Currently on the menu, the applications are shown in a list layout, would like to see an option to change this to a gird layout instead. With an option to specify the number of columns.
Graeme Gott referenced this bugreport in commit 0b767f6391b7d5ad59c79aff19ba66d34c0de44a Add option to show as icons. (bug #15675) https://git.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin/commit?id=0b767f6391b7d5ad59c79aff19ba66d34c0de44a
I could not make the columns stretchy (without messy and hackish code that was too brittle for my tastes), so you can't choose the number of columns. But other than that, you can now show the launchers as a grid of icons.
That's great thanks. Can't wait to try it out. I'm assuming this will be in v2.3.5, when will that be available, and how can I get it?
This will be in the next feature release (v2.3.5 was just a bugfix release and is already available), which won't be done for a few weeks yet. How you get it depends upon what distro you are using (I have a PPA for Ubuntu, and packages from OBS), or you can compile it from source.
I'm running Linux Mint XFCE. I don't mind installing a PPA to get the version that has this feature to test it out.
Just to be clear it is 19.3 of linux mint.
The version with this feature isn't finished yet. When it is released, you can get it from my PPA: https://launchpad.net/~gottcode/+archive/ubuntu/gcppa
Fwiw, this seems to be the new default when updating from 2.3.5 to 2.4.0 which might confuse users - and on top of that, display of labels is broken because of issues with recent pango 1.44 that also affected thunar (cf https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16310 and https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15856 for the thunar issue/fix) - the end result is https://yoona.everdot.org/linux/xfce4/whiskermenu-git-2020-02-10.jpg which is 'unfortunate'. should i file a new issue with this ? a probable fix is to apply a variation of https://git.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/commit?id=3eb6e78cf4aeacdebaa425af00556db4d73f6bcb to whiskermenu..
https://github.com/linuxmint/nemo/pull/2261/files has a similar fix for nemo - there's not much pango specific code in whiskermenu sadly, so some boilerplate looks necessary to disable hyphens via g_object_set() in the ctor in launcher-icon-view.cpp
Created attachment 9441 Fix hyphenated words with Pango 1.44 Yikes. I don't have that with my pango 1.44 install, so I can't be sure I've fixed it. Does this patch work for those affected?
Looks good on my machine. I don't see the same problem as Landry. I'm running Linux Mint 19.3.
Still a bit awkward with that patch, which gives https://imgur.com/u1Cw3s7.png here.
the strange thing is that i thought trying larger icons would help, but the size of the 'square' for the icon+label stays the same so text ends up hyphenated anyway, whatever the icon size..
not sure but on the other occurences (ie thunar for example), the attributes were set on the global view, not cell by cell.. trying ``` +#if PANGO_VERSION_CHECK(1,44,0) + PangoAttrList* attrs = pango_attr_list_new(); + pango_attr_list_insert(attrs, pango_attr_insert_hyphens_new(false)); + + g_object_set(m_icon_renderer, "attributes", attrs, nullptr); + pango_attr_list_unref(attrs); +#endif ``` but that didnt help either.
What's really strange is this shouldn't be possible. In git commit 98a6cf3bc74f5c8722f5338c7272d6e8fc74ce3b I made my custom icon renderer set a minimum width quite a bit bigger than the actual icon size. You are definitely using 2.4.0 and not a previous git version, correct? Maybe try this: ``` +#if PANGO_VERSION_CHECK(1,44,0) + PangoAttrList* attrs = pango_attr_list_new(); + pango_attr_list_insert(attrs, pango_attr_insert_hyphens_new(false)); + + g_object_set(cell_layout, "attributes", attrs, nullptr); + pango_attr_list_unref(attrs); +#endif ```
Hm, setting the attrs directly on the cell_layout spams the debug console with the fact that GtkIconView has no property named "attributes". Which makes sense, since that is a GtkCellRendererText property to set Pango attributes.
Created attachment 9444 Set icon renderer stretch property in constructor Looking at the code, the only way it could be finding the smaller minimum width is if it somehow isn't setting the "stretch" property correctly. Does setting the property in this manner fix the bug?
Created attachment 9446 Always set natural width It seems more likely that the issue is the cell not having the proper natural width.
Created attachment 9447 xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin git + attachment 9446 > Created attachment 9446 > Always set natural width Looks perfect with this patch. I have the pango-1.44.7. On my system The icon view is all me- ss- ed- up in current git master - the patch in attachment 9446 makes the icon view look perfect.
Good to know! In your screenshot there are still some hyphenated words. What happens if you also use the pango patch?
Created attachment 9448 attachment 9441 has no effect attachment 9441 does not appear to have any effect, not that I can see, anyway. So I guess it's not perfect, Angry Drunke- n Dwarve- and Aura Kingdo- m stand out as particularly ridiculous (if there's room for Kingdo- then there's surely room for Kingdom and no need to add a -). Perhaps I used the wrong patch, but I don't see any other patch mentioning Pango than attachment 9441 ?
Created attachment 9449 git master with no patches for reference Just a screenshot of git master without any of the patches for reference. attachment 9446 is clearly a huge improvement even if the hyphen issue isn't resolved
Created attachment 9450 Add more padding to icon columns Does increasing the icon column width help with the hyphenation?
looks great here with attachments 9450 & 9446, no hyphenation here. ``` if (icon_renderer->stretch) { - width += 76 - (icon_renderer->size / 2); + width += 76 - (icon_renderer->size / 4); + if (natural) + { + *natural = (width * 2) - 1; + } } ``` on a sidenote i fail to see what 'display as tree' does, seems to be the same as 'display as list' here but maybe that's because my menu is default/doesnt have subcategories/folders.
Created attachment 9451 Increasing the icon column width DOES help with the hyphenation There is still hyphenation but there's less of it with wider columns. It doesn't solve it completely BUT I do believe it is as good as it gets with attachment 9450 because .. any wider would probably be too wide columns (which would not be good?) as for Landry Breuil's question > on a sidenote i fail to see what 'display as tree' does, seems to be the > same as 'display as list' here but maybe that's because my menu is > default/doesnt have subcategories/folders. You can see what the tree view does in this image: https://linuxreviews.org/images/thumb/3/3e/Xfce4-whiskermenu-2.4.0-tree-view.jpg/960px-Xfce4-whiskermenu-2.4.0-tree-view.jpg There is a patch which adds some sub categories to garcon at https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16432 Tree view will obviously do nothing if you don't have any sub-categories. Having them makes the menu a bit more organized but it doesn't solve all that much. Steam, for example, has every single game install a desktop file with "Categories=Game" while most native Linux packages have "Categories=Game;ArcadeGame;" or "Categories=Game;StrategyGame;" or something like that which makes it possible to put them in sub-folders.
I have merged those patches (attachments 9446 & 9450) into git and will soon be making a bugfix release that contains them. Thanks for testing!
Thanks, can confirm 2.4.1 is fine here, updated the package in the OpenBSD ports tree :)