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Re: less maladjusted

On 05/22/2012 10:01 AM, Raphael wrote:



I've had some very similar issues. Since I wanted not to have to
recreate my old app settings, I actually copied my old Lucid /home to
the new Precise /home, which turned out to be a mixed blessing: on the
upside -- and this might be a help -- somewhere deep in that Lucid
home directory the program objects in my Lucid directory got
recognized as such by Precise -- including XyWrite -- and I was easily
able to simply drag them to the launcher.



If I understand things correctly, the *.desktop files that are used by
the Launcher can be anywhere, so long as you don't delete them after
dragging them to the Launcher. I've taken to keeping them in my
~/.../nixutils/unity directory instead of the standard
~/.local/share/applications, because the former is on a separate
partition accessible to my several Linux installations, and so the
*.desktop files can be used in both 12.04 and 11.10 (though 11.10 cannot
use "Actions / Desktop Actions" and so I'm forced to use the
"X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts / Shortcut Group" structure for compatibility.


The problems I'm having with the Launchers, which involves the 'spread'
effect (Compiz Scale), don't seem to be related to where I store the
*.desktop files, because it affects those that are derived from the
/usr/share/applications folder as well. I thought it might have been
related to my having used the unity-minimize-on-click ppa but that has
been purged and nothing has changed (and I use minimize on click in
11.10 with no ill effects).



About a week into my beta testing, something got badly confused and I
had one or two crazy reboots -- after which everything settled down.
A month later (a week or two ago) after I applied one of the updates,
my Midnight Commander object got lost in the shuffle -- and I am
basically in the same boat as you, unable to create a launcher object
for a bash script/batchfile that by reason should be the easiest thing
of all to create -- for the moment just stuck the mc bash script in my
~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts folder where I start it with a click on the
desktop background.



Were you creating the script launcher object by hand (or by drag and
drop)? I've got a script launcher that is based on something I found
online; it has a method for adding scripts to it, and I can see if I can
find the site or info on it -- but a warning, keep the resulting
*.desktop file backed up, since canceling the "add script" process can
cause the *.desktop file to be destroyed.


The end result, though, is nice; several scripts clustered in one
quicklist. I've taken to grouping settings programs (Ubuntu Tweak, Gconf
Editor, My Unity, Gnome Tweak Tool, etc) and software management
programs (Update Manager, Synaptic, etct) on launcher objects so that
they are easy to launch but don't clutter the Launcher (though they do
clutter things up once launched).



I haven't tried XFCE but if I had more space on the netbook and/or a
bit more time, I'd try it there. & I concur about Quicklists -- I
spent a few minutes jiggering these over the weekend & am delighted to
be able to open LibreOffice templates straight from the launcher, a
great hurdle-remover when you're concentrating on doing something
(composing and printing out a letter) and want to be able to do it in
one step rather than having to open LO, navigate to Templates,
remember which one you wanted & click on that.



I've love to get a templates quicklist on my LibreOffice Writer launcher
-- what do I need to do for that? At present, I've only got the standard
Writer launcher.



The HUD is a champ as well, particularly with something like GIMP
where every time I used it I'd spent literally 5 minutes looking for
the simplest tool.



I agree with you re HUD; it's a minor miracle.



Not sure what you mean about fighting for the Win key -- do you use it
in XyWrite? I didn't think that was possible.



I don't use the Win key for XyWrite; I use it in key combos to launch my
most common programs (Win-x for Xy4, e.g.) and for some commands
(minimize window is Win-minus, e.g.), and all those new key assignments
for the Launcher, HUD, Dash, etc, aren't "Super" as far as I'm
concerned. I figured out how to deal with most of the issues, but can't
seem to get my desired key assignments for minimize window, toggle
maximize window, and close window to stick. They will work for a while,
then after a couple reboots need to be reassigned. I didn't have as hard
a time with key assignments in 11.10.


It'll probably work out over time, and it's nice to have Ubuntu
committed to 5 years of security updates for 12.04.


Paul



-Rafe

On 05/21/2012 11:44 PM, Paul Lagasse wrote:

Rafe, I like Unity much better than when I first met it, and by
Ubuntu 11.10 I switched to it gradually.


Now, however, my current 12.04 setup, which was an upgrade of 10.04
rather than a clean install, has developed some malfunctions with
respect to the launchers that I can't seem to fix -- or find
discussed online. I have a clean installation on my netbook that I
had not added the more recent 12.04 updates to (I was about to travel
and didn't want to trash anything on that), but I'll proceed with the
12.04 updates now and see if things remain good or behave like my
main Ubuntu box.


Dosemu remains extremely stable. I do hate having to fight Ubuntu for
the Super (Win) key, and some things have become harder to tweak, but
it's brought other features (Quicklists for Launchers, and the
message indicator) that I'd hate to give up. It took a little while
to figure out how to get a custom icon to work with my XyWrite
launcher. I would like a "minimize on click" function added to the
launchers, and have found the patch that adds that helpful. And did I
say I hate having to fight for the Super key? That said, I'm
basically a satisfied nonpaying customer.


I hate Gnome 3, and don't want to go back to the limitations of Gnome
2. Mint is good for what it is, but I like Unity better. Should Unity
get too weird, I'd probably see what I can do with LXDE or XFCE --
I've used both desktops before and liked them well enough.


Paul


On 05/20/2012 02:33 PM, Raphael wrote:



Can't help it, but when I see these OT threads about the horrors of
malware -- as well as the demise of DOS support in the MS kingdom --
I have to pipe up about Linux. The latest version of Ubuntu, Precise
Pangolin, is at the same time 1) very easy to use out of the box and
2) potentially extraordinarily powerful and with the right tools,
not at all difficult to configure. I just posted a little entry
about it on my blog (they've got it up on ubuntu-news.net!) and it
contains a glancing reference to XyWrite


http://ray-field.com/content/blog/2012/05/18/ubuntus-unity-is-a-terminal-case



& as bears repeating, malware/virus is a non-issue and dosemu
support shows not the least sign of eroding. Is it for everyone?
Well, actually, it is. One of these days I'm going to put together a
page about running XyWrite under Linux -- but for the time being,
Edward Mendelson's WordPerfect for DOS under Linux will get you
started.


Paul Lagasse, how do you like Unity?

-rafe