tsuren's chest of curious packages

[tsuren]

It is generally a bad design to make assumptions, about anything. If you want to cancel the installation of packages, you do only that. Don't assume that anything else should be done. "Cancel installation" doesn't mean "Cancel installation and unmark everything". If you want to unmark packages, do just that. Don't assume anything else.

It is true, gapan. But we are not free from our capacity to make assumptions. And sometimes difficult to see if one assumption might fare well in terms of risk avoidance over others. In any case, I learnt my lesson there, and I wish I am the only one to have made this stupid error.

[mimosa]

I still think it would make sense to add a warning along the lines I suggested above. It could be implemented using whatever functionality it is that automatically selects anything at all because of dependency relations:

When you toggle the tick state of any item that, for certain operations, is associated with others that depend on it or on which it depends, you get a choice about whether their tick state is toggled too.

This needn't be an annoying dialogue box - it could be some clever button or widget that lights up, and you click on it to change the action from the default. A hovering mouse would see an explanation, like in Akuna's lovely apps for Salix Live.

[tsuren]

I think i was not careful enough. If you tick one package for uninstall, and its dependency files are also ticked for uninstall in the selection section, the cancel button should not do unmark all automatically. (And this was the point I did not see. I did not see that dep files are also ticked in the selection section, so this made me believe that they are ticked automatically and inadvertently in the confirmation window just before executing.)

So after seeing this, it seems that design makes sense now. But, it is not so obvious sometimes if not careful enough, and it is easy to make a mistake like that especially when uninstalling something. One needs to be a little more careful.

[tsuren]

tumblefile

Tumblefile copies every five minutes all files on your Desktop to a folder such as ~/Documents/2009-07-July/25-Saturday, prepending a timestamp (like 20090727.1645) to the filename. Meanwhile its little window sits in the system tray. It is a way to automatically keep your Desktop cleared and files organized. (For more, read the original text from the author here.)

I thought this application was interesting to have as my desktop is often messy with all sorts of photos, files, and so on. I had it on my computer for almost a year, and found it not as useful as I originally thought. Having said that I think the idea is neat, and can be of use to some people.

tumblefile-1.2-i486-1tt.txz

[tsuren]

A while ago, someone asked for Kupfer, an application that allows users to access applications and documents quickly. I packaged it then for 13.1, but here is the update version for 13.37. Note: I did not use all the python deps while compiling this. They are optional and you can find the list of python modules here: appindicator, docutils, gdata, gnome, gnomekeyring, keyring, nautilus, setproctitle, wnck). They are either related to gnome or to google, and I was not inclined to package them as well.

The package requires some dependency packages as well. So make sure to check the dep file as well.

kupfer
kupfer-v206-i486-1tt.txz

And you need "keybinder" if you wish to modify its shortcuts.
keybinder
keybinder-0.2.2-i486-1tt.txz

[tsuren]

fotowall
fotowall-0.9-i486-1tt.txz

A very cute and neat qt application. You can search and download photos directly from the Internet and use it for your photo manipulation. There are some other neat features in this application. One small complaint from me is that after bringing the main frame back, child windows go behind the main and there is no straight way to get back the child windows to the front (e.g. photo search and download window). Apart from this small thing, I think the application is really good.

[tsuren]

synergy

synergy-1.3.6-i486-1tt.txz

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. After installing, create a synergy.conf file in /etc/synergy directory (you might have to make it yourself). You can find how to use the application here.

If you are using a German keyboard as I am, you have to start "setxkbmap de" before launching synergyc on the client side, or you will have the US keyboard map set automatically for the client display.

Since last week, I have two computers right next to each other, and I am amazed how well this application is working on the two!

[Akuna]

@ synergy,

That seems so useful. My desks are cluttered with keyboard and mice. I'll try that.

[Shador]

There's synergy-plus in the repository, which is a bit newer version than synergy. They have undergone some weird forking and merging or possibly are still undergoing or maybe even died.

[tsuren]

The site told me that the plus was merged back to synergy.