Release Hotfix 5 - Rc 1 Ready For Testing!

[EvilDragon]

HotFix 5 is finally nearing completion. It's pretty stable already, so we got out of the Beta-Status and into RC 1.
It's not the final one yet and might have some bugs left, but it should run mostly without issues.
The final release will only add bugfixes and no new features.

It's still not in PND-form, so flashing this puts your Pandora back to the state you got it. Be sure to backup anything you put on the internal storage if you need it.
I'll work on making a PND-HF5-Installer for the final release.

Here are the changes that happened from Beta 4 to RC1:

* Added codepages (they had been removed when AbiWord has been removed). This prevented some apps like XBMC from starting.
* Removed the community backdrops to make the image size smaller.
* Added xdotool, a pretty useful and versatile app for mapping GUI functions to the keyboard
* Added Pandora Input Tester to the System-Menu
* Input Tester: Show keys that have been pressed
* libpnd: Increased the number of apps that can be defined in a PND from 20 to 50
* op_menu: specify field width for longer usernames (this fixes the non-working Pandora-Menu button in XFCE for some users)
* Low Power Mode: Now using cpu-speed-script to properly set the CPU Speed back
* MiniMenu: Some bug fixes (Keyboard-Shortcut wasn't working, crashed with wrong categories), etc.
* MiniMenu: Added Subcategory-folders in the Main Category
* MiniMenu: Added OVR-Editor
* MiniMenu: Added the possibility to add custom categories / subcategories (otherwise, the Freedesktop-Standard is used)

As you can see, there are a LOT of good new things happening with MiniMenu, thanks a lot to skeezix for this!

MiniMenu now supports subcategories as folders. On the main tab, only the main categories are shown. The grid shows ALL programs in that category as well as all available subcategories as folders. You can go into the folder to only view the programs within that subcategory.

If you have an program selected, you can press SPACE to open an OVR editor. You can change the category / subcategory as well as the name or CPU speed.
You can also hide an app if you want.

Please test these new features of MiniMenu!

In case you haven't checked the changes of HF5 Beta 1, 2 or 3 yet, here is the link to the the Beta 1 thread, here to the Beta 2 thread, here to the Beta 3 thread and here to the Beta 4 thread.

Download the latest version here.

How to flash the image?

Easy: Download the zipped image and extract the full contents onto the root of your SD Card.
Put the SD Card into slot 1 (the left one), switch on the Pandora while holding the R-Shoulder button and select "boot from SD1:1"

The flashing process should start. After it's finished, reboot the unit.
The first boot will take a while (up to 10 minutes). Patiently wait and you'll be greeted with the First Boot Wizard.

 

[sebt3]

* libpnd: Increased the number of apps that can be defined in a PND from 20 to 50

I think there are some fixes about translation here too

 

[skeezix]

Theres a bajillion little things, but he's trying not to scare the pants off everyone with a Giant Wall of Text [tm]

jeff

 

[skeezix]

BTW -- 'ovr' is a override, and is system wide -- not just inside minimenu. Just minimenu is the first convenient ovr editor .. I need to write one for xfce as well. ie: You don't need to know anything about how it works, its all transparent to the user (beyond these .ovr files popping up in your pnd directories), but a short summary of whats going on is..

An OVR file is a list of overrides for a given application -- so you can rename the app, change its preferred cpu speed, assign it new categories, and other stuff. The developer builds an application and puts in defaults into it (in the PXML) which advertises to libpnd how to handle the app. libpnd then looks for ovr files (its always done this, just very few people knew how to write them), and if present, picks up the overrides.

minimenu now provides easy to use overriding -- so even if you're an xfce user, you can open up minimenu, do some ovr edits, and quit, and you're good to go.

ie: Say an app is in the wrong category.. just recategorize it, and poof!

An ovr file is dropped in the same place as the pnd file, but with .ovr instead of .pnd in the filename.

Yeah, one of these days we need to write more documentation But there is a bunch on the PAndora Wiki, just nothign links to it so no one ever reads it

jeff

You can hit Select -> Configure and enable/disable a lot of things; default is to show 'subcategories' as folders within their main categories now, but if you want the subcategories as tabs (like before) you can turn that on. Likewise, if an app publishes itself as Game and Game->Emulator, you can have it show up in Game and Emulator both, or just in Emulator if you want to declutter your main tabs. You can create your own custom categories and subcategories if you want, and assign apps to them, all using the UI. (Noting that custom categories will just end up tossing the app into 'Other' in xfce, since its strictly following the Standard.. but mmenu will honor the overrides you've created, even if out of Standard.) SPACEBAR brings up the app menu where you can assign the app to other categories or other trickery.

Lots of other new stuff, if you've not tried minimenu recently .. hit A to toggle detail panel on/off, so you can have a full screen of icon grid (speeds things up not having to show/load screenshots), it runs faster, uses less CPU if you just let the machine idle at minimenu, etc etc. (minimenu as always uses 0 resources while running an application.)

 

[Esn]

Yeah, one of these days we need to write more documentation But there is a bunch on the PAndora Wiki, just nothign links to it so no one ever reads it

That can and should be fixed by making other pages on the wiki link to it! On the left panel in the wiki, for every page, you can see which pages link to the article you're reading.

I'm pretty clueless about devving, so it can only be done by those who understand what should be linked where.

 

[goldenegg]

Thanks for this release! I'm going to throw it on my Pandora and test it during my 15hour flight tomorrow

 

[goldenegg]

I'm having a problem with MiniMenu in this HF. Categorization seems to be broken. The emulator tab refuses to display, no matter what I do. I've even gone and recategorized apps to be in the emulator sub-category. For some, I can't even put them in the emulator sub-category. For example, Mame4All only allows me to choose from X11 subcategories, even though it's already part of game.

Any ideas? I deleted the mmenu cache off my SD cards, to ensure there wouldn't be a conflict.

 

[skeezix]

Thanks for the report!

A lot of pnds have bad categorization to begin with, which makes things hard to work with; mmenu used to let a lot of 'bad' get through and try to make it work, but that just 'enabled/encourage'd the bad behaviour.. so now we're much more strict (in line with xfce and every other desktop), so hopefully devs will clean up their pnds

So the rules are..

- did you have ovr files hand made before? If so, thats fine and they should work, but you might also have put yourself into a corner if you did some weird stuff there

- when you are trying to assign a subcategory, it only lets you pick subcategories for the category the app is in/showing-now. ie: You can't assign an app to Emulator subcat if its in the Network category, since thats an invalid selection. You would first have to set the Main category of the app to Game, and then set the subcat to Emulator.

- some pnds have just bad all around data; I've seen some pnds publishing 3 apps all with the same unique-id -- in that case, you just don't know what will happen when you try to override it .. which of the 3 will get hit?

- if a pnd is publishing bad categories, it may be hard to override .. you probably have to assign it to a good category,m then try moving it around more.

.... or you maybe hit a bug (theres probably some, since so much is new.)

But let me know which pnd and where you got it, if you're still stuck, and I can take a look; so far, every annoyance I'm run into (I fed about 50 pnds into it while developing/testing it) and any issue I found was due to bad pnd info. (ie: A bunch had swapped categories.. a pnd claiming to be main cat Emulator and subcat Game is invalid, it has to be Game->Emulator to be on spec.)

DaveC said he found a bug where if he created a main cat Emulator (normally reserved by the Standard as a subcat for Game) that then going to Game and entering the Emulator subcat might get weird or crash, so I'll invetiate that.. sounds like a bug. (I'm on the fence -- I was not going to allow new main cats that have the same name as any other cat, but I made the code allow it as long as it doesn't conflict with a main top level category, but we'll see how much pain it brings us

jeff

edit .. unless you're talking about subcategories as tabs, which we've changed default behaviuour of..

To be clear .. in the older mmenu's, subcats that were shown would show up as _tabs_; in the _default_ now, subcats show up as folder of their parent tab. So Emulator used to show up (and also Game), but by default now, Game will show up, and Emulator will show as a folder inside of Game (to keep tab-spam down.)

However, if you want Emulator _subcategory_ to show as a tab, you can turn off the new mode ("subcategories as folders" mode.. hit Select -> Configure and change it.

So could be a bad pnd thing, or could be just we've changed the way it normally looks under your feat and caught you off guard; by everything is configurable

Also you can turn on/off tabs/folders you don't want to see, etc.

 

[goldenegg]

This affects every emulator I have. None display in an 'emulator' tab, where they do prior to HF5. Even if I manually changed the sub-category of an app to be 'emulator', the tab still wouldn't appear. Mame4All is one which had a strange behaviour, where it would only show sub-categories under the X11 category, even after I change the primary category to Game. Very odd.

 

[fusion_power]

Maybe, there should be a more clear description how the PND makers make correct Categories n stuff. I find it very important that there are at least correct guide lines how to do a valid PND. If something is wrong (unknown or wrong spelled words for categories) the PND "maker" or whatever is used for this stuff should deny making the file. So Error-checking must be improved. Shouldn't be to hard to write the correct things for this stuff in the PNDs.

Maybe there can be an "PND correction tool" that fixes the wrong stuff directly in the file, so we don't have to deal with to much override-files.

 

[naples39]

I've been trying out HF4, updated with skeezix's most recent minimenu. So far so good.

A couple minor minimenu suggestions;
-I don't want to be the ovr nazi, and it's great to have the built in ovr editor, but the app re-categorization doesn't allow custom categories right now. If we're gonna be able to edit category assignments, I think it makes sense to be able make or access pre-existing custom categories as well as shift apps around freedesktop categories.

-I also think it would be more user friendly to hide/reveal apps and categories from minimenu without going into the config menus. I noticed you can hide apps from the main screen (space>hide app) and you can reveal hidden categories (select>reveal hidden category). May as well have the inverse of each function, to temporarily reveal hidden app icons or hide categories from the main display, rather than going into the config and scrolling through a long list of apps to reveal an app you previously hid. I guess I can envision it working like it does on newer blackberries, if anyone's familiar with that.

 

[skeezix]

This affects every emulator I have. None display in an 'emulator' tab, where they do prior to HF5. Even if I manually changed the sub-category of an app to be 'emulator', the tab still wouldn't appear. Mame4All is one which had a strange behaviour, where it would only show sub-categories under the X11 category, even after I change the primary category to Game. Very odd.

As suggested above --

Is it that you're trying to show the Emulator subcategory as a tab, or that you can't get apps assigned to it?

Which mame4all, and where did you get it? (So I can take a look at it.)

It _sounds_ like mame4all is declaring itself as a bad category X11, and you're trying to set a subcategory of Emulator for it (which is not a valid subcategory for X11 parent category.) So as suggest, you'd have to change its main category to Game first, then assign it to Emulator. And if you want Emulator as a tab and not as a folder inside Game, then turn off the option in Select -> Configure menu that puts subcategories as folders.

ie: Theres a few recommendations above, so you have to try one of those

We _did_ change the presentation a little, but thats because so many apps were doing things badly.

We do need more error checking, but we're hoping the store-sides will start rejecting/reporting, and mmenu and xfce will show the problems.

So far, the lazy devs are just not testing their pnds at all. I mean, if an app is packaged up and shows up in the wrong place, and the documentation link doesn't work, and the app doesn't run right.. theres just not much we can do to magicly make it work

The place that details how to make a pnd, and the sample PXML files, all declare where the list of categories and sensible values are...

jeff

mame4all beta 7 from dl.openhandhelds.org publishes itself as Game subcat Emulator. So you must be using something else?

 

[skeezix]

Thanks naples! Great feedback!

I've been trying out HF4, updated with skeezix's most recent minimenu. So far so good.

A couple minor minimenu suggestions;
-I don't want to be the ovr nazi, and it's great to have the built in ovr editor, but the app re-categorization doesn't allow custom categories right now. If we're gonna be able to edit category assignments, I think it makes sense to be able make or access pre-existing custom categories as well as shift apps around freedesktop categories.

-I also think it would be more user friendly to hide/reveal apps and categories from minimenu without going into the config menus. I noticed you can hide apps from the main screen (space>hide app) and you can reveal hidden categories (select>reveal hidden category). May as well have the inverse of each function, to temporarily reveal hidden app icons or hide categories from the main display, rather than going into the config and scrolling through a long list of apps to reveal an app you previously hid. I guess I can envision it working like it does on newer blackberries, if anyone's familiar with that.

The most recent hotfix should include the latest mmenu; the pnd I released in the other thread, the latest one (feb 09) should work as well.

- the ovr recategorization lists custom cats first, then freedesktop cats second. (Custom categories as created using the Select -> Manage custom categories menu.) If you have old ovr's lieing around that get picked up, mmenu will show them, but not automatically register their categories. (If that option makes sense, I could make it auto-register found categories, perhaps. But it doesn't do it now.. you have ot register them yourself to make them show up in the picker list.) -- the reason is -- if you register a custom cat, it shows up in your cat picker for assignment. If you then unregister the category, its gone from the picker.. but still in any ovr files you made before (so that you can reassign them as you see fit.) If we auto-register cats fro ovr, then its nearly impossible to unregister a custom category, without mmenu than hitting every one of your pnds/ovr's and editing them to something, which I am not planning on doing ....... so register your custom categories and all is well. Its not magic

- reveal hidden category is just a quick temporary pullup; say you dont' want to see System all the time as a tab, you hide it; but when you want it just that once, use Reveal and pull it up for that session. Its gone the next one until you forcibly bring it back. ie: I figure tab hide/show is not something you're doing all the time.. you do it a couple times and then you're probably all set and never do it again, so we don't need to make shortcuts to it.

- if you want a temporary reveal app .. not sure I see a 'use case' for that, but could add it; what UI would you suggest? ie: having an easy-hide is trivial, since you've got the icon selected already But for bring it back .. I could pop up a list of all hidden apps, but thats what you have now, as a Select -> Configure -> Down option .. not too far away. Unless you want to filter that list to hidden apps from the current tab, I could see that. Just how often woudl you need this? (ie: We must be careful not tomake a option for every conceivable need.. app gets out of control; instead you build a way to handle every need, and conveience methods for things you need to do all the time.)

But I've been wrong before, so let us know

jeff

Or maybe you're on an older mmenu; only yesterdays has the custom category support (or the latest hf beta).

 

[EvilDragon]

This affects every emulator I have. None display in an 'emulator' tab, where they do prior to HF5. Even if I manually changed the sub-category of an app to be 'emulator', the tab still wouldn't appear. Mame4All is one which had a strange behaviour, where it would only show sub-categories under the X11 category, even after I change the primary category to Game. Very odd.

Emulator never was a MAIN category, it is a SUB Category.
Older versions showed the subcategory as tab, the new version shows subcategories as folders in the main category.
So you won't find a tab named emulators. Your emulators are now in the GAME-Tab under the Emulators-Folder.

AFAIR you can enable in the config that subcategories will be shown in the main tab as well

 

[skeezix]

No functionality has been lost; we've changed some defaults to the new functions since we think it'll help most people, but if you disagree, you can hit Select -> configure and set things how you like. Most of what we changed was stricter enforcement of the specification

jeff

 

[naples39]

- the ovr recategorization lists custom cats first, then freedesktop cats second. (Custom categories as created using the Select -> Manage custom categories menu.) If you have old ovr's lieing around that get picked up, mmenu will show them, but not automatically register their categories. (If that option makes sense, I could make it auto-register found categories, perhaps. But it doesn't do it now.. you have ot register them yourself to make them show up in the picker list.) -- the reason is -- if you register a custom cat, it shows up in your cat picker for assignment. If you then unregister the category, its gone from the picker.. but still in any ovr files you made before (so that you can reassign them as you see fit.) If we auto-register cats fro ovr, then its nearly impossible to unregister a custom category, without mmenu than hitting every one of your pnds/ovr's and editing them to something, which I am not planning on doing ....... so register your custom categories and all is well. Its not magic

I missed the option to 'manage custom categories. Now that I see it, I think that does the trick.

- if you want a temporary reveal app .. not sure I see a 'use case' for that, but could add it; what UI would you suggest? ie: having an easy-hide is trivial, since you've got the icon selected already But for bring it back .. I could pop up a list of all hidden apps, but thats what you have now, as a Select -> Configure -> Down option .. not too far away. Unless you want to filter that list to hidden apps from the current tab, I could see that. Just how often woudl you need this? (ie: We must be careful not tomake a option for every conceivable need.. app gets out of control; instead you build a way to handle every need, and conveience methods for things you need to do all the time.)

I guess the simpler the better. Maybe just add an option under the select button menu that says "reveal all apps." Once selected, minimenu will show all apps for the rest of the session, but once you rescan or restart they'll be gone again according to the hide preferences you previously set.

 

[skeezix]

FYI ..

Minimenu
- I found something I knew about but forgot to fix .. if you register a custom category or subcategory, it would accept a blank name (ie: backspace over it all and hit Enter). Next build it won't allow that .. that'll be the same as cancelling.

- DaveC found one .. if you make a new custom main category with same name as an existing/populated subcategory, entering the subcategory could crash. (ie: If you have some emu's in Game->Emulator, and make a new top level Emulator category with the same spelling, it could cause a crash.)

Both are fixed for next build.

jeff

 

[Esn]

This affects every emulator I have. None display in an 'emulator' tab, where they do prior to HF5. Even if I manually changed the sub-category of an app to be 'emulator', the tab still wouldn't appear. Mame4All is one which had a strange behaviour, where it would only show sub-categories under the X11 category, even after I change the primary category to Game. Very odd.

Emulator never was a MAIN category, it is a SUB Category.
Older versions showed the subcategory as tab, the new version shows subcategories as folders in the main category.
So you won't find a tab named emulators. Your emulators are now in the GAME-Tab under the Emulators-Folder.

AFAIR you can enable in the config that subcategories will be shown in the main tab as well

But that's stupid. Emulators don't just emulate games.

 

[skeezix]

Esn -- so create a custom main category Emulator, and then put PDP11 subcat in there if you like. Or Create maincat Computers and put Emulators subcat in there.

More to point -- thats why Emulators is under Game; there could well be another Emulator subcat under something else, I didn't look. But the game emulators above, are properly Game->Emulator

jeff

 

[goldenegg]

Which mame4all, and where did you get it? (So I can take a look at it.)

It _sounds_ like mame4all is declaring itself as a bad category X11, and you're trying to set a subcategory of Emulator for it (which is not a valid subcategory for X11 parent category.) So as suggest, you'd have to change its main category to Game first, then assign it to Emulator. And if you want Emulator as a tab and not as a folder inside Game, then turn off the option in Select -> Configure menu that puts subcategories as folders.

The version I have is the latest from OpenHandhelds. Not sure why you don't see the same behaviour. I understand that the main category must be set to 'game' first, which I was doing. The sub category was still coming up for X11. I'll play around with it more over the weekend.

Emulator never was a MAIN category, it is a SUB Category.
Older versions showed the subcategory as tab, the new version shows subcategories as folders in the main category.
So you won't find a tab named emulators. Your emulators are now in the GAME-Tab under the Emulators-Folder.

AFAIR you can enable in the config that subcategories will be shown in the main tab as well

So I think this explains it! I didn't realize sub-categories were now shown as folders. I definitely prefer having them as tabs, so I'll take a look at enabling that functionality again.