@geo_c

If want to make your own take a look at this howto by @mikewalsh :
viewtopic.php?t=3420

wizard

Yeah that's the ticket. I made my desktop launcher manually. Now I understand the setup. That makes it easier to add to other pupsaves. I do things like email these files to myself and when I boot into another save grab the attachment and I'm good to go. Thanks!

[geo_c]

@@JASpup, @@MochiMoppel, @@bigpup, @@mikewalsh, @@williams2, @@wizard, @@666philb, @puddlemoon

Well I've been doing some more tweaks. I made the theme more realistically mono-chrome in that all the colors in jwmrc-theme/gtk-2.0/concky are set to exactly the same value #0C872D, which is very green on all my monitors, and changed the bold font in the menu and window titles to normal/book.

The only thing that takes away from the mono-chrome/drk console feel at this point are the tray notification icons, and the JWM-menu icons.

I have a desire to create a JWM menu with no icons displayed at all.

Is there a way to do that?

And I'm wondering where to look for the tray-notification icons.

POST SCRIPT:
Well to answer my own question. I used Geany to search /root/.jwmrc and replace icon=" with icon="X thereby adding an X to the frontend of the icon path and breaking all the icons, but leaving the references to the icon set while taking them out of the menu.

I like it.

[geo_c]

Well that was an eye-opener. Rebooted today and all the icons re-appeared!

[geo_c]

Well that was an eye-opener. Rebooted today and all the icons re-appeared!

Looking at the /etc/xdg/templates/README.txt, and seeing that rebooting completely restored the /root/.jwmrc file after I modified it, it appears that the /root/.jwmrc file is written by the template at every boot, so I'm wondering what it references to fill in the menu entries.

Is this why /root always has:

.jwmrc
.jwmrc-previous
.jwm-tray
.jwm-tray-bak
.jwm-tray.bak

to fall back on?

In other words, if I rewrite jwmrc and jwmrc-previous will my changes stick?

Well @geo_c , that's doubtful, because the jwmrc-previous file contains the changes of adding X into the icon path. So it appears that jwmrc was overwritten from scratch and the changes became jwmrc-previous. So there's a missing piece somewhere here.

[williams2]

if I rewrite jwmrc and jwmrc-previous will my changes stick?

No. /usr/sbin/fixmenus is run when Puppy boots, and when a software package is installed or uninstalled, when the system language is changed, etc.

I'm wondering what it references to fill in the menu entries.

It references .desktop files in /usr/share/applications/

There are more .desktop files in /usr/local/apps/

[geo_c]

It references .desktop files in /usr/share/applications/

There are more .desktop files in /usr/local/apps/

Which raises the question, when the menu icons are changed using something like JWMdesk>Puppy Icon Switcher does that change the icon definition within each .desktop file, or is it more like pixmaps points each desktop file to a new icon?

[JASpup]

Which raises the question, when the menu icons are changed using something like JWMdesk>Puppy Icon Switcher does that change the icon definition within each .desktop file, or is it more like pixmaps points each desktop file to a new icon?

the latter

We can also just run icon_switcher from terminal.

[geo_c]

Which raises the question, when the menu icons are changed using something like JWMdesk>Puppy Icon Switcher does that change the icon definition within each .desktop file, or is it more like pixmaps points each desktop file to a new icon?

the latter

We can also just run icon_switcher from terminal.

So much floating around in my head now. I've got to figure out this pixmaps thing. I don't know much about it. I just understand it by it's name, "Must be a map to all the pics."

The icon themes seem to be a kind of buggy aspect of desktop systems in general. I don't mean that they don't work or have bugs, but I mean it's quite an overwhelming endeavor to create a set. Creating the pics is one thing, but naming them and pointing the OS to them is another.

I've downloaded puppy icons from the package manager, and they are limited to a standard set, with seemingly a standard set of names so they can switched in and out. Then I've downloaded sets, comprehensive ones from gnome.look. They come with an index file. But I suppose that's tailored toward a specific desktop, gnome, or XFCE, or whatever the category happens to be for the specific download.

So then there's the idea of, I like my personalized icons, though they are always a work in progress, like still needing the gamma, exposure values set properly, etc. And then there's the idea of just getting rid of menu, window title bar icons altogether. In one sense, most of the icon sets I look at are just not that appealing. It's easy to see from my gifs and demonstrations in this thread that when it comes to icons, I have a certain simplistic bent. I guess it's leaning toward solid color, symbolic but defined types of images. Or why not just ditch them altogether, but I like them in ROX, which works well with the black background approach. So that's MIME type icons, and the ones I have manually assigned in ROX fit the bill. But the menu, and the window title bars look pretty darn sharp without any icons whatsoever. I know because I just made that happen in the menu, at least until the next boot when they all came back.

So the easiest solution for me, and one that puppy's layout might serve well, is to keep the MIME icons in ROX, and find an effective way to blow the other icons out of the picture. And then we will be very close to MATRIX-pup.

@JASpup regarding your comments in the other thread about panels, and hiding them. With what @wizard just showed me about making the .desktop file, and also delving into .jwmrc-tray, I was actually able to ditch the desktop icons altogether. I put my panel switch, conky switch, MOUNT_drv script, and dcontrol all in the tray each with a nice green icon from my set. So the panel is easily switched on and off from the JWM menu tray. One click on, one click off. I can boot up into a completely black desktop with the JWM menu tray on autohide, and switch on/off any other desktop items with one click, like the panel. So it's rather nice.

[geo_c]

@JASpup

I've got one more thought about this icon switching thing, "How the heck do people code all of this?" Does somebody have a flowchart somewhere that shows what the order and flow of the graphic elements of the system are connected? It seems there must be some documentation of the organization behind it floating around somewhere.

I like to know how things work, yet I'm comfortable operating at peak level with a lot of gray area unresolved. Must be the musician in me. But usually at some point I think, "Okay, I've got to master this technique."

[JASpup]

I've got to figure out this pixmaps thing. I don't know much about it.

The pixmaps folder is shortcuts to icon theme sets that change by the theme chosen + standard icons, or the other way around.

Do I have this mastered? No, but I notice odd things here and there. Is it too complicated? Yes. It is reasonable to have different icon themes in the same boot, but the graphical system feels more cobbled together than premeditated.

My main issue with extra sets are their size. There is a big difference between Icon Theme sets and the comprehensive GTK sets. Here in Slacko6 the installed icon themes are all under 150 KILOBYTES. The comprehensive Standard set symlinked from a pixmaps subdirectory is still less than 350k.

Full icon themes can be 25 MEGABYTES.

Puppy is another fish in the sea without its efficiency ethic. There has to be a middle ground... that is, where you can see all icons in your system without icon bloat.

And then there's the idea of just getting rid of menu, window title bar icons altogether.

I'm still experimenting, but one idea mentioned earlier that has been working well is multiple launch methods, i.e., the grabbing the closest utensil trick. It is functionality that gives an os value, and three unobtrusive ways to do the same thing is an example.

I had a similar ditching idea with FindNRun, but I find with it installed I'll still use menus or Rox launcher folders.

Your big idea from my perspective is a comprehensive vision for a unified desktop. It seems like a lot of justifiable work.

I am fine with simple JWM trays that autohide. I am still intrigued by your wmcontrol icon windows.