torios-dev team mailing list archive

[Israel Dahl <israeldahl@xxxxxxxxx>]

Still learning Rust, still working on xdgkit.  I've gotten most 
functionality, but have not gotten menu capabilities yet.

I have progressed fairly far in learning about FLTK + Rust and actually 
prefer it because of `Option` rather than `NULL`, as it presents the 
convention in an easier to understand and process, for example:

let variable:Type = match variable_as_option {
  Some(variable) => variable,
  None => Type::default(),
};
// do stuff with variable

Anyway, things are progressing slowly, but surely, as they always do 
with one developer working part time on a passion project XD

I''m also working on an FLTK + Rust game to really explore the things I 
can do for ToriOS.  I could likely create a Theme using the old color 
schemes from ToriOS.

I'm also learning XML APIs for Rust (for use with the menu), so I could 
potentially read something like a JWM, or openbox configuration file to 
"import" it into whatever we end up making. I would like to support both 
Wayland and X11 as you may recall, as to support a faster OS on the 
low-spec Pinephone.  This is a long goal, as the devices are still 
pretty usable with the high density DEs on them.  FLTK already supports 
dynamic resizing without needing any code (if you use FLUID that is), 
and already runs on Android, so the toolkit is prime for use in Wayland 
environments, as it has already been tested on mobiles.  There is even 
the basics of a Keyboard, as well as existing Keyboards that can be 
vastly improved, for example: squeakboard - GTK + FLTK = waaaaay better.

The other major thing I am considering is overall setup.  On a BIG 
screen, the App launcher should go on the same panel as the indicators, 
however on a small screen it should e split off to the bottom.  So I was 
thinking of potentially creating a "Panel" app at some point, that 
potentially wraps itself to the bottom (and autohides with a small tab 
to pull up) so no one would have to configure it to simply use their 
desktop configuration file.  It would choose the more common phone 
conventions, yet still have the common "Left side of screen = app 
launcher", but also the common "bottom side of screen = app launcher", 
which can be pretty common on the desktop (Windows, Chrome, etc...) as 
well.  Though on the desktop the Panel would still default to top, but 
could be changed to bottom as can be preferred.

Thanks to all who still lurk here and put up with my technical babble 
XD  Programming excites me, as does libre software, so thanks for 
letting me nerd vent on you all occasionally :D

--
😷