Author Topic: Qatapult (Read 305744 times)

ewemoa · « **Reply #175 on:** February 27, 2012, 07:25 PM »

Thanks for the new release

- the bad background bug detected by ewemoa should be a thing of the past too
-ecaradec (February 27, 2012, 02:44 PM)

With the inline skin, I still get truncation:

qatapult-inline-text-pane-truncation.png.png

Qatapult

Also, with the default skin I noticed evidence of a fourth pane -- may be when it is unwanted?

Qatapult

- the clock is gone, I don't think it was very useful and it was difficult to keep with the current changes. It will come back later.

I support this type of thinking and action -- even if you said "It MAY come back later"

I briefly tested:

Code: Text [Select]

<settings>
        <general>
                <font>MS Mincho</font>

It seems to work so far -- since J works, may be C and K will too

This was all under Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.

pigeonlips · « **Reply #176 on:** February 27, 2012, 08:41 PM »

$0.display was missing and while testing i had 'new' in the args bit. Corrected the post again.

pigeonlips · « **Reply #177 on:** February 27, 2012, 10:10 PM »

skinning is fun!

ecaradec · « **Reply #178 on:** February 28, 2012, 07:00 AM »

The first and the last rule in the bookmark plugin is a 4 items rule. I think that's your issue ewemoa, but I don't know what's the purpose of that 4th argument. It doesn't seem used.

ecaradec · « **Reply #179 on:** February 28, 2012, 07:01 AM »

$0.display was missing

It's possible that some $x.display miss in the last version. I replaced some by $x.text that is valuable for most kind of items : It's more standard.

ecaradec · « **Reply #180 on:** February 28, 2012, 07:15 AM »

You new skin looks awesome pigeonlips. However I feel a bit lost without a focus and your skin would require a different focus for each position of the focus.

However there is a special rule that I haven't really documented yet for background that you might use for focus. Qatapult will take the background picture whose path match :

background_(nbitems)_(focus).png

So you can make different background that include the focus by making the following backgrounds :

background_2_1.png
background_2_2.png
background_3_2.png
background_3_3.png

You won't need to include the focus anymore. You also might want to keep a background.png so that Qatapult default on it if it can't find a match.

ewemoa · « **Reply #181 on:** February 28, 2012, 07:37 PM »

The first and the last rule in the bookmark plugin is a 4 items rule. I think that's your issue ewemoa, but I don't know what's the purpose of that 4th argument. It doesn't seem used.
-ecaradec (February 28, 2012, 07:00 AM)

May be pigeonlips could clarify

pigeonlips · « **Reply #182 on:** February 29, 2012, 03:04 PM »

Hi all,

Yeah i can clairy. It was going to be used for the Name so like this:

Web Cat > Add to > URL > Name.

In the end i left it out in my struggle to make it work. I should now be easy to put back in. That upload was very very rough. I should have held off till it was fully finished

Also it would be cool if there was a way of setting a hint or something as with this approach i can not think of a way to notify the user what goes where in the GUI (IE s/he would need to know the order is > URL > NAME. ). Theres no "un-documented" way to set the text at the top (indexing) or preferably bottom (path) is there ?

I feel a bit lost without a focus

too true. I had played around with the focus.png and as gutted i couldn't get it to work, Thanks for the tip with the backgrounds. Here's what i got (see attachment)

re-position icons and text depending on the pane your on might be cool. I really would like to try a skin that instead of focus, uses size to indicate what pane your on.

Also that Alfred link looks great. I would try replicating it (will if you want), but the bit that looks the best is the preview part on the right.

I'd love to see something like that in qatapult with thumbnails but i guess that's a pretty big feature. If your keen just having the sources (ie IndexedFiles, Filesystem, Network, Window, Web, etc would be handy as a start. Thats just an idea though.

Great new update with the release. Thanks Heaps. I think its great how much progress you are making with it. The fairy-tale is fast becoming a legend to be sung in songs of old!

Maybe the 1% will start to get jealous

PS - forgot to ask - qatapult defaults to center screen - any way of configuring this. I'd like to try a skin that's at the top of the screen.

ewemoa · « **Reply #183 on:** February 29, 2012, 08:49 PM »

Also it would be cool if there was a way of setting a hint or something as with this approach i can not think of a way to notify the user what goes where in the GUI (IE s/he would need to know the order is > URL > NAME. ). Theres no "un-documented" way to set the text at the top (indexing) or preferably bottom (path) is there ?
-pigeonlips (February 29, 2012, 03:04 PM)

Some kind of status text does sound nice.

For comparison...

QS

Qatapult

Option in FARR

Qatapult

ewemoa · « **Reply #184 on:** February 29, 2012, 08:52 PM »

I miss the change in color of the area where the text is typed in a pane -- so it looks like a text edit field:

Qatapult

The subtle background is nice too -- presumably of the object's default image.

May be this will be possible at some point?

pigeonlips · « **Reply #185 on:** February 29, 2012, 09:32 PM »

@ewemoa

for the change in color - did you want it to look highlighted like the screeny above. If not i could easy knock up a skin with any color you like for text focus. (i think). One problem is that the text is white (not sure how to change that) and that there's no binding on the first pane in terms of H x W so it fills the background image.

pigeonlips · « **Reply #186 on:** February 29, 2012, 09:45 PM »

just tryed it and it looks bad. Mostly because of the white text on a pale background, also forgot but it applys to all the panes (ie free type in pane two etc)

pigeonlips · « **Reply #187 on:** February 29, 2012, 09:54 PM »

The subtle background is nice too

do you mean the transparency - i'm not following that bit

ewemoa · « **Reply #188 on:** March 01, 2012, 01:24 AM »

The subtle background is nice too
do you mean the transparency - i'm not following that bit
-pigeonlips (February 29, 2012, 09:54 PM)

I think so. The way the image came across to me was that underneath the text mode edit field was the image of a globe along with corresponding text.

Thus one gets a reminder of the object type displayed previous to entering text mode.

ecaradec · « **Reply #189 on:** March 01, 2012, 05:36 AM »

I've come to the conclusion that there is too much details and positioning issue that I can solve with automatic settings :
- the inline skin looks correct but the positioning of icons is way too approximative so that the skin looks really nice, and this will apply to every skin we can do with the current system.

What I think I'll do is to gives the control of the display to a javascript plugin, that way each skin will be able to exactly place each component of the skin where it want. It will also be able to display extra datas from the focused pane or the current rule, etc...

It could look like something like that :

function draw(gui,focus,rule) {
   if(rule.length==3) {
   drawImage("background3.png",x,h,w,y);
   } else {
   drawImage("background.png",x,h,w,y);
   }

   drawInput(0,0,w,h)

   drawImage("focus.png",0,50,w,y);
   drawImage("$0.icon",0,50,w,y);
   drawText("$0.text",0,50,w,y);

   drawImage("focus.png",100,50,w,y);
   ...

   drawImage("focus.png",200,50,w,y);
   ...

   drawResults(x,y,w,h);
   ...
}

The current drawing function is completly independant from the rest, so binding all of these would not be really difficult.

ecaradec · « **Reply #190 on:** March 01, 2012, 04:40 PM »

Tada ! I'm proud to say that the new version include the first part of the extension mecanism of Qatapult :

This part allows you to publish new items into Qatapult. You can read them in anything that is FAST to read. FAST is important because being slow here will impact everything you do in Qatapult. I've attached an example that read a text file and returns results to Qatapult.The whole available api is demonstrated in the example as there is only 4 functions. You can also create your custom type by giving it a special name and adding extra parameters. Here is what the plugin look like :

function collect(query,results) {
   if(!results.expects('TEXT'))
   return;

   var fso=new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
   var f=fso.OpenTextFile("plugins\\snippets\\text.txt");

   var objects=[];
   while(!f.AtEndOfStream) {
   var l=f.ReadLine()
   if(qatapult.match(l,query)) {
   results.addObject('TEXT',l, {'key':l, 'text':l, 'icon':'plugins\\snippets\\text.png'}); // TEXT is the type here, you can use CONTACT or FILE or your own type
   }
   }
   f.Close();
}

Because this kind of plugin has to be fast, I think that there will be separate extension mecanism for indexing slower things than would run periodically and save the results inside the sqlite db.

pigeonlips · « **Reply #191 on:** March 01, 2012, 05:46 PM »

downloaded and installed. I have no idea how to invoke it. do we call this from a plugin.xml?

I'm not realy a dev so a little out my depth.

ewemoa · « **Reply #192 on:** March 01, 2012, 06:30 PM »

New extension mechanism looks interesting!

Downloaded and installed latest Qatapult.zip and placed uncompressed content of snippets.zip in plugins folder -- as hinted at by the posted .js:

Code: Javascript [Select]

var f=fso.OpenTextFile("plugins\\snippets\\text.txt");

Qatapult crashes on start up though -- this was with XP Pro SP3.

pigeonlips · « **Reply #193 on:** March 01, 2012, 06:41 PM »

humm - i must be doing something wrong. Snippets extracted to plugins, qatapult loads a-ok but i have no idea how to make it work from here on out

pigeonlips · « **Reply #194 on:** March 01, 2012, 06:51 PM »

do you have to run the .js first or is having it in the plugins folder enough?

ewemoa · « **Reply #195 on:** March 01, 2012, 10:02 PM »

Tested with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit and also experienced crash on start up.

ecaradec · « **Reply #196 on:** March 02, 2012, 01:21 AM »

yes normally you just unzip the plugin inside the plugin folder. Be careful there is a folder inside it, there should be only the folder plugins/snippets/(plugin content ).

May be some file or somthing like that is missing that is causing a crash. I'll fix that asap.

ecaradec · « **Reply #197 on:** March 02, 2012, 01:26 AM »

To test it : type any string from the text file 'bonjour', 'dinausaure',... Or add your own words, however this is a very useless plugin.

ewemoa · « **Reply #198 on:** March 02, 2012, 03:22 AM »

FWIW, the following is the set up I have currently:

Qatapult

I've tried downloading both Qatapult.zip and snippets.zip with a different browser, but the results have been the same -- crash at start up.

ecaradec · « **Reply #199 on:** March 02, 2012, 04:08 AM »

It might be related to not having a script debugger installed. You might try to install http://www.microsoft...etails.aspx?id=22185 to check if that fix the crash. I remember that my code from fscript could have this issue, may be it wasn't fixed in the version I reused. Does it only happens when the 'snippets' plugin is installed ?