donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

jjacky · 2014-02-07 23:14:57

donnatella - donna for short - is a new GTK3 file manager.

Some features (as of 0.3.0 -- see branch next on github for the latest) :

- Inspired by vim, donna uses key modes to handle key presses.
- Also uses similar concepts of registers & marks.
- Just like you can define your keys, you can define your clicks, and (context) menus.
- Turn your messy useless tree into a great minitree! If you're not familiar with the concept, revolution ahead.
- Use highlighted folders & boxed branch to make your tree even easier to navigate in.
- I cannot stand the "full row highlight" effect, so donna offers a few options, such as cell highlight or row underline. Sanity restored.
- Many options for you to use the columns you want, showing dates, sizes and permissions in the formats you want.
- Go beyond the usual with custom properties, where any tool can be used to fill in their values. Want columns for video duration? latest git commit? It's all up to you!
- Filters can be used as color filters & selection filters. Also Visual Filters (VF) to only show what you need at the moment... All filters support boolean logic & multitudes of criteria...
- Little things, like going up and focusing the folder you come from, jump from files to folders in a click/key press, sort descendingly by default on time & size, use up/down array from inline editing, etc
- donna doesn't search, but parses output of external tool and show you the results naturally in its interface. IOW, donna's search engines are called find or pacman...
- Because sometimes a terminal is what you want/need, use embedded terminals! Any XEMBED protocol compliant emulator (e.g. urxvt) will work.
- While there's no scripting per-se, a socket allows to communicate w/ donna and do about anything you want from whatever language can use sockets, or simply via helper donna-trigger
- Much more! And even more to come!

Indeed, this is a very early/alpha release. There will be bugs, and also if you happen to be looking for such things as toolbars, tabs, menubar, autorefresh or drag&drop, you're out of luck. All of these are examples of items I haven't had a chance yet to implement. Worry not, it is (eventually) coming...

Another important point is that while based on GTK3, a few things weren't quite possible due to (bugs or) limitations in GTK, so patches were written. Unfortunately they haven't been merged upstream (yet, as I'd like to get that done eventually...), so a patched GTK3 is required to use all those features.
Worry not, a PKGBUILD is in the AUR, the patchset will fix some bugs & add extra features, all the while remaining 100% compatible with GTK+3. It won't change anything for other applications (unless they were victims of the few fixed bugs), but will unleash the full power of donnatella.
(Of course, donna works with vanilla GTK3 as well. Just not everything, for example the boxed branch effect, the different selection highlight effects or inverting a range (selection) won't be available.)

Alright, so a few links if you're interested:

- For a bit of history/reasonning behind donna, see this blog post
- For some more features & details, as well as some screenshots, the official site
- source code & issue tracker
- The AUR has a PKGBUILD for donnatella, and one for gtk3-donnatella (the patched GTK3. Note that then you obviously need to install it before compiling donna, for everything to work as expected.)

And of course, as always, questions, bug reports, suggestions or any other form of constructive criticism is very much welcome.
-jjacky

Last edited by jjacky (2014-11-06 17:38:30)

Rasi · 2014-02-08 00:39:06

screenshots?

karol · 2014-02-08 00:45:44

There are some on the official site: http://jjacky.com/donnatella/ at the bottom.

likytau · 2014-02-08 01:30:40

The GTK patchset link: http://jjacky.com/donnatella/gtk3-donnatella.tar.gz

seems to be broken.

I have yet to try this out, but the ability to treat command output as a legitimate list of files to be browsed through seems pretty great.

Last edited by likytau (2014-02-08 01:32:04)

karol · 2014-02-08 01:38:32

It should be http://jjacky.com/donnatella/gtk3-donnatella.1.tar.gz
Where did you find the wrong link?

jjacky · 2014-02-08 01:38:56

likytau wrote:

The GTK patchset link: http://jjacky.com/donnatella/gtk3-donnatella.tar.gz
seems to be broken.

Yeah sorry, here's the correct one: http://jjacky.com/donnatella/gtk3-donnatella.1.tar.gz

Fixed the link, thanks.

likytau · 2014-02-08 03:10:59

A little feedback:

* I don't understand why clicking on files doesn't select them (or do anything else either, seemingly -- right click, left click, middle click.. nope. Even though the configuration and docs state that some of these should do something.). But Menu key does work? And I can rightclick on the left pane to get a context menu there? This is a mystery to me. Is it one of the things fixed by the gtk patchset?
* I definitely prefer the 'multiple roots' system to the conventional 'bookmarks' system.
* The link to the gtk3 patchset in https://github.com/jjk-jacky/donnatella is still broken (although now I know the correct link, this is a mere cosmetic fault from my POV)
* How do I get the uri of the file onto the clipboard?. The real system clipboard, that is, so that I can paste it into my terminal.

Last edited by likytau (2014-02-08 05:11:47)

progandy · 2014-02-08 06:35:10

likytau wrote:

* How do I get the uri of the file onto the clipboard?. The real system clipboard, that is, so that I can paste it into my terminal.

Something like "+yy I guess? I don't know how or if you can copy one buffer to another.

likytau · 2014-02-08 08:54:24

^ thanks for the suggestion.
That seems to empty the clipboard, so that ctrl+v pastes nothing. Well, it's progress over having no effect at all.

jjacky · 2014-02-08 10:42:33

likytau wrote:

* I don't understand why clicking on files doesn't select them (or do anything else either, seemingly -- right click, left click, middle click.. nope. Even though the configuration and docs state that some of these should do something.). But Menu key does work? And I can rightclick on the left pane to get a context menu there? This is a mystery to me. Is it one of the things fixed by the gtk patchset?

Oh crap! Silly mistake on my end, sorry about that. The default click mode set on lists doesn't actually exist! If you edit your ~/.config/donnatella.conf and look in section [defaults/lists] for option click_mode, it should be set to list_unpatched; set it to list and that should fix it.

likytau wrote:

* The link to the gtk3 patchset in https://github.com/jjk-jacky/donnatella is still broken (although now I know the correct link, this is a mere cosmetic fault from my POV)

Oh right, forgot it in the README there as well; Will fix it, thanks.

likytau wrote:

* How do I get the uri of the file onto the clipboard?. The real system clipboard, that is, so that I can paste it into my terminal.

As progandy said, "+yy should copy the focused row to the clipboard, or if you have a selection you can copy it using "+Y Right-click should also bring you a context menu now, with a Clipboard submenu.

Thanks for the feedback!

likytau · 2014-02-08 14:39:13

jjacky wrote:

likytau wrote:
* I don't understand why clicking on files doesn't select them (or do anything else either, seemingly -- right click, left click, middle click.. nope. Even though the configuration and docs state that some of these should do something.). But Menu key does work? And I can rightclick on the left pane to get a context menu there? This is a mystery to me. Is it one of the things fixed by the gtk patchset?
Oh crap! Silly mistake on my end, sorry about that. The default click mode set on lists doesn't actually exist! If you edit your ~/.config/donnatella.conf and look in section [defaults/lists] for option click_mode, it should be set to list_unpatched; set it to list and that should fix it.

Thanks, that fixes it.

likytau wrote:
* How do I get the uri of the file onto the clipboard?. The real system clipboard, that is, so that I can paste it into my terminal.
As progandy said, "+yy should copy the focused row to the clipboard, or if you have a selection you can copy it using "+Y Right-click should also bring you a context menu now, with a Clipboard submenu.

Unfortunately, neither of these options work; As I commented above, they just seem to destroy the existing clipboard, without adding any content afterwards.
This seems to hold true whether I have a single file selected or multiple files.

Last edited by likytau (2014-02-08 14:39:40)

jjacky · 2014-02-08 15:28:15

likytau wrote:

Unfortunately, neither of these options work; As I commented above, they just seem to destroy the existing clipboard, without adding any content afterwards.

After having copied something, if you press 'r and go into "System clipboard ('+')" do you see the files you copied? If so, they should be availble on the clipboard.

One thing I realized though, is you said you want to paste into your terminal? If you're trying to access the clipboard as regular text content it might indeed not work/be empty. donna supports the following 3 formats: "x-special/gnome-copied-files"; "application/x-kde-cutselection" and "text/uri-list" (The former 2 having a first line with "copy" or "cut" before the list of URIs)
It might be a good idea to also support "text/plain" with simply the full filenames.

Edit: Alright, I've pushed changes to the branch next on github. Now donna also makes the list of full filenames available in the clipboard in all GTK-supported text formats. I've tried, and I can e.g. paste the list into vim now; Nice There's a donnatella-git in the AUR if you want.

Last edited by jjacky (2014-02-08 16:04:03)

likytau · 2014-02-08 23:35:08

After having copied something, if you press 'r and go into "System clipboard ('+')" do you see the files you copied?

No, in fact I see donnatella segfault!

The backtrace only shows glib symbols -- it appears that the crash occurs during signal emission.

EDIT: It seems that this may have been caused by not doing the copy properly.. when I use the menu interface, it seems to appear properly in both _ and + registers, and no crashing occurs. So I guess that some part of your clipboard system is not being properly initialized at startup.

Last edited by likytau (2014-02-08 23:37:55)

jjacky · 2014-02-09 00:22:06

There was a possible use of uninitialized memory somewhere yes, the fix has now been pushed to github. Could you let me know if that fixes it?

likytau · 2014-02-09 05:00:15

Looks like it:) And I'm getting pastes in my terminal okay now

jjacky · 2014-02-09 13:58:50

Good to hear. So I've released 0.1.1 with a few fixes & the clipboard enhancement.

jjacky · 2014-04-03 14:39:20

v0.2.0 is out, changes include:

- New event "log" to process some log events in donna; Messages are sent on different occasions, e.g. loading/saving a treeview from/to a file, adding nodes to a register, dropping a register, etc
- Provider exec: Add options for prefixes: you can define which prefixes to use for each supported modes, as well as the default mode
- Add embedded terminal support (via XEMBED)
- Patterns: Add support of different modes: pattern, search, begin, end, case sensitive & case insensitive matches, and Perl-compatible regex
- list: Add visual filters, to only show what you need (optionally only filering files). As all filters, boolean logic & plenty of criteria available...
- Provider exec: Add setting working directory on command line. As example, new items "Open Terminal Here/...in new window" in tree context menu
- Much more, including a bunch of fixes & optimizations.

More details here, and all needed links in the first post.

Supplantr · 2014-08-05 04:52:03

Hi,
When gtk3-donnatella is installed without any icon themes, donnatella hangs:

[00:46:39] [UI] WARNING: [Gtk] Error loading theme icon 'image-missing' for stock: Failed to load icon
[00:46:39] [UI] CRITICAL: [Gtk] render_fallback_image: assertion 'pixbuf != NULL' failed
[00:46:39] [UI] CRITICAL: [GLib-GObject] g_object_ref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
[00:46:39] [UI] CRITICAL: [GLib-GObject] g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
[00:46:39] [UI] CRITICAL: [GLib-GIO] g_loadable_icon_load: assertion 'G_IS_LOADABLE_ICON (icon)' failed
[00:46:39] [UI] CRITICAL: [GLib-GIO] g_loadable_icon_load: assertion 'G_IS_LOADABLE_ICON (icon)' failed

This doesn't occur when unpatched gtk3 is installed. I suppose making the gtk3-donnatella package depend on an icon theme would solve this.

Also, I briefly skimmed the config file and website, but didn't notice anything about displaying thumbnails for image/video files. Is this currently possible?

jjacky · 2014-08-05 13:56:37

- Well, gtk3-donnatella has an optdepend on gnome-icon-theme, much like gtk3, and it/donna should actually work without an icon theme. And I can't reproduce it; I just removed gnome-icon-theme & hicolor-icon-theme and I only get one warning on start:

[15:33:32] [UI] WARNING: [Gtk] Could not find the icon 'text-plain'. The 'hicolor' theme
was not found either, perhaps you need to install it.
You can get a copy from:
	http://icon-theme.freedesktop.org/releases

Other than that, things work fine. I'm not sure why it would not for you, nor why it would only occur when using gtk3-donnatella...

- re: thumbnails, there's no such thing, no. There's only one "view" supported, commonly known as Details/Detailled view, so only a (small) icon can be used for each file. I'm not really planning any other view so thumbnails aren't on my list either.

mrbrich · 2014-11-03 02:07:33

I wanted to try this, but it didn't work at all for me. The window flashed up for a second, but then it crashed (segfault). Might be due to the fact that my system isn't very up do date.

I was currious to know whether this work was inspired at all be the ranger file manager, which I have been using a lot over the past few years. I always hoped for a graphical ranger.

jjacky · 2014-11-03 09:49:19

More information would be needed to figure it out, e.g. a backtrace or the output from `donnatella -d all` maybe, but assuming you've tried the AUR package donnatella, maybe try donnatella-git to have the latest changes/fixes and see if it works (any better). Also if you want to try with a patched GTK 3.14 you have to use donnatella-git.

As for inspiration, nothing from ranger, no; As explained here, inspiration from another FM would come from XYplorer, actually.

jjacky · 2014-11-06 17:48:14

Version 0.3.0 is out, changes include:

- Add command exec() to run a given command line and use output as return value
- Add custom properties, so you can have any (meta) data you want associated with any file/folder of your choice (video duration/codec, MP3 tags, last git commit message, etc)
- New "fuid" time format
- Add a socket to communicate with donna from e.g. scripts; as well as helper donna-trigger
- Add $DONNATELLA_CONFIG_DIR & extend $PATH (for scripts)
- Fix/changes to work with GTK+ 3.14 (including updated gtk3-donnatella)
- And more, see this post for more details, or `git log` for full history

AUR packages for donnatella and gtk3-donnatella are available; for more links please see first post.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-02-07 23:14:57

donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#2 2014-02-08 00:39:06

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#3 2014-02-08 00:45:44

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#4 2014-02-08 01:30:40

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#5 2014-02-08 01:38:32

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#6 2014-02-08 01:38:56

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#7 2014-02-08 03:10:59

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#8 2014-02-08 06:35:10

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#9 2014-02-08 08:54:24

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#10 2014-02-08 10:42:33

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#11 2014-02-08 14:39:13

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#12 2014-02-08 15:28:15

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#13 2014-02-08 23:35:08

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#14 2014-02-09 00:22:06

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#15 2014-02-09 05:00:15

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#16 2014-02-09 13:58:50

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#17 2014-04-03 14:39:20

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#18 2014-08-05 04:52:03

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#19 2014-08-05 13:56:37

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#20 2014-11-03 02:07:33

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#21 2014-11-03 09:49:19

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

#22 2014-11-06 17:48:14

Re: donnatella: GTK3 customizable file manager w/ advanced unique features

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