LXDE's file manager PCManFM ()

Sergio | 6 Jul 2012 22:45

Some observations about pcmanfm (and being desktop agnostic).

Hello.
Again, pcmanfm seems pretty good. It already looks more stable than last time I tried it (of course, it
receive many fixes). Did every thing I asked it and never crashed.

One minor thing (that maybe isn't important) is that it comes pre-configured with 'gksu %s' for switching
to root. gksu, AFAIK, is a Debian app (maybe other distros use it), and here in Fedora we can use 'beesu' in
its place (or in other distros one may use 'ktsuss' etc.).

The other related issue regards the desktop handling (beware that the text below is quite convoluted
because I wrote while experimenting with things).

I'm using Xfce (without xfdesktop). It has a setting to enable/disable changing workspaces with the mouse
wheel (/general/mousewheel_rollup property toggled - true or false - with xfconf-query, just to
mention, true is default).
If pcmanfm is handling the desktop, then this Xfce setting doesn't work, regardless if it's set to 'Show
menus provided by window managers when desktop is clicked' or not.
It's been a while since I used openbox, but, correct me if necessary, IIRC pcmanfm toggles the desktop with
the mouse wheel even when it's handling the desktop and openbox is the window manager.
I know that xfwm uses standards for this because we can use wmctrl to manipulate it (and change desktops, for instance).

I thought that if possible pcmanfm, say, if it's handling the desktop and 'Show menus provided by window
managers when desktop is clicked' is set, then it would send inputs to the window manager like if there was
no desktop window.
But as I said, I don't know how Xfce (xfwm4) implements that feature of changing desktops with the mouse wheel.
What maybe could be done is that pcmanfm would have a similar option in its advanced section of desktop
preferences of enabling/disabling desktop switching with the mouse wheel and it would send the proper
inputs to the window manager.
pcmanfm recognizes the current workspace properly as it sets different wallpapers fine.

Regards.

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Andrej N. Gritsenko | 8 Jul 2012 22:54

Re: Some observations about pcmanfm (and being desktop agnostic).

    Hello!

Sergio has written on Friday,  6 July, at 13:45:
[.......]

>I thought that if possible pcmanfm, say, if it's handling the desktop and 'Show menus provided by window
managers when desktop is clicked' is set, then it would send inputs to the window manager like if there was
no desktop window.
>But as I said, I don't know how Xfce (xfwm4) implements that feature of changing desktops with the mouse wheel.
>What maybe could be done is that pcmanfm would have a similar option in its advanced section of desktop
preferences of enabling/disabling desktop switching with the mouse wheel and it would send the proper
inputs to the window manager.
>pcmanfm recognizes the current workspace properly as it sets different wallpapers fine.

    It's not pcmanfm who changes desktops with mouse wheel in LXDE. It's
'pager' plugin of lxpanel. So address your suggestion rather to it. Thank
you a lot for your opinions in any case. I hope PCMan will decide what to
do with 'gksu' default.

    With the best wishes.
    Andriy.

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Sergio | 9 Jul 2012 19:51

Re: Some observations about pcmanfm (and being desktop agnostic).


>     It's not pcmanfm who changes desktops with
> mouse wheel in LXDE. It's
> 'pager' plugin of lxpanel.

Ah, that explains it. Then nothing to do as I'm using Xfce with xfce4-panel.

> Thank
> you a lot for your opinions in any case. I hope PCMan will
> decide what to
> do with 'gksu' default.
> 
>     With the best wishes.
>     Andriy.
> 

Thank you. I think it should be blank, like the 'terminal' field.

Regards.

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Jonathan Marsden | 10 Jul 2012 02:26

Re: Some observations about pcmanfm (and being desktop agnostic).

>> I hope PCMan will decide what to do with 'gksu' default.

> Thank you. I think it should be blank, like the 'terminal' field.

It might be preferable to have a post-install script look for the
presence of one of a list of such "become root" utilities, and put the
entry for the first one it finds from that list into the system-wide
pcmanfm configuration.  If it finds none of them, it can leave the
field blank.

Once the list was reasonably complete, that approach should work for a
majority of end users, "out of the box", without needing their active
participation in configuring it by hand.

The same approach could also be used for the terminal field, of course.

Jonathan
--

-- 
  Jonathan Marsden
  jmarsden <at> fastmail.fm

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Andrej N. Gritsenko | 10 Jul 2012 12:12

Re: Some observations about pcmanfm (and being?desktop agnostic).

    Hello!

Jonathan Marsden has written on Monday,  9 July, at 17:26:
>>> I hope PCMan will decide what to do with 'gksu' default.

>> Thank you. I think it should be blank, like the 'terminal' field.

>It might be preferable to have a post-install script look for the
>presence of one of a list of such "become root" utilities, and put the
>entry for the first one it finds from that list into the system-wide
>pcmanfm configuration.  If it finds none of them, it can leave the
>field blank.

>Once the list was reasonably complete, that approach should work for a
>majority of end users, "out of the box", without needing their active
>participation in configuring it by hand.

>The same approach could also be used for the terminal field, of course.

    This is good approach but this isn't pcmanfm level but rather package
management one so it's better to leave package-independent default config
that is shipped with pcmanfm without such default, as Sergio proposed. So
packages can insert their defaults in post-install scripts or in package
specific patch (you know about alternatives system in Debian perhaps). If
there will be no objections then I'll remove that default.

    Thank you!
    Andriy.

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