Desktop is the new desktop user interface of Metview written entirely in Qt. It is meant to replace the current user interface (called MetviewUI) later this year.

metview4_new -desktop

Notes for MetviewUI users

Importing folder list

On first start up Desktop imports the MetviewUI folder list and opens all these folders up in the same window as a set of tabs.

Dot files

MetviewUI stores icon positions and types in hidden files (dot files). There is one such file for each icon. In Desktop this information is still stored but there is only one dot file per folder.

Icon positions

Desktop only reads existing MetviewUI icon positions when it opens a folder for the first time. Then icon positions diverge in the two system (due to the different way of storing icon information).

Drawers

Metview will not update the contents of the Icon drawers automatically any more. These tabs belong to the users now, which means, users are responsible to organise them. Please note that this is a different behaviour to MetviewUI, which automatically updates the Icon drawers with new system icons. System icons in Desktop are exclusively available in the Create new icon dialog.

The Desktop window

Overview

A Desktop window is divided into six parts.

• menu bar: contains menus and actions
• toolbar: contains a set of buttons/widgets to customise the view and navigate through the folders
• folder view: contents of the currently selected folder (or folders in different tabs).
• sidebar: contains the Bookmarks panel
• icon drawers: drawers are a set of centrally accessible folder tabs. They appear at the bottom of each Desktop window.
• status bar: displays information about the icons and provides the buttons for changing the icon size

The Metview filesystem

Each Metview session defines a home folder (by default it is ~/metview). This folder is set as both the home and root folder for Desktop! This has two implications. First, the home folder icon

in Desktop always refers to the Metview home folder (and not the UNIX home folder)! Second, we cannot directly access files outside this file system from within Desktop (but we need to use symbolic links for these files/folders).

Working with folders 

Folders are represented by this icon in the user interface:

To enter a folder double-click, hit enter or right-click Open on the icon. Folders can also be opened in a new tab or window by using the context menu of the Folder icon.

Folder tabs

The central part of Desktop can contain multiple tabs each showing a different folder. Folder navigation works for each tab independently.

New tabs can be added by the blue button at the right edge of the tab bar or by using the Ctrl+T keyboard shourtcut.

As it can be seen in the picture above there is a dropdown menu at the right edge of the tab bar showing the actual list of open tabs. This menu can significantly ease the tab navigation if there is a large number of tabs open in a given Desktop window.

Folder navigation

Folder navigation is based on the Back, Forward and Up arrows and on the Breadcrumbs, which are all located in the toolbar. 

Each visited folder is added to the folder history, which can be accessed via the History menu.

Both breadcrumbs and history items have a context menu, which allows opening the folders in a new tab or window.

Folder view properties

View modes

There are three folder view modes available:

• Classic icon view: icons are freely movable and icon labels are rendered below the icon pixmaps
• Simple icon view: icons are freely movable and icon labels are rendered to the right of the icon pixmaps
• Detailed view mode: icons and their properties are displayed in a table format

The view modes can be set to each tab separately through the View menu or using these toolbar icons:

Changing icon sizes

Th status bar features an icon size slider to change the icon sizes in the current folder (sizes between 16 and 96 pixels are available).

The icon size can also be changed from the View menu or from the Desktop context menu. 

Folder settings

View mode and icon size are stored for each folder separately. When a folder is opened for the first time in Desktop these settings are read directly from existing MetviewUI settings. For newly created/opened folders the default view mode and icon size is used, which can be set in menu Tools → Preferences.

Desktop offers a set of actions to customise the folder settings.These actions are available from the Folder settings tool button (with the "spanner" icon) at the right edge of the status bar (they can also be accessed in the View menu).

The tasks performed by these actions are as follows:

• Apply icon size to all open folders:it is a one-off action broadcasting the icon size from the current folder to all the open folders is one go
• Save view settings as default: it saves the view mode and icon size of the current folder as a default
• Revert view settings to default: it changes the view mode and icon size for the current folder back to the default settings

Icon information

As the mouse hovers over an icon in the folder views certain icon information such as name, type, size and modification date are automatically displayed at left edge of the status bar:

Icon drawers

Icon drawers are a set of tabs containing icon-strips appearing at the bottom of each Desktop window. Their contents is shared between the Desktop windows, so each window shows the same set of drawers.

Users are free to customise both the drawer tabs and the icons they store.

Working with Drawers

By dragging an icon from the icon drawers to the Folder views creates a copy of that icon in the target folder. Similarly by dragging an icon from a Folder view to the Icon drawers adds a copy of this icon to the target drawer.

Users can add new drawers by using the blue Add drawer button at the right edge of the drawers tab. Other drawer related actions can be accessed via the context menu of the drawer tabs.

Please note that Icon drawers can be hidden/shown via the View menu.

Creating new icons

The Folder view context menu (right-click anywhere in the view when no icons are selected to see this menu) offer various ways to create new icons in Desktop:

Users can directly create Folder and Macro icons from this context menu. For other icons the Create new icon dialog has to be started up from the context menu (or by using the Ctrl+N shortcut):

This dialog features three options to list the available icons:

• Recent: it contains the list of recently created icons
• Types: icons are grouped by categories (e.g. Views)
• Filter: it contains all the icons in a list with an optional filter working according to the combination of icon name, type and category. For example by typing the filter term "geo" results in the following list:

To create an icon from the dialog just double click on the selected icon or drag it to the Folder view to the location where it should be created.

Bookmarks

Both folders and a tab-sets can be bookmarked. Bookmarks can be accessed either via the Bookmarks menu or the Bookmarks sidebar.

Users can open the the Bookmarks sidebar

• with the Bookmarks button in the toolbar
• from the View menu
• by pressing Ctrl+B.

Bookmarking a folder

There are various ways to bookmark a folder. It can be done with:

• the Bookmarks menu
• the context menu of a Folder icon, Folder tab or Breadcrumbs item.

• the context menu of the Bookmarks sidebar
• the bookmarks icon at the right hand edge of the Breadcrumbs.

Bookmarking tabs

To bookmark a set of folder tabs use:

• the Bookmarks menu 
• the context menu in the Bookmarks sidebar

Tab-sets are indicated with a distinct grey icon in the bookmarks list like this (in this case "Demo" is being a tab-set bookmark):

Using bookmarks

Bookmark items can be opened in various ways (e.g. in a new tab or in a new window) via their context menu.

Icon filtering

Desktop features a filtering facility for finding icons in cluttered desktops. Just press Crtl+F in any of the folder views to bring up the icon filter bar at the bottom of the folder view.  By typing in a filter term for name or/and type the icons not matching the filter are greyed out in the Folder view.

Drag and drop

Users can copy icons between Folder views by dragging them with the middle mouse button.

Dragging an icon with the left mouse button means move.

The drop target can also be a Folder icon, a Folder tab, a Breadcrumbs item, a Bookmarks item or an Icon drawer. The rules are the same except for the Icon drawers where both the left and middle mouse button drag actions mean copy!

Desktop actions

The desktop context menu provides a specific set of actions available for the given Folder view.

Arranging icons on a grid

For the Classic and Simple view modes the icons can be arranged on a grid sorted by the icon name, type or file size, respectively.  This is a one-off action laying out the icons just one, then the icons can be freely moved again.

Reloading folders

Desktop rescans all open folders in every 8 seconds. 

Icon actions

The icon context menu is icon specific and only shows the actions available for the given icon. The snapshot below shows the context menu defined for a Grid Filter icon:

The default action

The Edit action in this example is highlighted in bold because it is the default action for this icon. The default action is triggered by double-click or hitting Enter on the icon. The default action is specific for icon type and for certain icons it is not defined at all.

Multiple selection

Desktop provide multiple icon selection by using the rubberband selection with the mouse or by Ctrl or Shift selection of the icons. For multiple selection the icon context menu shows only the actions available for multiple icons.

Clipboard usage

Desktop uses the system clipboard to implement the Copy, Cut  and Paste actions on the current icon selection.

Deleting icons

Unwanted icons can be moved to the wastebin by using the Move to wastebin action (Del shortcut). The wastebin can be emptied in order to permanently delete the icon(s).

Archiving/extracting icons

Archiving icons

Icons can be archived into a tar, tar.gz and tar.bz2 format by using the Archive as action in the icon context menu. Archiving is always based on the current selection. The resulting archive file is placed in the current folder and its name is generated from the first icon in the selection.

Extracting icons

For archived formats (e.g. tar.gz) Desktop offers the Extract action in the icon context menu. For safety reasons, the result of the extraction is always place into a new folder.

Sending icons in email

It is possible to send icons in email from Metview by using the Send action from the icon context menu. When this action is triggered a tar.gz file is generated behind the scenes by resolving all the necessary dependencies (see Archiving icons) and add all the needed icon descriptor files. Having generated the tar.gz file this dialog is popping up

enabling the users to specify the address, the custom message and overview the contents and send the  tar.gz file as an attachment.

When such email is received it appears something like this in an email client:

The automatically generated part of the message contains clear instructions on how to  import the icons in the tar.gz attachment into the local Metview environment.

Icon editors

Many of the icon types in Metview are editable. To edit an icon double-click or hit Enter on the icon, or right-click and select Edit form the context menu. This will bring up the icon editor assigned to the given icon type. The basic editor, which is used for the most of the Metview icons, looks like this in Desktop:

This editor is divided into five main parts:

• header: contains information about the icon being edited
• toolbar: contains a set of buttons to customise the editor
• parameters: each icon parameter can be individually edited here
• editor drawers: offers various drawers storing custom icons
• button box: contains the buttons to e.g. save, reset the editor.

Toolbar actions

The toolbar features two buttons to switch between GUI and text-based editor modes (the latter is indicated by the 'T' icon):

Editors are always opened up in a GUI-based editor mode and  to switch into the text-based mode the editor has to be saved.

The text-base mode reveals the 'contents' of the icon in text format. Here only the parameters which have been changed from their default settings can be seen. This is a quick ways to see which parameters have been set in the icon.

Icon parameters

Each icon parameter has its default value. When a parameter is set to a non-default value a blue 'revert' button appears in front of it to indicate that it has been altered from the default.  This button also reverts the parameter to is default when clicked.

Button box

The button box, which is located at the bottom of the editor, offers the following actions:

• Ok: save changes and close
• Save: save changes and stay open (it is also triggered by hitting Enter anywhere in the editor)
• Cancel: close and do not save changes
• Reset: reset editor to the last saved state

Tools

Process monitor

Metview has a built-in task monitor, available from the Tools menu on the menu bar.

This tool allows users seeing which processes Metview  is currently running. It is also allows some control , such as the ability to abort processes (right-click menu on each process's entry).