It would appear that on Sep 30, P Purkayastha did say:
> Well, I am not so sure that the e17_setup.sh script is of much use
> now. enlightenment_remote has been "retired" and now things are being
> moved over to dbus based commands. The current enlightenment_remote is
> just a scripted wrapper to dbus and supports only a small subset of
> the commands of the earlier enlightenment_remote.
>
> That said, feel free to forward the link,- it will remain as long as
> google does not remove it.
Now I'm depressed. I originally found enlightenment because when it began
to seem inevitable that (yuck) kde4 was going to grind kde3 under it's
treads I started looking for an alternative. Then I found a review of
enlightenment (that was based I think on e16) that mentioned it could be
configured to run almost exclusively with the keyboard. Since I have great
personal difficulty with pointing devices I then started looking into if I
could get enlightenment via the various package management systems of the
linux versions I currently run (Sabayon [gentoo based], Kubuntu [debian
based], & OpenSuSE ) And after I was able to install e16 on ALL THREE I
started to try to learn to live with it. As soon as I discovered how easy
it was to edit ~/.e16/bindings.cfg to get my primary user interface all
configured without resorting to the pain generating rodent, I feel in love
with it. I wasn't real happy with the gui tools I had to use to configure
the rest of it, but they were no more painful than kde4 had become, and
since the keybindings themselves were quick and easy to set-up, I felt like
I could make the other configuration changes a little at a time, which
helped avoid over stressing my wrists...
I thought I was happy again. Then I discovered that there was a newer
version of enlightenment in the works called E17. I thought, "Oh NO!
Did I just jump out of kde4's frying pan to land in another skillet?"
I feared that this e17 would sooner or later do to e16 what kde4 is doing
to kde3. So I thought I better check it out to see if I was going to have
to keep an eye out for yet another Window Manager/Desktop Environment, Or
could I really afford to get hooked on 'E'.
My first look at e17 wasn't encouraging until some nice person introduced
me to enlightenment_remote AND a marvelous script that made it relatively
easy to use called e17_setup.sh... (thanks again ppurka) And I began to
believe that I could afford to get used to the up and coming version of
enlightenment. Now It's almost as rare that I use e16 as that I would load
kde anymore. Especially since the new kde4 versions of some of the programs
I'm addicted to cause it to lock up more often than e17 (I hate it when I've
got several different kinds of documents open, some with unsaved changes,
and something suddenly causes the gui to stop listening to either the
keyboard or the mouse...)
But now you tell me that they are in the process of throwing away the only
keyboard based configuration tool there is...
---------<({ whimper, sniffle, ARGGHA!, sigh, whimper... })>---------
You know I don't mind things being designed to make things easier for point
n click methods, (some of it is a good thing) But I get really frustrated
when the programmers don't bother to include good keyboard support.
Especially when it used to be there.
I don't suppose this dbus stuff is scriptable in any meaningful human
readable way... (IE by someone who isn't a source code programmer)
Or to put it another way, Who do I gotta kill to get them to keep something
like enlightenment_remote around, even if it's really just a wrapper
written to keep as many things scriptable as possible...
[rant-mode]
Otherwise is there a way to convince them to make the gui more keyboard
friendly. (Yeah I know it's *_usually_* possible to use the tab, arrow, and
enter keys. But I've noticed that it's not easy to see where the enter
key's "focus" is. {Except when it's inside an editable text field.} IE to
use the "alarm" gadget to set a quick one time reminder, I first have to
fight with the mouse long enough to give it a right click, WHICH, if I'm
lucky enough to be able to let go of the mouse without the pointer
winding up inside the pop-up menu, AND if I didn't accidentally hold
the click too long so that the pop-up disappears when I release the mouse
button... Then I can use the keyboard to select 'add an alarm...' At which
point it takes 2 tabs to reach the alarm name field, the next tab gets me
the description field. The next two tabs are for the time sliders which
can be moved with arrows (God how I wish I could just type the time into
the text display window next to the sliders...) Then it's a clue how
painful the gui is for a keyboard centric user that I actually know it
takes 10 more tabs to get to where I could type in the date, But at that
point I'm only one tab away from the today button (two from the one I
need to set an alarm for tomorrow) then another 4 tabs away from the ok
button, (3 if counting from the tomorrow button) I know how many tabs it
takes because I sure can't see which button, checkbox, or radio selection
would be made by tapping either the enter key or the spacebar without
blindly tapping on the enter key or spacebar to see what changes... God
forbid that I should get interrupted and lose count. Cause then I have to
tab, squint at the three editable text fields to see of that skinny
cursor line has appeared yet, and keep tabbing till I know where it is, so
that I can again count the tabs to the button (etc...) I want.
I hate to borrow from Microsoft, But I suspect they stole the idea from
somebody else anyway... Why can't the label for each field, button,
etc... have an underscored letter that in combination with the alt key
will select the appropriate button, field, etc... so that navigating the
gui with the keyboard wouldn't be so much of a pain???
[/rant-mode]
Seriously though, I thank you again for your kindness. And e17_setup.sh
even if it's days are numbered. Actually, though, the good news is that the
fact that I'm dependent on distro-based package management (and associated
repos) means that it will probably be a while before the versions of e17
I wind up with will have done away with enlightenment_remote...
--
|
| ^^^ ^^^
| <o> <o> Joe (theWordy) Philbrook
| ^ ` J(tWdy)P
| ___ <<jtw...@ttlc.net>>
| ' `
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