Release Candidates :: DSL v4.4RC1

Quote (meo @ May 19 2008,21:07)

Hi Robert!

Very nice, was my first impression when I started DSL 4,4RC1. It looks very clean and nice with the new background and style. So you can be proud of your good work and all others who have contributed too. There is though some things I'd like to mention. The new font looks good but is a bit hard to read when you doesn't have a very good eye-sight. Another thing that i very noticeably is a very long pause during bootup after either declaring the version (if you boot with the legacy option) or registering unionfs. This I discovered after adding my extensions (a pretty good bunch after all these years) and having done a remaster that have substantially enlarged the KNOPPIX file. The 3.xx series didn't make a pause bigger than a couple of seconds under the same conditions but the pause has increased much with the 4.xx series. Approximately the pause with this RC was more than 40 seconds long and that seems like an eternity if you are waiting. Furthermore it takes considerable much longer time to load the extensions. I have no explanation for this behaviour. I just have made a comparison between those two release series. I'm just curious if you might have an explanation. This behaviour doesn't really bother me because I usually have the computer on for days with everything loaded and ready to go. But it would be nice to know. It seems to be a really promising release and I'm eagerly awaiting the 5.xx series. Thanks again for all the work spent to make this release possible.

Have fun developing DSL and using it,
meo

I really can't comment on custom remasters of DSL. I, of course, do not experience such delays with the official released editions of DSL version 4.x I am sorry to hear that you have encountered such a delay in your remaster.

What a great look - the best yet - clean & simple. Much better than the black on black of 4.2.5 that I had loaded on my Libretto. I too was worried when I first saw the new font & wondered what it would look like on a small screen. I've just run it on my Libretto (800*480, 7" diagonal screen) & it looks far far better than any OS I've used yet.

Keep up the good work.

I have noticed that with the new font it is spilling over out of the boxes in Dmix. Changing the text size doesn't seem to do anything to the font size. The only option is to juggle the box/button sizes to match. I have done this & emailled the revised version to the extensions email address.

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I have noticed that with the new font it is spilling over out of the boxes in Dmix. Changing the text size doesn't seem to do anything to the font size.

Unfortunately, smoothansi isn't scalable (and that goes for the rest of the artwiz fonts as well). Smoothansi is 13px.

Hi again Robert!

Thank you for responding. As I said the matter wasn't that important to me but I thought you might have an answer to it. I'm posting this from a "vanilla" or out of the box DSL 4.4RC1 and by mistake I started with jwm (I forgot the desktop boot code) and I must say that the looks of jwm in this cut is so good that I might be persuaded to keep on using it. The jwm menu has like a space between every item that the fluxbox menu doesn't have and that helps out a lot when you don't have a perfect eye-vision. It looks really nice so I don't mind if you keep it that way (this said by an old blackbox user in Slackware). I agree with andrewb "what a great look - the best yet - clean & simple". Now I won't bug you anymore so that you can get more time to work on coming releases of DSL.

Have fun and be assured that your good work really is appreciated (that goes for all contributors to this release),
meo

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It would be nice to have a single script to change the default font for all areas, .torsmo, firefox, dfm, fluxbox, jwm, .Xdefaults

Something to consider: using something similar to fonts-system.lua (murgaLua_demos) to provide a visual display of available fonts. Perhaps also a checklist of the apps/configs you mentioned to allow the user to apply all or just specific ones.

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Unfortunately, smoothansi isn't scalable (and that goes for the rest of the artwiz fonts as well). Smoothansi is 13px

Might consider trying a font that has multiple sizes. The Terminus font has several to choose from, including bold. You could include only two or three of them, say 12, 14, and 16. It's not as "cool" looking as smoothansi, but is clean and much more pleasing than misc-fixed.

Fonts that scale, however, can be a problem in fltk unless you dynamically adjust widget sizes according to the chosen font. As far as I know, the murgaLua bindings are missing the ability to retrieve the font size (in some widgets at least?), so this may be a problem.

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