Lets start making the helper gadgets

[Blue Shadow]

Of course that is easy, of course you can make a keybinding for that.
But every half sane person would be glad to have a simple clickable button instead.

I did not talk about a keybinding, I talked about gui elements. And I still see no need of being rude (like implying that persons who prefer a command line won't be sane)

And this thread was meant to provide this buttons.

But why can't those code examples be seen as a step in the process to make such buttons?

Person A: I would like to have function xyz
Person B: this can be done with following code: ...
Person C: Oh cool, did not know this. *writes a gui app implementing that code*

And in the case of a oneliner, A and C could often even be the same person, without have any deep technical knowledge (other than copy and paste to icon properties). And if they hesitate, there might still be someone around who provides a ready-to-use icon.

I mean It is your topic, so it might be up to you what you consider appropriote regarding to your question. But I really think code examples will serve your purpose rather than contradicting it.

 

[elw3]

I wasnt even criticising you @levi , at least you put a little explanation in it.

But I really think code examples will serve your purpose rather than contradicting it.

Yesyes sure i totally agree and all. But finding any value in an example that shows the sleep command only works when the readers are lobotomized.
Further there already is a bunch of example scripts on the pyra by default. If we disregard what there is and start again doing basic oneliners we will have a complete gui in 2043.

 

[levi]

I'm not sure I've found all of the scripts, but certainly some of them are here.

There doesn't seem to be a lot there for user use to be honest. They seem more about first run things that basically make things work. If you know there are more scripts and can find where we poor users without our pyra's yet can look at them, can you post the link, @elw3

 

[ible]

@elw3 is it a bigger request to ask for non-terminal solutions (i.e., making someone spend time creating a gui, maintaining it, and making it easy to use) than to ask someone to learn a few tricks in the terminal?

the terminal is infinitely more flexible than a GUI, and you can learn things on your own pace (web-search what you want to do and do it).

 

[Binky]

Tut. Real programmers use butterflies!

Command-lines are great if you already know what you want, and are adept at either working out how to achieve it, or throwing search terms at StackOverflow. However, they are extremely unwelcoming for a novice or non-technical user, because there are so few hints at what's possible, or even where to start. Yes, man pages exist, but they're not always much better than Wikipedia articles on maths!

That's not to say the CLIs aren't powerful, efficient tools - or that we shouldn't be supporting increased computer literacy in the world - but you can't force people into it.

We should be welcoming new users who may not know what "joe@pyra:~$" means, and helping them learn new tricks if and when they want to learn. That comes with being a free-and-open community project.

Behaving as if people who don't live and breathe shell scripts are somehow unworthy is exactly the sort of elitist nonsense that scares people away from the FOSS world! What does that achieve?

 

[spud42]

well said Binky.

 

[pyrat]

What's wrong with you all ?
Has shutdown been deprecated or something ?

shutdown +60 "Good night"

 

[ible]

Behaving as if people who don't live and breathe shell scripts are somehow unworthy is exactly the sort of elitist nonsense that scares people away from the FOSS world! What does that achieve?

my point was not that, rather that it was unreasonable to ask someone to develop a GUI that would take some time and effort, as opposed to teaching people a super simple terminal command. unless, of course, they were willing to put in the time to make the GUI.

and who knows, maybe the newbie will appreciate learning the command line. it's not like we said RTFM; we gave the command you'd use...

 

[Silent-Hunter]

I also think computer stuff has gotten too user friendly, in a way. Linux has an opportunity to be both user friendly and highly customizable, but Windows for example has sacrificed customizability for user friendliness and it really shows. You can't even change the system font anymore. I feel like the reason for this is people didn't want to read manuals, and companies want to make everything so completely intuitive that anyone can use it without reading the manual. But I think we should go back to how it was in the 90s and people should just read the manual that comes with their software.

Then again, like I said, Linux has an opportunity to be both. So I'm absolutely not against including these tools. But I do think the Pyra should come with a manual explaining the preinstalled command-line programs. Such as 'shutdown', and 'ls', etc.

 

[theredbaron]

A sleep timer would be nice. I often use my Pandora as mp3 player when going to bed and so I want it to poweroff after an hour or so.
Someone posted a .PND (it is not ithe one from the Repo) which opens a dialog where you can set the desired time in minutes. It then minimizes to the task bar and shows the remaining time in a mouse-over popup. You can also stop or change the timer from there.

Something like that would be nice to have as build-in widget.

If you don't mind a zenith script, that's one of the few things even I could write . A little popup asking for how long in min, set a sleep with a notification every 5 min for when it will shut off, and a final "click this or shut down will accure in X secs".

Sent from my H3123 using Tapatalk

 

[troy]

I would rather us start an effort to make the terminal accessible through tutorials and community effort than try and act like it's not an essential part of operating linux. If we want people creating new things on the pyra they're going to need to understand what they're working with.

 

[TrashyMG]

There is already a bit of scripts in /usr/share/pyra/scripts/letux/, but may have to sort through some that appear to be there for testing/debugging purposes.

 

[theredbaron]

I would rather us start an effort to make the terminal accessible through tutorials and community effort than try and act like it's not an essential part of operating linux. If we want people creating new things on the pyra they're going to need to understand what they're working with.

Some people don't like the term, and "forcing" them to use it makes them less likely to do it. When I first started on Linux, I used Ubuntu, so as to not use the term. I had GUI options for everything. The term was just something to play around with, not for actually doing anything.

Now, I run arch, bloody love pacman to any GUI package manager I have seen, and use a term all the bloody time. Having a GUI let me do that, I couldn't just dive in, no matter how many guides there where. You lead people to water, you don't toss them into the deep end and hope.

Sent from my H3123 using Tapatalk

 

[levi]

Yes, I think most linux users come across and become fans of the terminal sooner or later. That's not to say we should push people in that direction automatically though; I don't think it's a widely saleable. There are products for entirely terminal users, like that thing that was recently promoted here, which I can't actually recall the name or producer of, but it was about A4 in size and had a big keyboard and a few lines on LCD, and came without batteries (you had to supply your own 18650s). But that's a niche and Pyra users are a different niche.

That said, to begin with we might need more people to be familiar with the terminal to get us going though, I'm not sure.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

On my machine 'ls /bin/ | wc' gives me 2209 lines/words. Who wants to start schooling me (or anyone) on those?
They don't even speak the same dialect attributes-wise.
When I see a somewhat complex shell script, I wish Turing had built a machine to decode those instead of wasting his time with that Enigma stuff.

 

[pyrat]

I can school you on them all with one oneliner

man man

 

[Djoga'Ro]

@pyrat You're a lazy teacher.

 

[levi]

We can school you on them all in turn, but I don't think this is the right thread for that.

 

[F_Slim]

I am aware that a sleep timer is a one-liner in the terminal. Everything can be done on the terminal. But unlike on my PC or notebook I do not have a terminal open on my Pandora. And not everything which is possible is also convenient.
It is fully expected that you have to use the terminal on the Pyra especially at the beginning. But the intention is not that it stays this way.

The purpose of this thread was to find out which UI widgets people might find helpfull to quickly access things using the touchscreen. Also to make the Pyra more accessible to newcomers.
There are still people who do not use Linux on a daily basis and still want a Pyra, or who actually bought the Pyra to learn Linux.

@elw3 got a bit upset because this threads reads a bit like:
"Hey, how about some nice furniture? What do you think would be usefull?"
"How about a chair and table?"
"Well, you already got an axe and there's the forest. Also I can sit perfectly fine on the ground."
"I can even lie down on the ground, there is no need for chairs. (Not my problem if your butt hurts because you are not used to sit on the ground)"

 

[Binky]

More constructively, it occurs to me that there are a lot of little widgets and applets out there already. Many are either already in Debian, or just a compile away.

Although there may be a few special Pyra gadgets to write, I suspect most of the work is in finding existing ones, and making them play nicely.

One gadget I would particularly like to see is a friendly game-control remapper. It isn't exactly obvious what the buttons and nubs should do. Mouse movement? Joysticks? Scrolling? PgUp/PgDn? Mouse buttons? It depends on the user, and you might well want to change it on the fly.

Such a tool should provide a menu of pre-set (or user-designed) configurations, and I imagine would be mostly a frontend to xmodmap. There are HID mapping utilities out there already, but I don't know if there are any that really suit our purpose.