MX Fluxbox versus other Window Managers and Desktop Envioroments

[jeffreyC]

gmrun has tab completion and history, so if you have run it before all you need to do is arrow up to find it.

[PPC]

gmrun has tab completion and history, so if you have run it before all you need to do is arrow up to find it.

I just tested gmrun- it has tab completion all right, but it's not as powerful as rofi- if you try to run "writer" (libreoffice --writer) it does not find it- so gmrun is good, but not for running apps that depend on flags to run... the history is nice though (that's why I like my j4dmenu setup so much- it has history too)
It's nice knowing another good tool, thanks, Jeffrey!

P.

[Jerry3904]

Got rofi running well (F2), very fast and good looking (many themes). Doubling it with Alt-F2: xfce4-appfinder -c which doesn't need the exact name (e.g., "writer" works with it, doesn't with rofi).

[PPC]

Got rofi running well (F2), very fast and good looking (many themes). Doubling it with Alt-F2: xfce4-appfinder -c which doesn't need the exact name (e.g., "writer" works with it, doesn't with rofi).

Jerry, like I pointed out when I talked about some "launcher" options, there are several ways of starting rofi... Please try this:

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rofi -modi drun -show drun

this searches .desktop file names, and allows to launch writer, if you type "writer"- you can even search by "processor" (word processor) :-)

I even found a youtube video that showed several ways of configuring ROFI: I copied this command, that uses a new color scheme, and also lists running windows (nice if you have many open windows and forgot, for example, you were already running writer to edit a particular file, for example...):

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rofi -combi-modi window,drun -show combi -color-window "#000000, #000000, #000000" -color-normal "#000000, #b3e774, #000000, #b3e774, #000000" -color-active "#000000, #b3e774, #000000, #b3e774, #000000" -color-urgent "#000000, #b3e774, #000000, #b3e774, #000000"

Edit:
I just noticed how well you already configured rofi to match with Fluxbox colors...

If this all gets into the next MXFB update, I think it will both look amazing and run incredibly fast even on old/slow hardware!

[Jerry3904]

Thanks, I know about the drun stuff and watched a couple of videos myself. I'm not interested in a third menu so didn't hi that way. But I think rofi over fbrun is a no-brainer.

[mowest]

Thanks, I know about the drun stuff and watched a couple of videos myself. I'm not interested in a third menu so didn't hi that way. But I think rofi over fbrun is a no-brainer.

I'm so excited that you are having fun with rofi on MX-Fluxbox. One feature that new users might appreciate. You can turn on icons, so they can see a visual reminder that they are choosing their desired application besides the name. Since my desktop has an orange look to the theme, I was able to find an orange themed rofi theme that looks great with my wallpaper and conky.

mxfluxbox-rofi.png

[Jerry3904]

I'm still not getting icons. Do you have dmenu installed?

[mowest]

I'm still not getting icons. Do you have dmenu installed?

This is the line that I have in my keys file to launch rofi with icons:

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mod4 space :Exec rofi -modi drun -show drun -show-icons

No, I don't have dmenu installed, but as you can see I do use the "drun" flags.

[Jerry3904]

Oh, I see. Thanks.

Here is the line to be put in the config file (~/.config/rofi/config.rasi) then:

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	modi: "run,ssh,drun";

Then I can use Crtl+arrow to switch from run (no icons, no partial match) to drun (icons and partial match) to ssh. Not sure if I am going to stay with drun, but am glad to have it solved.

[PPC]

@Jerry3904 - Since this thread became a almost unofficial thread about suggestions to MXFB, I see no point in starting a new one just to ask this:
I know you like the very minimalist Fluxbox menu... But since you are serious considering adding a full blown menu... Is there any interest in also adding one of my previous suggestions- a "Recent files" menu entry?
Since Fb does not have dynamic menus, this can only, to my knowledge, be done using a script. I have one writen, but I got some feedback in the antiX forum and it does not work well in non Latin characters ( cyrilic in particular)...

For anyone wanting to test that script, it's below (just paste the code into a text file called something like "recent_files.sh", save it, make it executable and run it. You can, of course add it to the menu, create a shortcut idesk icon, or a dock icon, so it can be easily accessible...

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#!/bin/bash
### Recent files window- by PPC, 13/1/2020, for use with antiX and MX-fluxbox
#GPL licence- do what you want with this, but please keep lines about the author, date and licence
# works on any system with yad and xdg-open installed, optionally: exo-open (see exceptions to the general rule, when launching files, near the end.
# https://pastebin.com/fSDPR9E1
#Parse the file that stores the recent used files, send output to recent0.txt
awk -F"file://|\" " '/file:\/\// {print $2}' ~/.local/share/recently-used.xbel > ~/.recent0.txt
#reverse contents order, so last file comes first, and so on...
tac ~/.recent0.txt > ~/.recent.txt
#function to decode file name (from %20 instead of spaces, etc, from https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/159253/decoding-url-encoding-percent-encoding
urldecode() {
    local url_encoded="${1//+/ }"
    printf '%b' "${url_encoded//%/\\x}"
}
# Use a undecorated Yad window to select file to be executed
EXEC=$(yad --title="Recent files" --undecorated --width=450 --height=400 --center --separator=" " --list  --column=" Recent Files:"  < ~/.recent.txt)
#do decoding on the file name, just in case it has spaces or special characters that come up as %xx
decoded=$(urldecode $EXEC)
# general rule: open selected file with the aplication used for its file type
openwith=xdg-open 
###Exceptions to the general rule: LibreOffice Writer ".odt" files - check extension and  force it to open with lowriter; also more exceptions: like open ".sh" files for edition and run ".desktop" files instead of editing them
check=$(echo -n $EXEC | tail -c 3)
	if [ "$check" == "odt" ]; then openwith=lowriter ; fi  #this solves bug opening odt files with spaces
	if [ "$check" == ".sh" ]; then openwith=exo-open ; fi
	if [ "$check" == "top" ]; then openwith=exo-open ; fi
#add quotes to the file name, just in case it has spaces
EXEC2="'"$decoded"'"
#launch the selected file
run=$(echo $openwith $EXEC2)
eval $run