Hidden partition hides .backdrop'ped icons

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Raziel
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Hidden partition hides .backdrop'ped icons

Post by Raziel »

There is a little inconsistency i found today, not sure if it's meant to be like that and/or by design.

If you hide a partition icon from Workbench (Preferences/Workbench/Hidden devices) which has a ".backdrop" file with "left out" icons on it and save, those left out icons will still be visible and accessable, but will be gone on reboot.

1) First of all i would like to know why the left out icons doesn't disappear if i "save" to hide the partition the ".backdrop" file is on?
2) Second, why do they disappear on a reboot?
(I tried "Redraw all" and "Update all" after i saved, but the "left out" icons are always present while the session is running.
This bit me after a reboot from yesterday, suddenly two icons weren't showing up, took me a while to realize.
3) Lastly, if i reboot with the hidden device and choose to "unhide" it from within Workbench prefs, the device icon *and* the two left out icons show up immediately. That's inconsistent regarding number 1) (and also makes me feel i did something wrong).

Imho it's logical for the icons to reappear when the hidden device reappears (if that was meant to be the design), but illogical for them to stay if the device is being hidden.

Another question would be, if it could be possible to keep those left out icons visible and only hide the root device?
I know that this would oppose the fact that the device (and probably all in it) should be hidden.



Background:
I use a NAS drive on my router, which i need (for now) to have writable and visible with it's root to be able to snapshot and change appearance of the icons i actually use on Workbench.
It looks like this:

Fritz.NAS (root)
- Music
- Pictures
- Videos
- Documents
- FRITZ
- Online
- USB_NAS
-- All stuff on the NAS

Everything in root will go to the routers memory (which, of course, is limited).
"USB_NAS" and "Online" hold all the stuff i need and are the only dirs i'd like to have on Workbench.

The router lets me either release "Fritz.NAS" completely, which would give me everything including root, or "USB_NAS" and "Online" which would give me everything in those dirs but NO write access to root.
Now, if i want to snapshot the "USB_NAS" icon, i couldn't, because root has no more write access.

If i however would be able to "hide" the root icon from Workbench (without all the other stuff getting hidden aswell) i wouldn't be able to alter something in it by accident anymore. (But as written above, if i do so, the left out icons vanish on the next reboot)

Here's hoping i made myself clear

Anything that can be done about it?

Thank you
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Entire ecosystems are collapsing.
We are in the beginning of a mass extinction.
And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.
How dare you!
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broadblues
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Re: Hidden partition hides .backdrop'ped icons

Post by broadblues »

Raziel wrote:There is a little inconsistency i found today, not sure if it's meant to be like that and/or by design.

If you hide a partition icon from Workbench (Preferences/Workbench/Hidden devices) which has a ".backdrop" file with "left out" icons on it and save, those left out icons will still be visible and accessable, but will be gone on reboot.

1) First of all i would like to know why the left out icons doesn't disappear if i "save" to hide the partition the ".backdrop" file is on?
Did you do an update all? Ah see reading further down you did. Possibly a bug / half implmented feature then.
2) Second, why do they disappear on a reboot?
Because you have hidden the Volume, no drawers or icons can be accessed, via the workbench, having icon left out that don;t work woud not be helpful :-)
(I tried "Redraw all" and "Update all" after i saved, but the "left out" icons are always present while the session is running.
This bit me after a reboot from yesterday, suddenly two icons weren't showing up, took me a while to realize.
I think this definetly count as a bug. At best somekind of workbench internal limitation about removing iocns.
3) Lastly, if i reboot with the hidden device and choose to "unhide" it from within Workbench prefs, the device icon *and* the two left out icons show up immediately. That's inconsistent regarding number 1) (and also makes me feel i did something wrong).
I guess the drive gets scanned when it's revealed to WB and the icons get added to the list of left out icons. That's likely much easier than removing them.
Imho it's logical for the icons to reappear when the hidden device reappears (if that was meant to be the design), but illogical for them to stay if the device is being hidden.
AS I said bug and / or possible WB design limiation.
Another question would be, if it could be possible to keep those left out icons visible and only hide the root device?
I know that this would oppose the fact that the device (and probably all in it) should be hidden.
I'm not sure about project icons, but drawer icons for certain would not work.

Background:
I use a NAS drive on my router, which i need (for now) to have writable and visible with it's root to be able to snapshot and change appearance of the icons i actually use on Workbench.
It looks like this:

Fritz.NAS (root)
- Music
- Pictures
- Videos
- Documents
- FRITZ
- Online
- USB_NAS
-- All stuff on the NAS

Everything in root will go to the routers memory (which, of course, is limited).
"USB_NAS" and "Online" hold all the stuff i need and are the only dirs i'd like to have on Workbench.

The router lets me either release "Fritz.NAS" completely, which would give me everything including root, or "USB_NAS" and "Online" which would give me everything in those dirs but NO write access to root.
Now, if i want to snapshot the "USB_NAS" icon, i couldn't, because root has no more write access.

If i however would be able to "hide" the root icon from Workbench (without all the other stuff getting hidden aswell) i wouldn't be able to alter something in it by accident anymore. (But as written above, if i do so, the left out icons vanish on the next reboot)

Here's hoping i made myself clear

Anything that can be done about it?

Thank you
The drawer icons won't work if the root volume is hidden as hiding the volume hides the whole thing! So leaving them out won't help you
. (Not without significant redesign of the feature I'd guess). To verify that, try using the Contextmenu Open Drawer option to open one of the drawers on the hidden volume, it won't work.

If you use filer or some other 3rd party filenamger like DOPus, you might like to consider creating a "shortcut" that way.

I create filer shortcuts by creating a small script

eg as simple as the onelinee

Code: Select all

sys:utilities/filer/filer projects:sketchblock/sketchblock
Saving it to SYS:Utilities/Filer/Shortcuts/skethcblocksrc

adding an icon set to lauch from shell and leaving that out on the workbench.

I keep maening to create an ARexx script to autmate the above, but never have yet....
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Raziel
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Re: Hidden partition hides .backdrop'ped icons

Post by Raziel »

Thank you, i thought as well, though access, as you mentioned, to files in the hidden partition is still very much possible (like playing a song out of there)

Could you maybe file a bug item against this (the non-removed icons)?
People are dying.
Entire ecosystems are collapsing.
We are in the beginning of a mass extinction.
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How dare you!
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tonyw
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Re: Hidden partition hides .backdrop'ped icons

Post by tonyw »

When you think about how the "left out" stuff works, it's not so surprising.

If a volume is not hidden, WB searches it for a file called ".backdrop". That file gives a list of items that have been left out. I can imagine that WB would keep a pointer to the file once it has opened it, and then relies on DOS to send it notification of changes *to the file*. So if you add or subtract file names from the ".backdrop" file, WB will hear about it and re-read the file to update its display.

If you change the "hidden" nature of a volume, though, that will only affect WB preferences. It seems that WB does not realise that it has to rescan all ".backdrop" files on all volumes, just in case something has changed. You could call that a bug, or you could say "The effect will only be seen after a reboot".
cheers
tony
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Raziel
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Re: Hidden partition hides .backdrop'ped icons

Post by Raziel »

tonyw wrote: If a volume is not hidden, WB searches it for a file called ".backdrop". That file gives a list of items that have been left out. I can imagine that WB would keep a pointer to the file once it has opened it, and then relies on DOS to send it notification of changes *to the file*. So if you add or subtract file names from the ".backdrop" file, WB will hear about it and re-read the file to update its display.
That is not the case either...if i change the .backdrop file manually nothing happens afterwards, neither is a removed item "put back" nor is an added item "left out".

So, this seems to be a new feature then?

Regarding the "it only affects the system after a reboo" should at least go into the Workbench manual then, shouldn't it?
People are dying.
Entire ecosystems are collapsing.
We are in the beginning of a mass extinction.
And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.
How dare you!
– Greta Thunberg
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