JamieRamone/MondoWorkspaceManager

Clone of NeXT's Workspace Manager for NEXTSTEP 0.8, for the Mondo Development Environment.

						    Mondo Workspace Manager

So what is this shit?

This application is a replica of the NeXT Workspace Manager, for the versions 0.8 and 0.9 of their operating system. It has most of
the same functionality, including:

- Console window, to see diagnostics messages.

- Browser viewer windows, to navigate thru the file system.

- Drag & drop handleing of files, including moving, copying, and linking.

- A recycler in a separate app icon.

It does differ from the original is several ways. First and most obvious (to those that ever used or at least saw the original) is
the icons. This app uses modern icon set from NEXTSTEP 3.3, so prettier home icon, recycler instead of black hole, etc. It's also
limited to a browser viewer for general file management and an icon view for the recycler, that's it.

The icon view for the recycler while fully functional is rather rigid, only allowing dropping icons in it, and dragging them out,
but no dragging within: it re-orders the icons alphabtically, left-to-right, top-to-bottom, creating a new row when the edge of the
window was reached.

The protection panel difers quite a bit in that it displays the current protection of the file, showing "On" or "Off" instead of
showing the string "No Change" on the buttons. The File Info panel also differs slightly in that it allows editing of the "Link To:"
field whereas the original did not, and it doesn't show the permissions (redundant, as it's already in the protection panel). But
you CAN still close it by clickingon any non-editable field :-)

There's no volume/external media management, but that's OK as this was also absent on the original and the machine it's made for has
no external drives (read below). Also note that there's no included task management, you have to rely on ps, top, kill, and xkill
for this purpose.

The impetus for making it was that the development environment for building my games and related tools lacked such a tool and I was
mainly working on the teminal application from the NextSpace project <github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace> and the Midnight Commander
file manager for UNIXish systems comand line.

I'm personally OK working like this. However, I had decided some time ago that the whole operating system I built for development
would be given more public role. I wouldn't be distributing it per se but rather put up the instructions to build it from the
publicly available sources, and only host the source for my own tools. This is just perfect as it derives from (a heavily modified)
LFS 9.0 anyway <www.linuxfromscratch.org> and makes hosting it easier as all I need to keep in my site is the source code for my own
tools. The problem is that not everyone would be OK with using a command line tool, stylish as it is, on a GUI.

I looked around and contemplated my options. There was GWorkspace, but that's a dumpster fire: mess of contradictory UI paradigms
(spatial vs. single-window file management, desktop AND dock AND shelf AND file manager), a mess of no-cohesive components (recycler
app with its own menu that can take the focus away from the main app a "desktop" that could be turned on and off), unneeded features
that serve no purpose and make it look more cluttered (icons in the browser), and so on and so forth...

Then there's NextSpace itself. It's much closer to the NEXTSTEP 3.3 overall experience, using a good chunk of the WindowMaker window
manager for the workspace itself and adding window accessories (title bar, borders, icon and miniwindows, etc.), a WM.app that does
look right from the screenshots I've seen, a HIGHLY improved terminal, and much more. But it was built for RedHat, Objc2, and not
easily coaxable to be used in an LFS-derived, ObjC development environment.

This left me with the final option: build my own app for this purpose. Now what specifically is this purpose? It would have to allow
for file management, manage applications (i.e start, stop, and activate) and processes, and volume management (i.e. mounting and
unmounting internal secondary memory volumes and removable media), and session management, as in logging out via the app. It would
take quite a hile to implementa all those things, however I COULD get away with implementing at least file and session management
and add some, if not all, of the other features later on down the line.

It took me a litte over two weeks but I got a fully functional file manager, complete with console and recycler. This NEXTSTEP 0.8
overall feel was chosen as it's mostly just a file manager, as session and volume management were barely existent and app management
wasn't really handled by WM.app but by workspace. Here, it's actually handled by WindowMaker. And as far as session management it
just sends a term signal to its parent, which is WindowMaker, just before terminating itself.

Now, using this application, gamescrafts can work on their code in e.g. TextEdit, compile things via gcc on the command line using
Terminal, and shuffle around the files in this app, even starting them from it. Hopefully it'll provide a comfortable enough
working/development environment for other users of the system so as to attract more or at least retain users as I finish it up in
the future.

So how do you install this shit?

This app depends on the GNUstep runtime/development environment which, if you've built the Mondo Developement Environment, you
already have. Otherwise, get those components first. Specifically, you need gnustep-make 2.7.0, gnustep-base (FoundationKit) 1.26.0,
gnustep-gui (AppKit) 0.27.0, and gnustep-back 0.27.0. Follow the instructions provided with each one and install them in that order.

Once that dependency is met, you can procede to unpack it by issuing 'xz -d < MondoWorkspace-1.0.tar.xz | tar xv' in a command line
prompt, within the same directory that the file MondoWorkspace-1.0.tar.xz is located in and then 'cd MondoWorkspace-1.0'. You don't
have to even be running the X Window System do do this.

Then you can build it by issuing 'make' and then install it by issuing 'make install'. You can string them together like this: 'make
&& make install'. This way, if running make fails, it won't procede to try to install it. If all goes well it'll install at
'/aux/lib/GNUstep/WM.app'. This is the default installation directory for it in the Mondo Development Environment, but if installing
elsewhere you'll have to manually override it by providing it to make when installing via the GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_DIR variable. So
if you want to install it in e.g. '/usr/local/WM.app' (might be a more appropriate location for most other distros) you'd type:
'make GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_DIR=/usr/local install' instead.

Finally, you'd  want to start it to check that it's working properly. To do this issue 'openapp /aux/lib/GNUstep/WM -staging' at the
command line. If you installed it anywhere else change the '/aux/lib/GNUstep' part of the command for your installation directory.
If all's well it should start up fine, and you should see the menu window at the top left corner of wour screen (the one titled 'WM
1.0', one browser window close by showing the contents of your home directory, and two app icons (two little square tiles). The
icons are for this app and the recycler. You can quit the app by clicking on the menu entry labeled 'Log out' (don't worry, it wont
log you out).

As a finishing touch, if running WindowMaker, you can drag both icons to the dock before quitting. Then, after you quit, open the
settings panel for each one and change the line for 'Application path and arguments' to read 'openapp /aux/lib/GNUstep/WM -staging'
for WM, or just 'openapp /aux/lib/GNUstep/WM' if you wish to logout via the menu entry. And for the Recycler cange it to a single
space i.e. ' '. You could also set WM to start with WindowMaker by ticking the first checkbox, the one labeled "Start when Window
Maker is started". Then click "OK" on both and your good to go.

So how do you use this shit?

You start off with one browser viewer window. The majority of the window is taken up by a UI control calle a "hierarchical browser",
or just browser as a shorthand. it consists of a series of columns side-by-side, each one displaying the full directory listing for
each component of a path. It also hilights the entry for any path component in the preceding coloumn (the one to the left), except
for the first one of course. So if the path to a file is '/A/B/C/d', you'll see the first column listing the contents of '/A' with
the entry titled 'B' highlighted, the next column to the right shows the contents of '/A/B' with the entry title 'C' hilighted, the
next one showing the contents of 'A/B/C' with the entry for 'd' hilighted.

You can also select multiple files by dragging the mouse across several entries in a column. This will cause them to become
hilighted. You can even extend the selection by clicking on another entry, or drag other entries, while pressing the 'Shift' key.
These other entries need not even be directly before or after the inital selection i.e. you can make a disjointed selection by
dragging.

By clicking on the browser you can change the path and thus, the selected file. This, of course, implies clicking on sn entry
itself. Clicking on an empty column or other part does nothing. When you click on an entry different that the currently hilighted
one that entry gets hilighted, the one that was hilighted gets un-hilighted if it was in the same column, any non-empty columns to
the right get cleared, and the one immediately to the right of the column with the selected entry gets loaded with the listing for
that entry if it was a directory (it remains empty if it's a regular file).

There are two buttons to the left for scrolling the browser if the amount of columns becomes larger than the vieable amount, four
initially. While there's less path components than visible columns they're disabled. When the total amount of columns becomes larger
they get enabled as needed to indicate which way you can actually scroll it i.e. if the browser is completely scrolled left only the
bottom one get's enabled, if completely to the right only the top one is enabled and if neithe fully to the left or fully to the
right, both are enabled.

On the right side of the window is the file well. It displays an icon for the selected file (the right-most hilighted entry in the
browser), which can be dragged out. This is th main means of manupulating the files. With this control you can drag the the file to
a well in a different window and, depending on which keyboard modifier you press, you can: move it, copy it, and/or make a symbolic
link to the file in the destination. It also displays a special icon for when multiple files are selected, and dragging this icon
applies the same operations to all the files in the selection.

Finally, you can open files and applications by double-clicking on their entry in the browser. Obviously, you can't open a selection
of multiple files, but you can drag them into the app icon of an app that can understand their type from the file well.

Just below the file well is the file name label which not only displays the selected file's name, but also allows renaming it. You
can do this by clicking on it, where you'll notice a text editing blinking cursor will appear, and then procede to type in new
characters into the file name (or delete any, or both). When youre done, you can commit this change by pressing 'Enter'. If you
click on any other control while editing, the name will reset itself.

In the submenu titled "Window" there are aditional operations on selected files which can't be performed from the selected file(s).
The first entry opens files just like the bouble-clicking of the browser does. However you can open multiple files at once from
here, even launching the relevant app. This way you don't have to depend on the underlying window manager's assistance, which may
not be there, nor having to manually open it yourself in this case.

The second entry, "Open directory" allows you to open a new browser window displaying the same selected file as the one on the
current main window. This allows you to have multiple browser windows to use as target/destination for drag and drop operations,
something that can't be done with a single window.

Next is "Protect..." entry. This one brings up the file permission panel for the given file (currently, only single file selections
are supported). Here you can change the UNIX permissions on said file, with the current protection bits displayed when the panel is
opened as a matrix of button titled "On" or "Off".

The next entry is called "New directory" and does just that, creates a new directory in the current one if the selected file is one.
After creating it, it'll be automatically selected.

Then there's the "More info" entry, which brings up a panel displaying the metadata for the selected file. This includes things like
the path of the directory that lists it,last modification date, size, group, owner, aplication(s) that can open it, and, if it's a
symbolic link, the file it points to. In the last case this field is editable so you can alter it. Pressing on the OK button, or any
text field, or label, closes the panel.

The last two apply to all windows: miniaturize and close, and do pretty much what they say: miniaturize and close the focused window
respectivly.

Note that some of these entrie apply only to directories and others to non-directory files. They will be appropriately enabled or
disabled depending on the type of the selected file in the focused window.

In the "Edit" menu, along with the usual suspects (cut, copy, paste, etc.) there's another file maipulation option called
"Duplicate". As it's name suggests, it duplicates the given file in the directory it's listed under, prepending "Copy_of_" to its
name.

Another menu that's unique to this app is the "Utilities" menu. With the first entry, "Destroy Deleted Files", you can empty the
recycler. This action deletes files for good. The next one, "Icon Grid...", brings up the icon grid settings panel. This panel is used
to configure the default (and only, for the moment) icon placement settings for icon views. This currently applies only to the
recycler. And the last one, "Console", well...brings up the system console i.e. the window where applications log status messages.

The final aspect of this application you should know is how to work with the recycler and how to delete files. The recycler has two 
components: the recycler icon and the recycler window. The recycler window can be closed at any time, and be brought back to the 
screen by double-clicking the icon.

To throw away files you no longer need, but may want back later on, you drag 
them into either component. while dragging over either one, the icon will spin. Once you drop the file(s) it'll stop and show a small 
dot in the center. This indicates that they're being moved into the recycler. Once that operation finishes and the files were moved,
it'll show a larger dot indicating that there are files in the recycler. As far as the window's concerned it'll show the new file(s).

You can restore files by dragging them from the window and into a browser viewer window. To do this you must first select them. There
are two ways to do this: clicking on an icon to select individual files, or dragging a rectangle around several icons to select more 
than one. Then you can procede to drag the icon(s) out. Just like between file wells, you can use keyboard modifiers to make copies of 
or links into the ones in the recycler. And just like in the file well dragging case, moving the files is the default action.

There, that's how you use it.

Wait, how are you licensing this shit?

This project is licensed under the terms of the third edition of the GNU General Public License. Under these terms you may use it
however you please, make any number of copies, modify it, and redistribute it, modified or not, without having to ask permission.
It also prohibits you from re-license it, so any modified copies you distribute are licensed under the same terms, and you HAVE to
make the source code INCLUDING YOUR MODIFICATIONS available to those you give it away to. You of cours also have access to the
initial source code, the one I provide as the projects author.

Thats some kewl shit!

I know, right?