how to achieve vertical (left-side) toolbar + HORIZ button text ?

[ido]

this old ticket (not mine) describes the issue https://sourceforge.net/p/fluxbox/bugs/1119/

this patch reputedly addresses/fixes the issue https://github.com/fluxbox/fluxbox/commit/00cca1284fb436afd43b0569d56302f7c78e3d8d
and bears a commit message stating

"A vertically rotated text should be checked against the height of the button, not the width of it.

Fixes #1119 ("Toolbar cannot display full text of workspace/​clock/​windowtitle.")

and, in the release announcement for v1.3.7 https://sourceforge.net/p/fluxbox/mailman/message/33375551/
Minor Bugfixes:
• Working vertical rotated Tabs and Toolbar

http://fluxbox.org/help/man-fluxbox.php
http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/docs/newdoc.manpage.php
toolbar.windowLabel
toolbar.button
toolbar.justify
toolbar.font
toolbar.iconbar

session.screen0.tab.rotatevertical: If True, will rotate text on the tab so it is readable on vertically- placed tabs. Once again, use the Configuration/Tab Placement menu.
session.screen0.tab.width
session.screen0.tab.height


yowza! Maybe it doozn't dooz what I thunk it dooz?
I've been unable to achieve the desired result.


Meanwhile, this submitted patch is sitting, unused (and likely bitrotted) since 2009:

https://sourceforge.net/p/fluxbox/patches/147/

This patch adds:
- Menu item "Always horizontal icons" (bool).
- Menu item "Icon size" (int).
- Menu item "Text padding" (int).

It allows to align the windows list horizontally while tollbar aligned vertically.

BTW, here's a bugfix pull request from 2015, sitting unmerged b/c the dev doesn't approve of the title wording. WTF?
https://github.com/fluxbox/fluxbox/pull/20

Before I attempt to merge that "Always horizontal icons" patch, I'm posting this to ask: "am I overlooking something? The functionality aready exists?"

[PackRat]

I can't get that functionality working either.

One thing to note though, tabs are different than the iconbar -

these options:

Code Select Expand

session.screen0.tab.rotatevertical: If True, will rotate text on the tab so it is readable on vertically- placed tabs. Once again, use the Configuration/Tab Placement menu.
session.screen0.tab.width
session.screen0.tab.height

relate to window tabs; so if the tabs were positioned on the lesft side of the window, they cold be rotated horizontal and made readable.

these options -

Code Select Expand

toolbar.windowLabel
toolbar.button
toolbar.justify
toolbar.font
toolbar.iconbar

relate to the toolbar/icon bar. As far as I know, those have never had a rotate option should the user want the bar vertical. Probabaly easiest to go with tint2 or some other taskbar for that.

[ido]

Thanks for the confirmation that rotation of iconbar buttons is currently impossible. The commit mentioning a "fix" so that complete text is displayed, it considered the current rotation (orientation). I suppose I too-hopefully misread its intent. Ah, BTW, that reported issue remains -- I'm seeing the last character getting truncated from button labels (the dev probably didn't consider, and text, a variety of fonts) and for Boldface fonts, quite a few characters are being truncated/hidden. MAYBE the issue only arises when a certain setting (or combination: left / right / center / relative / justify) is specified.

The patch I mentioned in earlier post, it refers to files that no longer exist (like "FbTk/Container.cc") so I'll have to hunt for apropriate places to insert the changes.
Apparently the result would be a new button exposed in the Configure}}Toolbar submenu, enabling toggling of "Always horiz button labels".
Hmm, maybe whoever wrote that didn't think it through ~~ toggling on-demand is sort of pointless, b/c in order to fit the horiz textlabels, need to select a theme that specifies wider (taller?) toolbar.

[PackRat]

I wonder if you're just missing a dependency. There may be some package needed to allow for rotated text, but it's not getting installed as a dependency for fluxbox since this feature appears to require a patch. Maybe look into that.

[ido]

Nope, no missing dependencies, and during my trials I specified all --enable-stuff (except debug) build options.
Subsequently, I waded back through the sourceforge request+patch tickets, the alternative branches (and forks) at github, and cherrypicked all the patches which seemed useful -- not just in terms of rotated text -- and never did arrive at being able to render a wide, horizontally stacked taskbar presentation within a left-docked fluxbox panel. Maybe, due to wishful thinking on my part, I just misinterpreted the changelog comment(s).

I still don't understand the meaning of those changelog comments. After the 1.7.3 "fix", what was the intended result? Within a given taskbar container (button), when the panel is vertically oriented, should we expect to see

W
i
n
d
o
w
T
i
t
l
e
H
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e

? ? ?
Anyhow, I moved on, and achieved a "solution" by hacking  fbpanel .
It supports vertical orientation, can be configured to individually exclude tray and clock and...
(other whizmos which are redundant with those provided by fluxbox panel and/or conky)
...and I relaxed its hardcoded 192px maxwidth constraint.

After wrestling with code for many hours, I'm laughing at self because the real-world content of my "nice wide autohiding tasklist" often provides less-than-ideal labelnames like
[ leafpad /home/bartholemew/longassed/path/to/some/Documents/projectX/iwannapony.txt ]
[ Mozilla Firefox ]
[ Find ]
[ rules ]

[ido]

packrat, are you custom-compiling your fluxbox? If not, what version (and from what repo) are you running?

I've packaged my custom version into a debfile & intend to post the source + "howto build" instructions to github.
Would you be interested in building + testing it?
(and in collaborating toward further modding the code + FINALLY achieving comprehensive, up-to-date docs)

[PackRat]

Right now I'm running Fluxbox 1.3.7 on Void linux - they build from git so it should be current.

I use to custom build Fluxbox on Debian because their package is 1.3.5-2+b2. Fluxbox 1.3.7 is in experimental. I don't know what the "-2+b2" means, maybe the Debian maintainers are including the bug fixes from 1.3.7 but nothing else so they don't change the version number.

If you want to post your customized source and HowTo on git, I'll try and compile and test it on Void. I think I already have the dependencies installed.

Unfortunately, I don't have a Debian system installed at the moment, but that's an easy fix.