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 Post subject: Beginner questions.
PostPosted: Sat Sep 14, 2019 9:18 pm 
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Hello. Sorry if these have been asked. I did search...

1) The themes, specifically the fonts, have some issues. No matter which theme I select, when I click "Fonts," the window says

Quote:
Fonts used by the 'Windows_7_Xtreme' theme:


Image
Image

I think I've thoroughly mangled the themes, even after a reinstall of the program. Any way to reset them? Would editing the theme files directly be a bad idea?


2) Is it possible to limit a shelf to just one row of icons? I accidentally dropped one in a second row, and although I can delete/move that icon, I can't seem to delete the row that it created.


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 Post subject: Re: Beginner questions.
PostPosted: Sun Sep 15, 2019 4:13 pm 
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After reading a little further in the forum, it seems that skinning is borked in general for Nexus. The "apply a different theme and then reapply the first" does nothing.

If it is the case that something as basic as font/font size changes is impossible, I'd like to request a refund. At the moment, the type is too small for me to even read--I have to put my face up against the screen to read the icon and tab labels.

Clearly I should have read the forum before I made the purchase, but since I determined that I needed tabs and the free version doesn't have them, I jumped. It's hard to imagine that software in which a major function is broken continues to be sold.

If this sounds like an over-reaction, maybe it is. I'm not a "dock hobbyist." I don't want to pore over arcane bits of knowledge. I just want a dock that works. And once it works, there will not be regular tweaking.


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 Post subject: Re: Beginner questions.
PostPosted: Sun Sep 15, 2019 7:34 pm 
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cyraxote wrote:
It's hard to imagine that software in which a major function is broken continues to be sold.


Question: did you ever use another application of this kind? More to the point, did you ever use another application that is 'skinnable' ?

If you have, then you will know that this part is not a 'major function', it's actually a convenience. Fonts, etc, are part of a theme and font types and sizes are supposed to be set by the person who did the actual theme, not the end user. If you want to change a theme, you can edit that theme's configuration files directly with a text editor, which is what the theme creator did.

Does that require some time to learn what the settings in the configuration files do and which configuration files to change? Yes, which is why I added that fonts dialog as a convenience to the regular user who is not a skinner.

I recently added support for multiple shelves while before you could only have one, and that unfortunately broke that font's dialog normal functionality - bugs can happen when you change code that had remained unchanged for many years.

I already fixed the issue here, but if you don't want to wait for the next release then go to the folder containing the theme you want to change, open the shelf's .wsw configuration file in a text editor and change the settings related to font names and font sizes (guess this answers your first question in the first post).

Also, please note that if the problem is the size of the text being hard to read on high resolution monitors, there is an option to seamlessly scale the shelf up, without having to change font sizes and risk breaking the theme.

As for your second question, any chance of a screenshot please? Want to make sure I understand what you are actually seeing (e.g.; what *type* of shelf tab it is, etc...)

cyraxote wrote:
If this sounds like an over-reaction, maybe it is. I'm not a "dock hobbyist." I don't want to pore over arcane bits of knowledge. I just want a dock that works. And once it works, there will not be regular tweaking.


Yes, it does sound as an over-reaction, since you asked. :)

Every application has a learning curve, this is no exception. In fact, every effort has been made to make it easy to use, something I'm sure you will appreciate too once you get past 'skin deep' and realize all that it can actually do. What you called a 'major function' above is but a small drop of water in a very, very, large ocean - but it will take you some time to realize that (which, IMO, is actually part of the fun of using an application like this).

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Jorge Coelho
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 Post subject: Re: Beginner questions.
PostPosted: Sun Sep 15, 2019 7:46 pm 
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cyraxote wrote:
I think I've thoroughly mangled the themes, even after a reinstall of the program. Any way to reset them?


Sorry, missed that part.

Uninstalling the application first would be one way to do it, since installing on top is not going to change newer files (imagine something like that undoing changes you *deliberately* made to some themes) :)

This said, it is not necessary: first exit the application.

Now go to C:\Users\Public\Documents\WinStep\ and delete the Themes folder. Now re-install the application *on top*, which should this time unpack the original themes when you run it again.

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 Post subject: Re: Beginner questions.
PostPosted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 5:46 pm 
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Yeah... I was a little agitated. Sorry about that.

The screenshot you asked for:

Image

I think that I'm just accustomed to ObjectDock, where there seems to be a little less room from the top to the bottom of the dock.

Could you point me to the "seamlessly scale the shelf up" option? (I found some checkboxes for NOT scaling on high DPI screens, but that didn't seem right.) My monitor is 2560x1080, so maybe it qualifies.

Finally, the reason I stopped by today is that I'm getting intermittent high CPU usage in Winstep Theme Manager. But I suppose that should be a separate post.

Thanks!


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 Post subject: Re: Beginner questions.
PostPosted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 6:56 pm 
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cyraxote wrote:
Could you point me to the "seamlessly scale the shelf up" option? (I found some checkboxes for NOT scaling on high DPI screens, but that didn't seem right.) My monitor is 2560x1080, so maybe it qualifies.


Right click on that Shelf's left mini-tab (small symbol on the leftmost tab) to open the Shelf's main right click context menu. Select 'Shelf Properties' in that context menu (this is one of the *multiple* ways to get to the Shelf Properties dialog for that particular Shelf, by the way).

In the Shelf Properties dialog, click on the 'Appearance' tab. At the bottom right of this tab you should see two options with a slider: Shelf Scaling and Menu Scaling. Use the former to automatically resize the Shelf. The latter setting affects the size of context menus, in case you need it.

cyraxote wrote:
Finally, the reason I stopped by today is that I'm getting intermittent high CPU usage in Winstep Theme Manager. But I suppose that should be a separate post.


Not really, you can mix and match. However, I don't quite understand what you mean by 'Winstep Theme Manager' - and I need more details to understand what is going on there anyway. :)

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 Post subject: Re: Beginner questions.
PostPosted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 9:09 pm 
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Here's a screen cap:

Image


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 Post subject: Re: Beginner questions.
PostPosted: Sat Oct 12, 2019 12:45 am 
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Ah, ok - Winstep.exe actually performs a lot of different functions.

I know it sounds unrelated, but trust me: how many files do you have on your Recycle Bin? :)

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 Post subject: Re: Beginner questions.
PostPosted: Sat Oct 12, 2019 3:53 am 
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Quite a few...


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 Post subject: Re: Beginner questions.
PostPosted: Sat Oct 12, 2019 10:21 am 
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Quite a few is not detailed enough lol. 10 could be 'quite a few' for some. :)

If you want me to help, you need to understand that the devil is always in the details.

Anyway, reason I asked is because one of the things winstep.exe does is count the number of files (and their sizes) in the Recycle Bin so it can present this information in the Recycle Bin module. This is done by winstep.exe and not the main application because it can actually take a lot of time if there are many thousands of files in the Bin (also depending on the speed of the media).

If it takes too long, counting them could block the single-threaded main application and render it unresponsive while the operation is ongoing, so winstep.exe is used as a proxy whenever it's necessary to know if the number of files in the bin has changed. This *might* explain the periodic peaks of CPU activity for winstep.exe, as it is also used as a proxy for other time consuming operations.

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 Post subject: Re: Beginner questions.
PostPosted: Sat Oct 12, 2019 7:30 pm 
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There were about 150,000, about 50 or 60 GB worth. I just emptied them, so we'll see what happens.


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 Post subject: Re: Beginner questions.
PostPosted: Sun Oct 13, 2019 10:08 am 
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LOL Yeah, I would also call that 'quite a few'. :wink:

Let me know, please, but I think you found the answer to your question. :)

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 Post subject: Re: Beginner questions.
PostPosted: Sun Oct 13, 2019 7:46 pm 
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Just curious: if I take the recycler module off of the shelf, does it stop the activity you described?


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 Post subject: Re: Beginner questions.
PostPosted: Mon Oct 14, 2019 4:02 am 
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If you remove *all* instances of the Recycle Bin module, assuming that is what was causing it (and it should also stop if you have emptied the Recycle Bin) then yes, it will stop it.

Modules that are not in use anywhere do not use any resources.

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