Minimenu Configuration Ui; What Do Uneed On It?

[DaveC]

Cool but you forgot my questions Please if you could let me know these few things i am no linux guy, thanks.

Also putting the preview pics in doesn't work if the original pnd didn't have a pic. It seems there must be a pic to override in order for that to work. I hope that will be changed so that the pvw pic will be read even if the original didn't have anything.

Oh yeah how do I get to the NAND to copy the mm config file?

 

[grasshoppir]

use one config file

 

[skeezix]

Dave - I figured for config questions, you could just wait until I get the new beta build working, and then you could not bother doing config file hacking and just use the UI; hopefully read tomorrow for first beta

I'll expand things so that preview pics can be overridden even if not present.

As to speed worries; possibly for that SD card (or all SDs?) the opening a directory to get a listing is a more expensive operation than we like, (ie: in terms of milliseconds), so that could be worked around; but that'd be later. Right now trying to do the conf UI (which is a lot of work), and then do some snes stuff (scaling UI options maybe), and lots of other stuff; spread too thin, and not enough free time I'll probably do a vsync no tearing beta soon too, of that.

jeff

 

[Pleng]

Pleng -- moving apps to different tabs/cats is on a per-app basis; you can currently do it using .ovr files (but making them is a pita of course -- I will make a tool one of these days to make and edit ovr files as well (outside of minimenu, since the ovr mechanism works for minimenu, xfce, or any other freedesktop DE). So that one is a 'separate project' per se.

OK how about a minimenu specific overrideing config file in the meantime. Something with some kind of intelligent string matching. If a PND has string x in its file name it will go in tab y. For example:

overrides.conf

Emulators: UAE, SNES, Picodrve, Mupen, PSX
Games: Openjazz
Multimedia: Mplayer,Audacious,Milky

Would that be easy enough to implement? Obviously I have no idea how the internals of minimenu work, but if it would be simple enough it would be really appreciated.

 

[skeezix]

Pleng - it wouldn't be hard, but its not the right place for it; why create another mechanism, when one is already there If you don't mind hacking textfiles to do that, then create ovr files

(Or perhaps you don't like having one .ovr per app, and you want a master .ovr that does multiple apps? We coudl try to extend the ovr system so you could have a global.ovr that applies to all apps, so you coudl try to override lots of apps from one place. *shrug*)

Or just wait till someone writes a ovr editor tool.

Agree?

jeff

Edit; I suppose I've got (now) a config tab for show/hide each app; could chang that to be 'tab or hide', and have minimenu 'edit' ovr files for you or something, but thats crosdsing into ovr-edit functionality which I want to do 'half properly' in another tool; so worry about this sort of request later once I (or someone) gets time.

minimenu code works well, but its a bit of a mess; ie: needed to write it super fast, so the base core was written in about 5 high speed nights

 

[DaveC]

Edit; I suppose I've got (now) a config tab for show/hide each app; could chang that to be 'tab or hide', and have minimenu 'edit' ovr files for you or something, but thats crosdsing into ovr-edit functionality which I want to do 'half properly' in another tool; so worry about this sort of request later once I (or someone) gets time.

minimenu code works well, but its a bit of a mess; ie: needed to write it super fast, so the base core was written in about 5 high speed nights

A context menu was mentioned how come you didn't like that? This would work by either putting the cursor over an icon then pressing a certain key, or holding the stylus on the icon for 3 seconds or something. Then a menu would come up in the preview/note area that would let you choose the catagory to move to or other ovr parameters. That is more intuitive than some separate list or something.

Also please don't add another tab for config. We don't want to get tab clutter here. I would just put that as a menu item or even an app icon placed in the lower panel. I wouldn't want another tab showin for something that would only get used infrequently.

 

[headcrash]

hi,

I would appreciate beeing able to switch to mini-menu, booted angstroem from sd-card.

I tried it, but something crashes and I have to reboot with sudo shutdown - "reboot-shutdown dialog" won't appear anymore...

greetings

 

[Pleng]

i dont know if these have been mentioned or not, and sorry but my connection here is too unreliable to be able to read the rest of the thread:

Firstly, the Pandora button is used by some emulators and apps to quit. When you run these apps from minimenu the apps built in quit system is overridden by minimenu's force-kill. Could force kill be mapped to, say fn-Pandora or ctrl-Pandora.

Secondly im constantly switching between minimenu and XFCE. While in XFCE, and also when using any of the system tools from minimenu, enter is confirm. In minimenu though you launch an app with B. Could enter be mapped in addition to B for launching apps?

 

[skeezix]

Could map enter to it as well; right now its Start and B (and maybe even Space, I forget.)

The Pandora button probably should not be used to quit an app; which ones do that? ie: in xfce, Pandora brings up the bottom-left menu or pnd-kill when held; in minimenu, its force-kill. ie: if an app uses it right now, it is in error.

That said, we may jiggle the buttons around one of these days..

jeff

davec; by 'config tab', I mean a tab in the config UI, not a real tab. That'd just be silly A context menu of some sort is still possible (never said I wouldn't, and being akin to a right-click menu I'm for it); but for now I'm doing it all in one place (sort of Palm OS like in that regard, from the old "delete" option in the core Palm OS launcher.) ie: Let you rip down the full list of apps and show/hide them in one big shot .. pretty handy. On the other hand, I could just drop that, and have a 'context menu' (just using the right-side panel as a menu, just like with Select, right now); hit A (or reuse Y?), and show a menu: show/hide toggle, show info page, delete from SD, launch ovr editor.

 

[twent4]

Cosmetic, somewhat off-topic:
How about finger sweep support, or gestures? I feel like pandora's awesome touchscreen is grossly underused on both UIs.

 

[cosam]

The Pandora button probably should not be used to quit an app; which ones do that? ie: in xfce, Pandora brings up the bottom-left menu or pnd-kill when held; in minimenu, its force-kill. ie: if an app uses it right now, it is in error.

That said, we may jiggle the buttons around one of these days..

I hope so. The XFCE menu is handy, but having a single button kill the current app is bit accident-prone to say the least. There were a couple of threads on the use of the Pandora button recently:

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/54372-pandora-key-as-universal-menu-key/
http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/54436-pandora-key-as-universal-menu-key-part-2/

The consensus is pretty obvious and although I didn't vote I agree on both counts. Dega has no menu but uses the Pandora button for exiting at the moment. In XFCE you get an "Are you sure?" before leaving but there's obviously no such luxury for minimenu users ;-) One unpleasant side effect is that the XFCE menu pops up when you exit. In some cases it hangs around and can't be clicked away, either.

 

[skeezix]

At the risk of hijacking yet another thread, the proposal there (pandora short press goes to app, long press goes to menu) is a bit of a pita in a few ways I think; to the user though -- it means if you do a short press in XFCE, nothing happens, and a short press is the normal use of a button .. so right off the top, your average user will press the button and nothing will happen.

(ie: consider the code .. pndevmapperd gets the event, hands it off to op_menu.sh, which splits on xfce or non-xfce mode, and in xfce mode checks if the press is >2sec (or whatever) and if so, does the normal thing (pops up the menu.) If its a short press, it is discarded, so that whatever app is active, can do something with it.

If you have 5 apps open in xfce ... hopefully they are well behaved

But if no apps are open, nothing happens. User says 'wtf?'

easy change, but looking for ED to make an executive decision before I do it

I'm likely going to make use of Pandora in minimenu, while in minimenu, anyway; so the above change would work fine as well, there .. since minimenu is only up when no app is running (usually), then a quick press going to minimenu is fine; a long press could be ignored in the non-xfce case perhaps, or else we'd have to add an entrey to gui.conf, to say what to do when pandora long press occurs, which would probably be the best way to do it.

jeff

 

[cosam]

I accept all liability for the hijacking ;-)

I see where you're coming from, but I think the term "menu" in this sense means either the app's own menu (short press) or some UI-independent pop-up for killing apps, etc. (long press). A short press in XFCE would still open the XFCE menu (one could consider XFCE itself as the current app if nothing else is running).

But yes, things would get hairy if several apps are running in XFCE. Perhaps pass the short press event to the app which currently has focus and, if it does nothing with it, pass it the XFCE in order to open the menu? I've admittedly no idea how that would fit into the grand scheme of things code-wise.

 

[Pleng]

Could map enter to it as well; right now its Start and B (and maybe even Space, I forget.)

Wondeful. Would be very appreciated

The Pandora button probably should not be used to quit an app; which ones do that? ie: in xfce, Pandora brings up the bottom-left menu or pnd-kill when held; in minimenu, its force-kill. ie: if an app uses it right now, it is in error.

They should not, but they do. DEGA does for sure, and doesn't Mupen (I forget)?

On top of this when playing in the dark it's pretty easy to press Pandora instead of start/select. Goodbye 1 hour's progress on A Link to the Past

Really, something as extreme as force-kill-application should be mapped to a combination, not any single button.

That said, we may jiggle the buttons around one of these days..

I don't think a major jiggle is needed, just a couple of minor tweeks.

On the other hand, I could just drop that, and have a 'context menu' (just using the right-side panel as a menu, just like with Select, right now); hit A (or reuse Y?), and show a menu: show/hide toggle, show info page, delete from SD, launch ovr editor.

Yes. Please.

One thing to bear in mind is that obviously some apps appear in multiple categories. The hide functionality really needs to only hide from the current tab.

Oh, one other idea. A quick hack for the ovr editor could be mousepad. If no ovr exists for the particular pnd, a template could be created using the details from the PND itself (ie an ovr with all the required data but as is doesn't actually override anything)

 

[Mjlink]

Anyway that when the Background Killer is run that a password doesn't have to be entered? It's a pain IMO.

Thanks!

Peace & Pandora,

Link

 

[skeezix]

Background killer has nothing to do with minimenu (and is it still necessary after hotfix #3? I've not looked at background killer to see what it does specifically, mind you

Pleng; I hadn't looked at the idea of suppressing apps on a per-tab basis yet; right now I'm going for 'suppress it, or allow it into all its categories', an all or nothing thing; Coudl try to expand it eventually (not now) to be 'suppress from here and here and here' in the stored out conf file, but for nwo its just a flag 'don't even parse this guy anymore' (by unique-id.)

jeff

 

[Pleng]

Coudl try to expand it eventually (not now) to be 'suppress from here and here and here' in the stored out conf file, but for nwo its just a flag 'don't even parse this guy anymore' (by unique-id.)

jeff

surely it would be just as easy to have don't parse this guy for category x? You could then have as many of these in the config as required, and would be about a thousand times more useful.

 

[DaveC]

The forced kill could still be just the pandora button but just set the time to 2-3 seconds. If you accidentally hit it I doubt you will hold it down for 2 seconds. If you do maybe then you deserve to lose your progress

The problem with combos are they are unintuitive and can be awkward (you now have to search for two keys in the dark and remember which ones). Also what if a computer emu or game or something happens to use the same combo for the app?

Apple uses this hold button to kill app thing (although you need to do it for too long) on all of heir iPhones and iPads etc so it has kind of become common knowledge.

Also the context menu. Yes I suggested that before. If you say place the cursor over the icon then hold B for 2 seconds (or press a certain key) a ovr editing menu pops up in the notes/preview panel. In there you can do things like tell which tab the app shows up in, what clock speed to run it at, etc. Right now emulators always show up in "games" and I always have to make an ovr file to make them only show in "emulators" kind of a PITA. I have my "games" tab reserved for things like Giana sisters, OpenTyrian, Doom etc.

 

[bzar]

Apple uses this hold button to kill app thing (although you need to do it for too long) on all of heir iPhones and iPads etc so it has kind of become common knowledge.

Just to point out that there are those of us who don't know this. My iPhone experience is measured in minutes and I've never seen an iPad live. It's not common knowledge by any means.

 

[Pleng]

to be fair you have to assume that if it's i-stuff then it's reasonably common knowledge. I don't have any i-products either and didn't know this but I accept that I'm in the minority.

To be honest I feel that anything as extreme as kill app should be a key combo; it's not like you're going to be regularly using this function. It couldn't exactly be a key combo on an i-device though could it (where you gonna get the second button from?!!) But if there are reasons preventing it being a combination the press-for-2-second solution suits me.