torios-dev team mailing list archive

[Israel Dahl <israeldahl@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi quick update.

I've made progress with xdgkit bringing it to version 2.0.0, due to
breaking changes in the API.  This brings the ability to search for an
icon based on its symbolic name, such as in a desktop file.  The
algorithm seeks out the current user theme (KDE/GTK), defaulting to
"hicolor" if none exist, and then searches for an appropriate icon (svg,
png, xpm).

The majority of the future work will go into the Desktop Menu
specification.  I already have some underlying mechanisms in place to
find the current session's XDG_MENU_PREFIX, and return the menu file in
use, or the default `applications.menu`.  The underlying mechanisms for
dealing with ".directory" files is also in place, so the remainder is to
construct a menu, which can then be output.  I would like to eventually
make this easily output to many menu formats, as well as being able to
integrate it into FLTK to create a very fast menu that can be used in
*ANY* window manager.

The backend of FLTK has been undergoing changes in the 1.4.0 branch so
work to support displaying on Linux Phones, such as Pinephone are
potentially in the near future.  The Rust FLTK API is fairly complete,
and I am progressing well in my familiarization of the "new" API.  I've
begun working on a few test games, written in Rust + FLTK, which I may
eventually get to a point where I can release them.  Much of the game
development work is to test out general programming ideas involving Rust
+ FLTK + ini configuration files.

I have decided on using ini style configuration files moving forward, in
ToriOS, as they are the most human readable, and easiest for a child to
edit.  XML is great, but not as human readable (used in JWM), where as
an ini file is a list of items under a header (the desktop file is a
good example).  My ultimate goal in building a decent small, fast menu,
is that we would not be tied to any specific window manager, or even
display manager.  A maximalist App launcher, for any combination of
libre desktop components.  It could even function pinned as a shortcut
on any DE's panel.

I am not sure how long it will take to get to that goal, but I'll keep
at it in the times that I am able to, as usual.  This also has the
further goal of building ToriOS again, with a much safer programming
language.  Less bugs to fix, means less work in the future.  The future
work is locked into optimizing, rather than mitigating security threats :D

If you read all that, I hope you are doing well during this really hard
time.  Feel free to reach out if you need to.

-- 
😷