[rox-devel] Capturing error output from child processes

[Stephen Watson <stephen@ke...>]

I've added another patch to
<URL:http://www.kerofin.demon.co.uk/rox/patch.html>;

When the filer does its copy action it forks a copy of itself and then the
copy forks and execs cp to do the copying.  If cp fails with an error
(permission denied, bad block, etc.) all the filer normally does is print
"Copy failed" in the action window.  The copyerr patch captures standard
error of the cp command and uses that in the action window instead.  (It also
does the same for move and mount).

-- 
Stephen Watson <URL:http://www.kerofin.demon.co.uk/>; Glorantha & RISC OS
"I still remember sailing on that dreamboat on starlit mirrored seas
I hold my breath and I gaze from shore, From this empty beach,
and this pile of clothes... I hit the water, the ship sails on."

Re: [rox-devel] Quiet button in action windows

[Thomas Leonard <tal00r@ec...>]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2001 at 09:40:53AM +0100, Mohari Andras wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 18, 2001 at 05:26:48PM +0000, Thomas Leonard wrote:
> > My plan is that 1.1.10 will be the last version of the filer with any
> > major changes. After that, it's just going through the TODO list and
> > fixing little problems here and there.
> 
> Will there be nothing new in the filer after 1.1.10? Not even if
> the majority of problems are fixed?

Once the bugs are fixed in 1.1.x, we release 1.2.0 (stable series) and
start 1.3.0 (new developement series)... I should have been a bit clearer
there ;-)

> > I think we still have to do something about thumbnail generation.
> > Maybe process all selected files (if any), or all files of type 'image/*'
> > otherwise? Also we might want to remove thumbnail scanning from directory
> > scanning (the current system is confusing). Ideas as to how this should
> > work are welcome!
> 
> That's a good idea -- but in this case, 'Create Thumbs' should be moved
> into the File menu.

My main problem with that is that all the other file operations either
operate on the selection, or ask you to select something. Create Thumbs
doesn't work like that.

> An idle callback could do the thumbnail scanning, it could even use
> GdkPixbufLoader (this would be great to create thumbnails for _huge_
> images without heavy system load). The problem is that the idle callback
> has to know what to do if the user changes directories or removes files
> while scanning. Also, there should be a way to stop thumbnail scanning
> at user's request.

We could make it use an action window (which also allows recursive
scanning). This makes more sense now that thumbnails are saved. Possibly,
then, we have 'Create Thumbs' on the File menu and show all known thumbs
automatically.

That means that creating thumbs the first time is slightly slower (Select
All, Create Thumbs, and maybe Quiet), but faster in future (thumbs are
shown automatically) or when doing a large file hierarchy.

> > I don't think there are any other major issues... ?
> 
> Well, it's a bit off topic, but what about running commands from the
> Shell minibuffer in a terminal window?
> Yesterday I created a small shell script called ROX-Terminal that
> can be used to do just that. I modified minibuffer.c so that it calls
> "ROX-Terminal" instead of "sh -c" when a command starts with "x ".
> For example, one can type
> 
> 	x grep foo "$@" | less
> 
> and it's executed in a terminal. A shell is invoked after the command
> is finished, so the terminal stays open.

Can't you just put a command 'x' in your PATH? I'm not sure this requires
a modification to the filer...

The shell stuff should probably wait until 1.3.x.


-- 
Thomas Leonard			http://rox.sourceforge.net
tal00r@...		tal197@...

Re: [rox-devel] Re: Shell commands in a terminal(was:RRe: Quiet button in action windows)

[Mohari Andras <mayday@ma...>]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2001 at 10:43:06AM -0800, Francesco Bochicchio wrote:
> Alternatively, we could popen() the command. If the command has some output 
> we well show it in a scrollable text window. This should also cover the
> case of a mistyped command, or running an uninstalled program, which currently
> gives no feedback.

Yes, that could be useful. I don't know if Thomas likes the idea.
Anyway, using ROX-Terminal, an uninstalled program gives feedback,
so if you type

	x foobar

you'll get a terminal with a message `sh: foobar: command not found'.
However, if you type

	x ls;;

you'll get `sh: syntax error near unexpected token `;'', but you won't
see it (sh quits and terminal quits as well). I've modified the
script so it seems to work with an invalid command line now (you can
see the message). It needs testing, though...

> > The script can be customized using <Choices>/ROX-Terminal/options.
> 
> Or we could use the same terminal setting used to customize x-term here
> menu option, if we go on the full x-terminal way

That's not OK for my script, I need 3 separate options: executable for the
terminal, the '-e' option (or whatever that is used by the terminal) to
execute a command in the window and anything else that the user might
want to pass to the terminal emulator (title, fg/bg colour etc).

I don't have a place for ROX-Terminal, so I can't put it up the web
for download. Let me know if you want to give it a try. It's small, about
1400 bytes compressed.

--
Andras Mohari

[rox-devel] Re: Shell commands in a terminal(was:RRe: Quiet button in action windows)

[Francesco Bochicchio <fb@su...>]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2001 at 09:40:53AM +0100, Mohari Andras wrote:

> 
> Well, it's a bit off topic, but what about running commands from the
> Shell minibuffer in a terminal window?
> Yesterday I created a small shell script called ROX-Terminal that
> can be used to do just that. I modified minibuffer.c so that it calls
> "ROX-Terminal" instead of "sh -c" when a command starts with "x ".
> For example, one can type
> 
> 	x grep foo "$@" | less
>
 
> and it's executed in a terminal. A shell is invoked after the command
> is finished, so the terminal stays open.
>
Alternatively, we could popen() the command. If the command has some output 
we well show it in a scrollable text window. This should also cover the
case of a mistyped command, or running an uninstalled program, which currently
gives no feedback.

 
> The script can be customized using <Choices>/ROX-Terminal/options.

Or we could use the same terminal setting used to customize x-term here
menu option, if we go on the full x-terminal way



Ciao
-- 
FB

Re: [rox-devel] Quiet button in action windows

[Mohari Andras <mayday@ma...>]

On Tue, Dec 18, 2001 at 05:26:48PM +0000, Thomas Leonard wrote:
> My plan is that 1.1.10 will be the last version of the filer with any
> major changes. After that, it's just going through the TODO list and
> fixing little problems here and there.

Will there be nothing new in the filer after 1.1.10? Not even if
the majority of problems are fixed?

> I think we still have to do something about thumbnail generation.
> Maybe process all selected files (if any), or all files of type 'image/*'
> otherwise? Also we might want to remove thumbnail scanning from directory
> scanning (the current system is confusing). Ideas as to how this should
> work are welcome!

That's a good idea -- but in this case, 'Create Thumbs' should be moved
into the File menu. An idle callback could do the thumbnail scanning, it
could even use GdkPixbufLoader (this would be great to create
thumbnails for _huge_ images without heavy system load).
The problem is that the idle callback has to know what to do if the
user changes directories or removes files while scanning. Also, there
should be a way to stop thumbnail scanning at user's request.

That's what I think, I'm sorry if it doesn't help much.

> I don't think there are any other major issues... ?

Well, it's a bit off topic, but what about running commands from the
Shell minibuffer in a terminal window?
Yesterday I created a small shell script called ROX-Terminal that
can be used to do just that. I modified minibuffer.c so that it calls
"ROX-Terminal" instead of "sh -c" when a command starts with "x ".
For example, one can type

	x grep foo "$@" | less

and it's executed in a terminal. A shell is invoked after the command
is finished, so the terminal stays open.

The script can be customized using <Choices>/ROX-Terminal/options.
I tested it with xterm, rxvt, aterm, wterm, Eterm and GNOME Terminal;
it works pretty well for me (except that an invalid command line
causes it to exit -- you can't see what went wrong).

I'll send it to you if you think it's worth trying.

Regards,
Andras Mohari

Re: [rox-devel] Thumbnails (was: Quiet button in action windows)

[Stephen Watson <watson@ul...>]

In message <20011218172645.GA16196@...>
          Thomas Leonard <tal00r@...> scribbled:

> I think we still have to do something about thumbnail generation.
> Maybe process all selected files (if any),

A patch which does that is at
<URL:http://www.kerofin.demon.co.uk/rox/patch.html>;
but it's probably not the best implementation.

> or all files of type 'image/*' otherwise?

Good idea, if we can override its choice by the selection mechanism.

> Also we might want to remove thumbnail scanning from directory
> scanning (the current system is confusing). Ideas as to how this should
> work are welcome!

-- 
Stephen Watson          Physicist
Ultra Electronics Ltd - Signature Management Systems (UESMS)
Tel: +44 (0)1543 878888 (switchboard)     Fax: +44 (0)1543 878249
Email: watson@...