Re: Starting from scratch...

Weeble wrote:
> I've not actually been running Litestep for ages, but I desperately
> need a virtual desktop system on my tablet, and frankly every
> standalone one I've tried has sucked. Having decided that nothing
> short of Litestep will do, I now find myself staring at Austerity and
> wondering what to do.
Not Austerity! Go to ls.net and start downloading! :)
> So, for a start, what are everybody's recommended workhorse modules?
RabidVWM, lsxCommand, LSLua, xLabel, xTaskbar, xTray, xPopup 
(implicitly: xPaintClass and xStatsClass)

Looks like an X trend, don't it?
http://www.ls-universe.info/
> I don't care about the weather or media player integration or stuff like
> that. I do need good ways of starting programs and switching between
> programs, in particular those that involve no keyboard input and don't
> involve trying to target the edges of the screen.* I'd like to be able
> to rearrange icons on my desktop (or at least have an easy and quick
> way to create drop-targets on the desktop to move/copy files to chosen
> directories). I need good ways to move windows between desktops and
> switch desktops without using keys.
xLabel can do the dragging stuff with no scripting involved, most likely 
(though you may want to, for extra options/control), though I'm not sure 
what happens w/ folders and multiple files normally (never tried it). 
xLabel can do a lot...don't let xPopup get too lonely, either. I imagine 
it could be used (with big entries) fairly well with a stylus.

Moving windows between desktops...drag them. If you want free dragging 
(ctrl+drag, right now, with any RabidVWM-using theme), I'm pretty sure 
there's a setting to change that to the normal drag behavior. For 
changing desktops, there are quite a few ways, between hotspots, labels, 
and the VWM module itself. Yup: VWMSnapWindowOnDrag.

For icons, there's basically Clickonic.
>
> I'm not afraid of RC files and have done some scripting and theming
> before, it was just a very long time ago. That said, I'd rather not
> have to edit RC files regularly - hopefully I can set things up as I
> like them and then do everything else by rearranging folders of
> shortcuts and triggering changes through scripts.
Try checking out fractal.design and xcal's more recent themes. fractal's 
won't be tablet-friendly, from what you're saying, but have lots of good 
Lua stuff and good use of xLabel. Popsicle might be another to pick at a 
little for xModule stuff (note that not all settings will be just right 
for the newest versions of the modules, based on xPaintClass).
> Also, I asked before, but got no reply: does anybody have any idea how
> to summon the Tablet Input Panel when Litestep is running? Some
> applications *ahem*everythingbasedonQT*ahem* don't register their
> input areas properly with the OS so it doesn't give you the icon that
> opens the handwriting panel. Normally in Explorer there's a special
> toolbar that has a button to summon the TIP, but as a toolbar it only
> works with Explorer as shell.
No clue. Never seen it before.
>
> Regards,
>    Weeble.
>
> * - The stylus is a fascinating input device. Compared to a mouse:
> Clicking on things is less natural - it's hard to click without small
> motions that make it think you're trying to drag.
> Double-clicking is very awkward - it's tricky to click twice in the 
> same place.
> Dragging is very natural
> Gestures are very natural
> Using the right button is quite awkward - it involves squeezing a
> button on the side of the pen and then tapping the pen on the screen
> There's no middle button or scroll-wheel, at least on my pen
I'm surprised buttons (and double-click) weren't made to be handled by 
your other hand on the computer itself as modifier keys...but, oh well. 
They'd probably be made to require a crappy Explorer-hooked thing that 
would make them useless in LS if that were done, anyway :).
> Moving large distances is more work - it involves more movement to
> move the pen the width of the screen than the mouse
> Targetting the screen edges and corners is really hard - whereas the
> mouse pointer is constrained to the screen, your stylus is not! This
> is exacerbated by poor digitiser accuracy near the screen edges, at
> least on my tablet. Scroll bars are a bit of a pain because they tend
> to be very narrow.
What happens if you make them larger? Does being large enough make them 
eat up too much space? Or does the low precision get in the way even then?

> Ack, it's all gone nasty. I tried downloading some themes from
> ls-universe. I'm getting lots of DLL errors and Litestep keeps
> refusing to start. For example, with the theme "RockSolid-xpc v1.0":
> * Firstly I get errors about xPaintClass-1.0 being missing. I think
> this is just an oversight in the theme - I'm assuming it's supposed to
> tell NetLoadModule to fetch this module before loading the others and
> it doesn't. Anyway, I downloaded it manually and put it in the modules
> folder.
Add this to the theme.rc before other modules load:
*NetLoadModule xpaintclass-1.0
Being able to get it without manually installing it (and into the LS 
program dir, not the modules one) is exceptionally new (Jan 25!).
> * Now I get a whole bunch of errors that all say "Error: Could not
> locate module. Please check your configuration." I get this for the
> following modules:
> C:\LiteStep\modules\xtaskbar-2.0.dll
> C:\LiteStep\modules\xtray-2.0.dll
> C:\LiteStep\modules\xlabel-4.0.dll
> C:\LiteStep\modules\xpopup-2.0.dll
> All of these files appear to exist in the paths specified. I don't
> know why it's saying this.
XPC needs to be loaded first, that's all.
> I tried another theme from the same site, EcyStep, and it seemed to do
> nothing at all other than start litestep.exe. I couldn't see any
> on-screen elements.
>
> Are these just broken themes? Or am I having bigger problems? I used
> Omar's installer. Should I have used the dist.ru one? Do I need more
> up-to-date core/modules/something?
A newer core wouldn't hurt. 0.24.7 Final is out. I'm not sure if any 
modules will be affected.

-cerbie

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