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DroidSansFallback TrueType font

September 06, 2024 — BarryK

The guys have been discussing support for Chinese language in EasyOS (and Puppy):

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=12555

Typing Chinese characters is one thing, displaying them in web pages is another. I'm just tackling the latter for now.

EasyOS has TrueType fonts in /usr/share/fonts/TTF folder. I hunted online for TrueType files that support traditional and simplified Chinese, but they are all very big, 12 to 40MB. The mainstream ones anyway. However, I found one that is very small, Droid Sans Fallback, that was used in early releases of Android. Android replaced it with Roboto.

Downloaded DroidSansFallback.ttf from here:

https://github.com/aosp-mirror/platform_frameworks_base/tree/master/data/fonts

...3.3MB. Of course, having this builtin to EasyOS, it will be very much compressed in 'easy.sfs' -- maybe about 1.2MB.

Language support is described here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_(typeface)

The first link also has DroidSansFallbackFull.ttf -- I don't know what extra languages and glyphs that supports. It is bigger, about 3.9MB. Hindi?

I have tested DroidSansFallback.ttf with Chromium, gone to various sites that have traditional and simplified Chinese, and they display OK.   

Tags: easy

Appi and Flapi icon-free-desktop aware

September 05, 2024 — BarryK

In the last few days, have posted about scripts becoming aware if in icon-free-desktop mode (jwm-mode):

Appi, the AppImage installer, and Flapi, the Flatpak installer, are now also jwm-mode aware, plus more enhancements. See github commits:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/fad498d5fbe2a9f348dade637a213c217cf3cb6d

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/17d3c8f892c2450220577f188c01abd4a7759b70   

Tags: easy

Orange-ball menu entries restructured

September 04, 2024 — BarryK

Orange-ball menu entries are "important" native apps available via PKGget and not yet installed. There have been posts about them, including here:

The way this works is there is a menu entry, for, say, "Scribus", and there is /usr/share/applications/scribus.desktop file. This file causes the orange-ball icon to display in the menu entry, and when chosen, /usr/bin/scribus.install will execute. This script will offer to install Scribus.

Easy 6.2 has all of these orange-ball menu entries:

aqemu  claws-mail  dia  gimagereader  obs  qtemu  scribus  shotcut  vlc  vym

The implementation has been inefficient, with *.install scripts written for each one, even though they mostly have the same code.

So, have create a single common script, /usr/local/orange/orange.install, with a folder /usr/local/orange/config with configuration for each app.

Continuing with the Scribus example, /usr/bin/scribus.install just has this: 
#!/bin/ash
exec /usr/local/orange/orange.install scribus

File /usr/local/orange/config/scribus has this:

#!/bin/ash
export TEXTDOMAIN=orange
export OUTPUT_CHARSET=UTF-8
#pkg-name
PN=scribus
#executable-name
EN=scribus
#real-name
RN="Scribus"
#alt-exe-names
AN=""
#short-descr
SD="Desktop publishing"
#homepage
HP="https://www.scribus.net/"
#mini-icon (found in /usr/local/lib/X11/mini-icons)
MI=mini-Document-layout
#run app as this user ***FUTURE*** currently only recognize root
UN=scribus
#post-install frame...
PF=""

Github commits:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commits/765b448fffd177f87649302e74a1daa2c4436a17/

Script /usr/local/orange/orange.install does something important; it is aware when in jwm-mode and will create an icon in the tray. I posted about rox-mode and jwm-mode yesterday:

Need to work on Appi and Flapi also, to make them aware of jwm-mode.   

Tags: easy

appi and flapi script path changes

September 03, 2024 — BarryK

This is a "under the bonnet" thing that I have wanted to do for some time. It's of interest to developers, not users.

The folders /usr/local/appimage and /usr/local/flatpak have been changed to /usr/local/appi and /usr/local/flapi, and the scripts therein changed from appimage to appi and flatpak to flapi.

I wasn't going to do it, as thought had hardcoded the paths in too many places, but today made the changes. Github commits can be found here:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commits/a14798aa8d4b1c155c67abc3dec51a89de53ba86/  

Tags: easy

Retain icons when switch rox to jwm

September 03, 2024 — BarryK

I posted a couple of days ago about revisiting the icon-free-desktop mode, also known as jwm-mode:

We have been discussing this on the forum:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=12573

If the user creates icons on the desktop while in rox-mode, now when switch to jwm-mode those icons appear in the tray. Before, they got left out.

Switching between rox- and jwm-modes is very easy. You will find it in the menu at "Desktop --> MoveIcons tray or desktop", also via clicking on the "setup" desktop icon. The latter case, a photo:

img1

Clicking on the "Move icons - Icons in tray or desktop" button:

img2

Clicking on "All icons in the tray" radiobutton then "Continue" and we get a desktop without icons:

img3

The icons I had previously created in rox-mode are leafpad, droidcam, chromium, nanosaur, claws, okular and frogatto, and they are all in the tray. They all have popup label when mouse-over.

The script that has been edited is /usr/local/ui/jwm/jwmrc-insert-icons:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/4229312636435bb5aa0893f055e572b48d3b20ba

This is great, makes icon-free-desktop mode really nice to use.    

Tags: easy

Revisiting icon-free desktop mode

August 31, 2024 — BarryK

EasyOS can switch between having icons on the desktop or all in the tray. This is chosen via the menu "Desktop -> MoveIcons tray or desktop", or via the "setup" desktop icon. Here is an early blog post introducing the icon-free desktop:

It hasn't been a popular option; just about everyone, myself included, have preferred to stay with the traditional desktop icons. As far as I'm aware anyway.

Here is an example of icon-free, from Easy 3.4:

img1

Due to limited space, there are no labels shown in the tray, only icons. The tray width is also less than screen width, as determined by file /usr/local/ui/jwm/tray_dims. I think it would be more usable if running apps showed in the tray with labels, as is done with icons-on-desktop mode. So, I have changed the tray to full-width, and running apps now have labels:

img2

...much more "normal" looking! Here is the github commit:

https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/bd65b39cf8f1423aae46391540856a4e620f88aa  

Tags: easy

French keyboard layout fix

August 31, 2024 — BarryK

There have been issues for users with a French-layout keyboard. There was a fix for JWM, for any non-US keyboard, posted about here:

That fix is in Easy 6.2; however, not quite there yet, as discussed in this forum thread about the 'xvkbd' virtual keyboard:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=12167

Easy 6.2 did not get it right, fixed now, see this post in the thread:

https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=129955#p129955   

Tags: easy

JWM version 2.4.3.99 compiled in OE

August 28, 2024 — BarryK

EasyOS has Joe's Window Manager version 2.4.2. The latest release is 2.4.3; however, there has been activity on github since then, so I downloaded the latest source and gave it version number 2.4.3.99. Github source is here:

https://github.com/joewing/jwm/

Here is the new OpenEmbedded recipe:

https://github.com/bkauler/oe-qky-scarthgap/commit/d8ea59cc43163a9f8571d7a3b480abf3effa0dc8

I don't see any "must have" changes since 2.4.2, but probably good to be up-to-date.    

Tags: easy