I like say some words about what I miss in AmigaOS4 / Workbench, and find problematic.
Sorting of icons does is organized in columels and not rows, if you have one icon whit a where long file name one of columns is going have large space in between, the icons.
Moving icons by hand, it is very difficult to align icons, way not some kind of grid snap system, 5x5 pixel 10x10 pixel or some thing?
An other issue I have is def icons prefs, I think I taked about this a few times, if you install a application it might nice to be able to change the def icon tool type to the new application, whit out having to do it manually, I Like to be able to add deficonsprefs entries and change tool type from installation script. Way not change file format of prefs files to JSON?
Snapshoted icons whit wrong tooltype, I like a menu item under icons menu, that says change tooltype to default.
Sorting of file types does work well, it looks like workbench only know the differnce between files and directories not iso fils and txt files.
Edited by orgin on 2013/2/19 17:24:45
(NutsAboutAmiga)
Basilisk II for AmigaOS4 AmigaInputAnywhere Excalibur and other tools and apps.
Sorting of icons does is organized in columels and not rows, if you have one icon whit a where long file name one of columns is going have large space in between, the icons.
Moving icons by hand, it is very difficult to align icons, way not some kind of grid snap system, 5x5 pixel 10x10 pixel or some thing?
Icon handling on workbench can be a pain. I suggest you grab dopus magellan from sourceforge and give that a try. it does multi-line or abbreviated icon names, has snap to grid etc. and does a whole lot more than workbench.
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An other issue I have is def icons prefs, I think I taked about this a few times, if you install a application it might nice to be able to change the def icon tool type to the new application, whit out having to do it manually, I Like to be able to add deficonsprefs entries and change tool type from installation script. Way not change file format of prefs files to JSON?
DefIcons prefs does not contain any information about what is done with the associated file. that is in the default icon stored in envarc:sys/ all you need to do is edit the one icon in there and reboot then all files will use the new settings except those attached to files you have edited manually as they are no longer DefIcons but real icons.
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Snapshoted icons whit wrong tooltype, I like a menu item under icons menu, that says change tooltype to default.
That would be impossibe unless EVERY program that uses tooltypes was rewritten to allow workbench to access a programs default tooltype settings.. Tooltypes are nothing to do with workbench, they are specific to the program using them. It would be like telling one program to use another programs prefs file. It would crash & burn...
Amiga user since 1985 AOS4, A-EON, IBrowse & Alinea Betatester
An other issue I have is def icons prefs, I think I taked about this a few times, if you install a application it might nice t
You also can go to an icon Information you have (for instance a jpg picture), set the default software to start with.
Then go into the Menu and choose "Save as Standard" (in German: Als Standard Speichern ;), i think you find the menu entry).
Then all JPEG Images are connected with the softwar you choose in only one file. So you never need to go to defIcons or in the Sys Folder and search after your file format.
(Found this funktion 2 weeks ago, well hidden ;) )
LiveForIt wrote: Moving icons by hand, it is very difficult to align icons, way not some kind of grid snap system, 5x5 pixel 10x10 pixel or some thing?
You can hold RAmiga (or is it LAmiga?) whilst dragging icons, to fix them on the current axis.
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I Like to be able to add deficonsprefs entries and change tool type from installation script.
You can change tooltypes from an install script easily (Installer tooltype function does this). Adding entries to DefIcons programmatically is AFAIK impossible, and has been commented on a number of times. It would be good if this was added.
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Way not change file format of prefs files to JSON?
Don't see how that would help.
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Sorting of file types does work well, it looks like workbench only know the differnce between files and directories not iso fils and txt files.
In list mode, it does absolutely know the difference between different file types (it uses DefIcons). Directories are always sorted to the top. Not sure if the file types are distinguished in icon mode, if I have enough files to require sorting by type, I tend to be in list mode so have never tried it.
Icon handling on workbench can be a pain. I suggest you grab dopus magellan from sourceforge and give that a try. it does multi-line or abbreviated icon names, has snap to grid etc. and does a whole lot more than workbench.
Well most of the time I don't won't all that Dopus has to offer as it bit of a over kill.
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DefIcons prefs does not contain any information about what is done with the associated file. that is in the default icon stored in envarc:sys/ all you need to do is edit the one icon in there and reboot then all files will use the new settings except those attached to files you have edited manually as they are no longer DefIcons but real icons.
Well the idea is that if let's say I have program that can display or edit a unknown file type, then I like to able to add it to def icons database from an installation script, and copy def icon to envarc:sys, instead of having to explain to end user how to add file type to def icons prefs and then copy icon to envarc:sys, its not going to work, many people do not have the skills to do that.
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That would be impossibe unless EVERY program that uses tooltypes was rewritten to allow workbench to access a programs default tooltype settings.. Tooltypes are nothing to do with workbench, they are specific to the program using them. It would be like telling one program to use another programs prefs file. It would crash & burn...
I'm talking about project icons.
Her is an example:
You create a few pictures in ppaint or another program, all the pictures where given a .info file where tool type is ppaint, your going to share this files whit some one that might not have ppaint, so you need to change the tooltype to one that everyone has for example multiview, the default tooltype for iff pictures is multiview.
Another example:
You copied music files from an old CD (Amiga Format), that has icons whit a tooltype that opens a program that does not work under AmigaOS4, so you need to change it to one that works.
For one reason or another you do not won't to replace the icon or go out in shell and delete the icon by typing "delete #?.info" in shell because its horribly clumsy. in this cases it might be nice to have menu option in workbench icon menu that says set tooltype to default, Nor do you won't to use "icon information" from menu to change the tooltype as it over 100 files.
Yet another example:
You snapshotted a lot of icons whit out knowing the default tool was pointing to program you don't want to use, now you most delete all .info files change tooltype of the def icon, and re snapshot the icons.
Edited by LiveForIt on 2013/2/19 17:39:05 Edited by LiveForIt on 2013/2/19 17:40:41 Edited by LiveForIt on 2013/2/19 17:45:24 Edited by LiveForIt on 2013/2/19 17:47:08
(NutsAboutAmiga)
Basilisk II for AmigaOS4 AmigaInputAnywhere Excalibur and other tools and apps.
You copied music files from an old CD (Amiga Format), that has icons whit a tooltype that opens a program that does not work under AmigaOS4, so you need to change it to one that works.
What you want is a "set default tool" option, not a "set default tooltypes" option.
Somewhere around there is a command line tool that can do this sort of thing. It shouldn't be much work to work it into an ARexx script that installs itself into the Tools menu.
Icon handling on workbench can be a pain. I suggest you grab dopus magellan from sourceforge and give that a try. it does multi-line or abbreviated icon names, has snap to grid etc. and does a whole lot more than workbench.
Based on my tests of Magellan on my system, I think it's a little premature to start recommending Magellan for daily use. For example:
Open Magellan on it's own screen. Close Magellan and start it again. It crashes here. If you never close Magellan it might be O.K.
Open Magellan on it's own screen and close it. Open Ranger and it crashes or freezes the system. I think opening and closing the Magellan library or modules does something to corrupt the system library list and othe programs can crash as a result.
Amiga X1000 with 2GB memory & OS 4.1FE + Radeon HD 5450
Well the idea is that if let's say I have program that can display or edit a unknown file type, then I like to able to add it to def icons database from an installation script, and copy def icon to envarc:sys, instead of having to explain to end user how to add file type to def icons prefs and then copy icon to envarc:sys, its not going to work, many people do not have the skills to do that.
This cannot be be done as far as I Know, a few devs have done some really nasty things like supplying a custom deficons.prefs file which can destroy the users own settings. They usually supply deficons as well which again overwrite the users existing default icons, usually by an install script that doesn't ask you if you want to replace them. This is very annoying if you are just testing a program and decide you don't like it and have to mess around putting things back the way they were before the install.
I got around this problem by moving all my deficons to a different place, now any that get installed are in envarc:sys/ and I can just delete them to get my customised icons back.
It is far better to not supply any project icons or deficons attached to files. just have an icons drawer with them in and let the user decide what he wants to do with them.
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I'm talking about project icons.
There are many tools on aminet that let you set icon attributes from the cli or a script. I suggest you look at DoIcon17 and change all your icons in one batch process eg.
DoIcon ram:temp/#?.info NEWDT="my program"
Amiga user since 1985 AOS4, A-EON, IBrowse & Alinea Betatester
I have same problems here. I though that was my fault, but icons sorting/viewing behaviour seems to not work for me. Often the icons doesn't keep their position.
Another strange behaviour i noticed is that when i'm going to select the icon on a window, if the mouse pointer go out of this window, still select other icons on workbench and on other opened windows. Is this normal?
Icons have a border area round them, if you get two icons too close together when you snapshot them wokbench will move them next time they're loaded. an easy way round this is to go into workbench prefs, icons tab and set bordersize to large, click test then rearrange your icons, snapshot them and click cancel in workbench prefs.
Yes it's normal to be able to select icons from multiple windows.
Amiga user since 1985 AOS4, A-EON, IBrowse & Alinea Betatester
XML and JSON files are easy to import and edit, while IFF based prefs files are not so easy to edit.
Way JSON its easy to read and more compressed compared to XML.
Compared to XML
And compared to IFF based prefs files its no match.
Your example isn't even an IFF file. Not that it matters, as DefIcon's prefs file isn't IFF either.
I'd recommend not trying to edit it by hand - what is needed is an official commandline tool that can make the amendments. A commandline interface to the DefIcons Prefs program would also work.
The file format is then irrelevant (which was my point).
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