Hello,
Applications Menu Applet is simple. And why not.
But I miss at least 2 and half things here :
- it’s not possible to « completely » browse it with arrows keys, categories stay out of reach.
- in categories, there is no « recent » item which could show the dozen last used app’s
( like in xfce menu applet ).
- the 2 and a half thing : ability to set the default view on « recent » instead of « all ». That would be very convenient
Other note : you can browse that menu with [tab] and [shift]+[tab] but then you have to hit twice the key to make one move. That does not look like an intended behavior. Arrows key act normally.
( damn sorry, I had forgotten this one : https://github.com/solus-project/budgie-desktop/issues/1240 )
A bit of history - before budgie desktop v10.4 the “all” list was ordered by “most frequently accessed”.
It apparently caused lots of “complaints” because it wasnt thought to be intuitive and as such this was dropped by upstream for v10.4
As you pointed out there is a navigation issue upstream. Don’t forget - on the panel - menu budgie settings you have various options to change how the menu operates such as a compact option.
Not really sure how receptive upstream will be for the readdition/reworking of the menu as you have described. I suppose no harm in requesting. Maybe as you intimated, pull back the code that was dropped before 10.4 but put it under an option to change “All” to ‘Most Frequent/Recent’
Thanks for history !
A recent category with some settings would be a nice way :
- number of recent app’s shown,
- set « recent » or « all » as default selected category at menu launch - very important,
- a delete app’ history entry somewhere - last item on the list ?
Just look at xfce whisker app menu - I don’t say I like it but it provides those few settings regarding recent app’s and default category in view.
I could go for a compact view with only recent app’s listed if the search still looked through all applications… At first glance, favorite app’s are pinned in panel or dock, then the recently others used at quick reach, those two entries cover 95% of the needs. For the remaining 5% a full app menu is helpful, when searching for some not so often used app’s. But strangely, almost all app’s menus answer first and quite well for the 5% situation…
Anyway I’ve noticed another weird thing. System language is French here. The alphabetical sorting of all app’s may look strange for accented letters, they all are to be found after the Z. Well X actually as I don’t have app’s beginning with Y or Z.
- À should come near A and at least before B ( À propos = About )
- É near E and at least before F ( Écran = Screen… )
I assume that might be true in other languages.
These observations need to be raised upstream.
Please raise individual observations as individual issues in the upstream github tracker
I totally disagree about invalid label and closing issue for alphabetical sorting for #1546 as « my suggestion » is the way it’s implemented almost everywhere… examples :
As the « bug » is closed, was it any useful I added comment to it ? Or do I have to file another one for the same reason ?
I’m afraid there is very little we can do about this - the upstream project has stated it’s reasons and well … shrug … not much we can do.
This will need a bit of investigation by the Ubuntu Budgie community. If we can find out the best coding algorithm then we can look to investigate implementing this ourselves. We can propose this to upstream at that point.
Mmm… how sad. That means all non English user may suffer that strange sorting just because one person said it’s ascii compliant, sort of ?
…while all other DE and many if not all other app’s achieve best sorting in this scenario. And AFAIK humans ( users ) don’t read or speak ascii. Well some might but they’re utterly geek then.
Don’t get me wrong : I am not asking any fix now, only acknowledgment of the bug. That could stay low priority for months or years I understand there are more important things to fix.
But that « invalid / closed » thing sounds like a « I am the developer and I am necessary right » then go play elsewhere poor ignorant user…
Well why do I feel sad ? …how / where can I learn to fix that myself ? Starting from scratch, as am just a user, not a dev.
The person who replied to you is one of the main budgie developers. So authoritatively represents upstream. There isn’t much we can do to influence that decision.
In terms of resolving
You will need to understand
- How to compile budgie
- How to code in vala
- Where in the codebase the issue resides
- Find a suitable algorithm and figure out how to apply that in the codebase
Depending on your skill level… first learning vala and compiling code using the examples in valadoc.org would be a first step.
I’m still very very very far away from doing that myself but at least someone already thought about it :
Hey there.
Just to add some more insights:
-
It’s probably not the best use of developer time to make proper unicode / international support for parts of Budgie which might be axed in the future.
-
But [as a broader topic] something worthwhile to research, and learn more about. Because it affects all GUI stuff, for proper internationalization.
-
A good solution is to recruit international members to your project (non-english speakers, for example russian, scandinavian, asian). Who by nature already have a strong interest and knowledge of unicode support.
Personally:
[edited]
Sorry I think I got confused with the budgie menu. It’s probably not the same thing as the budgie application launcher? (The Budgie Menu operates like the Gnome2 menu).
So perhaps this part of Budgie is worth investing more time in. I just have not been able to install it / try it yet due packaging Budgie Extras Github
Alternatively, having an external 3rd party application would instead also be equally welcome. As mentioned previously, I am now using Albert launcher on linux. Which is not without it’s own kinds of flaws and limitations.
The gold standards (for me, my own opinion) were tools like: QuickSilver on Mac OS X. Which is where it all started. The original tool that everybody else copied (including apple). But then much later on. We eventually saw on linux: in the earlier versions of Gnome 3, (which was when, around 16.04 time?). Then Gnome had an excellent usability for search. Which are the screenshots you posted above. Lovely. It was almost perfect.
Unfortunately (and more recently) the Gnome developers, for whatever bizarre reason(s) decided to destroy it’s functionality. By removing underlying stuff which the search GUI relies upon. I cannot fathom why. So it is now become rather useless for certain object types. For example: to search for songs, and playing those mp3s in your default music player. Doesn’t work anymore. And the GUI still has like checkboxes to ‘enable music’ etc. Totally broken now in 18.04.
Elsewhere, in the meantime, win10 (1803 update) start menu has improved quite drastically. To the point where i can just type in mp3 songs, and they will be played in AIMP. And is no longer so buggy / laggy. Pretty awesome. And ultimately that is the competition that the linux GUI desktops are facing (as always). Getting users off windows.
To be honest - proper unicode/international support isnt wasted effort IMHO. Much of the research, techniques learned and indeed code could be reused in future projects.
Yeah - this topic is referring to the upstream projects budgie menu .
All - think the alphabetical sorting issue is a simple change to the menu code
Adding the following to the strcmp functions “.casefold().normalize(-1, NormalizeMode.ALL_COMPOSE)” at https://github.com/solus-project/budgie-desktop/blob/master/src/applets/budgie-menu/BudgieMenuWindow.vala#L539 and https://github.com/solus-project/budgie-desktop/blob/master/src/applets/budgie-menu/BudgieMenuWindow.vala#L544
Happy to throw up a test PPA - first person to let me know which version of UB they are using gets to test…!
UBudgie 18.04 here, I’d like to see that 
( remember : usptream did not see that as an issue and closed it ).
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntubudgie-dev/desktop-search
sudo apt upgrade
reboot --
Once finished testing to revert:
sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntubudgie-dev/desktop-search
let me know if
- ordering is resolved
- searching - is it still quick to search? Is it noticeably slower than before?
- when searching is any odd search results shown compared to the current v10.5 search capability
I’m afraid there is absolutely no difference : sorting is still not natural to my language…
↑ nothing starting with E or É between D and F
↑ À and É at the end of list
ah well…
it seems to work under german - but not under french.
ho hum. never mind.
There is another place where sorting is not correct but not for the same reason : places applet
Here also alphabetical sorting is expected.
Places get alphabetically sorted by their initial english name, not by their french displayed counterparts.
FR = Documents ⋅ Téléchargements ⋅ Musique ⋅ Images ⋅ Vidéos
( not alphabetical but same order as in english )
UK = Documents ⋅ Downloads ⋅ Music ⋅ Pictures ⋅ Vidéos
expected FR = Documents ⋅ Images ⋅ Musique ⋅ Téléchargements ⋅ Vidéos
( Logiciels and home are nautilus bookmarks, I may sort them out by modifying ~/.config/gtk-3.0/bookmarks ? )
I don’t say it’s related, it’s just another example of « non natural » sorting.
yeah - it will be the same issue - lists are in ascii order and accents are never next to their ascii equivs.
Ok, but as I pointed in Applications menu : incomplete keyboard browsing & no recent category many programs seem to act otherwise regarding « alphabetical sorting », and not only in french…
It looks OK in « default » Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04 so what makes Budgie different here ?
And whatever the language À is an A with an accent, or É is an E, they’re not letter after Z.
Or ß is a double s, not an esoteric symbol.
ASCII is not a « human » reference.
( should I ppa-purge now ? )
