Pinboard (desktop) enhancements

I created a new topic for the following so as not be off-topic.

When I hear talk of creating a virtual save location for the pinboard, it feels like its breaking part of the User Interface, which incidentally Acorn fixed by enabling you to drag an icon from an application to an icon bar device, thereby allowing you to save from an application to one of the disc drives.

An area for improvement. When you drag multiple pinboard icons across the pinboard, those icons become a grey box. IMHO it makes relocating a group of icons difficult. The grey box makes sense for the filer, but not for the pinboard; seeing the individual icons’ outlines makes it easier to place them on the pinboard.

A feature of the pinboard I used to use circa RISC OS 3.1 as I couldn’t find a utility to save the desktop state, was to use suitably named pinboard files for different tasks; programming as one example. It was a great way to open both windows, files and applications that you needed for a particular task.

Anyway I’d vote for a desktop save state feature, so that you can return to your work, following a restart or shutdown.

When you drag multiple pinboard icons across the pinboard, those icons become a grey box.

A box/package icon with RISC OS markings on it, you mean?
As opposed to the dotted outline defining the rectangle that encloses you chosen objects – which is what you get when you untick the “dragging objects uses a solid icon” option in Filer Configure.

Anyway I’d vote for a desktop save state feature, so that you can return to your work, following a restart or shutdown

Probably take me ages to find the reference, but I’m pretty sure there is a 3rd party item that does that.
I’d recommend a trawl through the APDL main catalogue text file.

A box/package icon with RISC OS markings on it, you mean?
As opposed to the dotted outline defining the rectangle that encloses you chosen objects – which is what you get when you untick the “dragging objects uses a solid icon” option in Filer Configure

Correct. For single pinboard icon moves, the switch to a translucent icon looks great. IMHO even better if that principal could be extended to relocating two or more icons.

For me, the grey box doesn’t help when relocating multiple pinboard icons in that it makes accurate repositioning of multiple icons difficult. Also, switching to what is essentially a different look via the configuration panel is a step that could be discarded.

Whilst we have a thread on Pinboard, why is the desktop background colour set here in Pinboard Config rather than in Screen Config?

And if it is really more appropriately set here, why doesn’t it form part of the Pinboard file? An entry there could over-ride the CMOS setting, which might be useful when using multiple pinboard files for differing purposes to highlight which was in use.

I can see why the “Use plain colour” choice is there with the background image setting choices, but is not setting the “default” screen colour itself more part of the Screen Config settings?

Having the default set in Screen and the ability to over-ride it in the Pinboard file seems to me more logical and useful!

Just an idea!

I expect that the same logic might suggest that the background image set defaults might also be usefully over-ridden in an individual Pinboard file as well!

why is the desktop background colour set here in Pinboard Config rather than in Screen Config?

Why can’t RO globally manage window background and window furniture colours?

Why can’t RO globally manage window background and window furniture colours?

(my emphasis)

Ooh, so if I set my machine to use the Arthur colour scheme, everybody’s MacOS desktop will switch to garish colours?
I like the sound of that!

(and specially for Android as I’m not a fan of the constant “this is what’s trendy this week” UI redesigns, white buttons with white text laid on to white backgrounds)

Anyway I’d vote for a desktop save state feature, so that you can return to your work, following a restart or shutdown.

My WindOpen module can do some of that, in that it can save out an obey file contain commands to move windows to their current locations. It’s not fully automatic though, you still have to add commands to start the applications which own those windows, and if you change the windows related to files (i.e. those with filenames in the title) from WO_MoveWind to WO_OpenWind, it will both load the file and move its window. This allows you to create obey files to load a working set of applications and files.

It could be further automated, but as RISC OS does not have a dedicated desktop save state API, there will be some applications for which this is difficult or impossible.