Filer window backgrounds

Jim Nagel has suggested to me that it might be easier to read context quicker if all filer windows could have user defined backgrounds, not just pinboard for the root $. An alternative would be user-defined title-bar colours.

The cleanest way to have user-defined filer window background colours would require extending the Filer_OpenDir_Accept data structure by an extra byte DCB “bg=bgcolour/S”, with extra words dirreq_bgcol and fopendir_bgcol, and extra code for setting the workspace background colour in the new window block. The templates file would require a colour picker and the newdir dialog would need an extra button for opening it.

I wrote a module a long time ago to do this, it was called FilerColour.

It coloured any filer window (identified by path) and could optionally fade the backgrounds of children relative to their depth. It must be floating round somewhere.

It doesn’t need anything extending, it is easily implemented via a Filter on the Filer’s redraw request.

Or maybe it was ColourFiler. Anyway, I’ve found the source.

Hi nemo, sounds useful :) A google search got me nowhere. Do you still have a copy of the module?

Cheers, Adam

The module is here: http://20000.org/wimp/colourfiler.zip

nemo: This does sound very useful; thanks.

Unfortunately on RO5.13 the filer crashes as soon as a redraw is needed. I haven’t put it in the boot sequence—is that necessary? I’m reluctant to try that if it’s not suited for an Iyonix.

I’m using Fred Graute’s Wimp, if that’s relevant.

I put the module in !Boot.Choices.Boot.Predesk and rebooted (RO 5.13). No crash, but no colours appearing either. The *Filer_Colour command dutifully showed what directories I had set colour and fade parameters for, but the colours were not being displayed. I am using PhotoFiler. I wonder if that could be clashing? I also use a patched filer to display “Delete” commands in red, but that should hardly affect anything.

Same here – I’ve put it in “PreDesk” and it responds OK to setting options etc, but doesn’t seem to actually change anything. I don’t have any other patches installed, that I recall. I’m using RO Adjust.

Adam

Just checked with no PhotoFiler. I get the same phenomenon as Adam, on RO 5.13.

According to the ReadMe ColourFiler should detect the Filer starting, but the service handler doesn’t seem to do this. As a result the required filters aren’t installed and hence nothing happens.

The obvious solution is to alter the service handler so that service call ‘Started_Filer’ is acted upon. Until that’s done you’ll need to issue a ‘RMReInit ColourFiler’ from the desktop to get it working.

I’ve found it works prefectly on RO4.02, even when the RO5 filer and wimp are softloaded.

I have noticed that I have to manually re-draw the desktop, after entering each filer_colour command.

I haven’t tried putting the module in predesk yet.

I haven’t tried putting the module in predesk yet.

I have now… and it doesn’t work. It does work if you put in tasks instead. The supplied readme file just says that “it integrates with boot”, it doesn’t say that it must be put in predesk.

I’ve also now successfully tested it with RO6.06 and with Photofiler on RO4.02

ColourFiler works a treat for me … but on nemo’s website he writes…

Although compatible with recent OSes, changes to the way the WIMP draws Filer icons means there are unwelcome ‘rubout’ boxes behind text in RO5. It didn’t look like that when I wrote it for RO3.7, and it would be nice to remove them.

… and I agree. As others have commented, it means that it is best to stick to pastel colours close to grey so the name backgrounds do not look too nasty.

Does anyone have any idea if or how the Wimp could be changed to avoid this? Or what the changes were in RO5 that caused this effect?

Does anyone have any idea if or how the Wimp could be changed to avoid this? Or what the changes were in RO5 that caused this effect?

Possibly something that could be fixed with WimpVisualFlags? (see this thread for some related info)

Yes, WimpVisualFlags -RemoveIconBoxes does it!
Well done, that man!

Whoops – sorry, copied down the wrong one. The switch should be: -NoIconBoxesInTransWindows

Brilliant! Thanks Jeffrey for the pointer to that thread … which I see I started!

However, there seems to be something odd here. If I do…
*WimpVisualFlags -NoIconBoxesInTransWindows
the ColourFiler text is indeed ok.

But if I do (as Paul Vigay’s Misc setup may well do)…
*WimpVisualFlags -RemoveIconBoxes -NoIconBoxesInTransWindows
the ColourFiler text is NOT ok!

Anyone else see this?

I have done some more experiments, using RO5.20, trying all combinations of setting *WimpVisualFlags for Icons and Trans windows, and noting whether there was a box behind the icon text:

 Icon      Trans         Text+Sprite   Pinboard  ColourFiler
  No        No              box          box       *ok*
  No        Yes             box          ok         ok
  Yes       No              ok           box        box
  Yes       Yes             ok           ok        *box*

This looks odd to me, as there seems to be some strange effect on ColourFiler as I would expect it to be affected the same as the Pinboard, but the asterisked ones are the opposite of what I would expect!

It means that there seems to be no setting which removes the boxes for all 3 cases …. unless anyone knows different!

You might find this useful: https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/4/topics/2046#posts-24608
[in case anybody missed it in the previous link]

How does the link help explain my observations? I was setting the flags using the *WimpVisualFlags command.

I’ve just run my RPCEmu install of 5.21 and the suggested fix works from my colour config Obey file.
Thus:

RMEnsure ColourFiler 0.06 RMLoad System:modules.ColourFile
WimpVisualFlags -NoIconBoxesInTransWindows

Etc…

However, this doesn’t work on the SARPC running RO 6.20 I wonder why?

Dave: yes, but I think your suggestion still leaves text+sprite icons in normal windows with a grey box round them? This can be fixes by adding -RemoveIconBoxes (possibly only obvious if you have Textured Window Backgrounds set!)… but that screws up ColourFiler!

Yes that worked, and after I’d set Textured Window Background Off, indeed the remote shares had lost the grey box around the text.
However, on this 6.20 I now have grey boxes around the text. (Noted in your chart)

Considering that this SARPC 6.20 is the machine I use the most, I think Textured Window Background will be set On, and I’ll put up with the grey background around the remote filer texts.

See our new bounty here.