Pointers

Pointers follow the movements of your mouse. If you move your mouse to the left the pointer will move to the left. The standard pointer is the Arrow pointer. If you perform special operations with your mouse, the pointer changes.

Icons

Icons give a graphical representation of what can be found on your system. It shows you objects that you can access or view. There are a couple of default icons available to represent files and folders.

The idea behind the GNUstep system is that everything on your system is represented by an icon.

The left most icon represents a folder. Folders are place holders for other objects like files and applications.

And the secon one is the Tool icon. Tools are commandline programs, they can not be run in a graphical environment, and thus have a generic icon to represent them.

Every application that is supported by the GNUstep system has an icon that represents that application. In very rare cases you could come across the Unknon Application icon. But in normal cases you should not.

Files are objects that can be handled by applications, like text files, or spreadsheets. If the system does not know which application can handle a certain file, the Unknown File icon is shown.

Windows

A window is a part of the screen where you can view the results of your actions. It can hold a document, or a spreadsheet, or in the case of GWorkspace the contents of the filesystem. It is in a window where you perform your actions.

A window consists of a top-bar and a bottom-bar. The top bar displays the window name and a couple of control elements, like this:

When the minimize button is clicked a mini-windows is placed at the bottom of the screen. Double clicking this mini-window resizes it again to full size.

The button on the right closes the window, but is also a status indicator. As long as the cross is solid you can close the window or use ALT-w to close it. If however the cross changes to then something in de window has changed which you might want to safe first. So if you edited a document, but did not safe it the cross indicates that it is not safed. Clicking the cross will popup a panel asking you if you want to safe or discard the changed contents of the window.

The bottom of the window is made up of a bar that is also refered to as the resize-bar:

The middle part of the resize-bar can be used to make a window larger or smaller. The width stays the same. To also change the width of a window you can use the two smaller parts on the left and the right. Clicking a part of the resize-bar and holding down your mouse button while moving you mouse, resizes the window.

The Command Menu

A special kind of window is the command menu. It does not have a close or minimize button, but otherwise it acts exactly like the other windows.

The command menus hold the commands you can use to control the computer. The entries witin this menu are commands you can access directly like Quit or Hide, but they can also have a triangle next to it, which means that those entries lead to a submenu, like Info and Edit.

Clicking on the triangle will open the submenu, which is a window on its own, so you can access the commands.

Every application has its own list of commands that can be used. The one presented in this section is the one from GWorkspace. Menus can be moved with the mouse. Put your mouse pointer on the title-bar of the menu, click and keep the mouse button pressed. Now you can move the menu around. Releasing the mouse button will release the menu.

If you click the Info bar the submenu appears.

If you now try to move the Info menu you will notice that the main menu stays where it is, but the Info menu will get detached. It becomes a standalone menu which you can move around.

Menus are windows that belong to the main menu, but can be moved independantly. The title bar of the menu indicates the name of the bar you have choosen. Not the entire path, but just the name of bar from the previous menu entry.

Another thing that you might have noticed is the fact that the entry you selected, like Info stayed highlighted when the menu was still attached to the main menu, to indicate how you got to a certain submenu. But as soon as you detached the menu the path highlighting stops at the last entry still shown.

The File Viewer

The most important feature of GWorkspace is the access to the filesystem. A computer organises everything that is stored on the harddisk into logical elements. The basic organisation is files and folders, where a folder is an element that can contain files. A folder is also called a directory.

Files are all other objects like documents, spreadsheets, images, etc.

The Shelf is a place holder for shortcuts. Initially the only shortcut present is the one to your home folder. If you click the icon you are immediately transfered to the place where you store your files and folders. By dragging files, folders or applications to the Shelf you can create your own shortcuts.

The icon path represents the path from the root of the filesystem towards the point where you are now. It always ends at an highlighted folder or file. It is this highlighted element on which you can perform operations, like dragging and dropping.

And the last section is the viewing area. Here the contents of the filesystem is displayed. It presents to you in a graphical way the surroundings of the highlighted item.

The Dock

The Dock is a place to store often used applications.

Your Home Folder

The place where you end up depends on your system. Most Unix-like systems use /home/<username> as the home folder of a user. To make it easy for you the entire /home/<username> can be abbreviated to the ˜ (tilde character), which saves a lot of typing.

A Filesystem

A filesystem is organised as a hierarchical tree where the higest part is called the root. If you look at the following picture and turn it upside down you understand the tree analogy.

This way of organizing your data is very efficient. Assume you have a folder in your home folder called Documents, you can then subdivide that one into Memos for business documents and Private for your own documents. This way you can quickly create a hierarchical structure to maintain your data.

Another probably more familiar example is sound files (like MP3). Just create one folder called Sounds and the subdivide it per artist and then per album.

If you organize your work this way it gets very easy to find your data. The folder tree of GNUstep is setup in a similar fashion.

Different Views

GWorkspace gives you a great deal of flexibility of how you want to view the filesystem. If you are quickly browsing through a large tree of folders the browser might be fine for you. But if you are trying to locate an application it would be easier if you can look at the icons, instead of only the names.

And for this there are different views:

With the arrow keys you can walk through the objects of a view. Sometimes this is easier then using the mouse to select elements. Another keyboard replacement for the mouse is the Enter. Pressing Enter while an object is selected is equal to double clicking the same object.

Within the Icon View mode or the List View mode you can use the PgUp to scroll an entire screen up or PgDn to scroll an entire page down

And the last way to walk fast through a list is by selecting the first letter. It moves you immediately to the first matching item. If you want to jump to the objects that start with a k, type the letter k on your keyboard. Note that this is a case sensitive action. The k and K are two different places.

If you hold down the Shift key while selecting objects the selection gets expanded with the new objects. This way you can select multiple objects before performing a certain operation. Ofcourse in the Icon View mode this can also be performed with the mouse. Hold down the left mouse button and select an area. All objects within the area will light up.

In the Icon View you can also change the size of the Icon Size, Icon Position and Label Size get active.

Using the Icon Size submenu you can change the size of the icons from 48x48 pixels to 24x24 size.

Instead of having the name of the file below the icon, you could use the Icon Position to have the title to the left of the icon.

And the last option you can change is the size of the filename. Which is called the Label Size. This can be lowered to a font size of 10 points, or as great as 16 points.

Spatial Browsing

By seleting from the View the View Behaviour entry you can select the Spatial mode. This mode is quite different from the browsing mode. It does not have a Shelf, and it does not have an Icon Path. You only have the viewing area.

Selecting the Spatial browser mode puts you at the root (/) of the filesystem.

Double clicking on a folder opens automatically a new viewer with the contents of that folder. All options for viewing like, Icon view, List view and Browser view are still available.

The dimmed objects in the different views are the path you have followed.

Your screen might get quite busy with all the open folders, so there are some special tricks that might help you to keep an overview. If you hold down the ALT while double clicking on a folder, a new viewer will be opened with the contents of the folder, but the old one will be closed. Which can ofcourse also be accomplished with Enter and holding down the ALT key.

Creating Folders

To create a new folder go to the GWorkspace menu and click the File item. This will open a submenu. Click New Folder. The new folder will appear in the FileViewer icon path. Double click on the NewFolder name and type the name you want the folder to have. For now we call it Documents.

With ALT-n you can create new folders without using the menu, which is much faster when you have to create more then one folder.

Create two more folders called Test and Backup within this newly created folder.

Opening a new viewer

Hold down the CTRL-key and double click on the Documents folder, to open a new viewer with your Documents folder as the root.

Now you have two viewers one with the entire filesystem, and one starting from the folder you double clicked.

Files and the Inspector

Go back to the File menu command and select New File. Rename it with the same procedure as above (use Test.txt as its name).

In the GWorkspace menu select the Tools item and go to the Inspectors. Select attributes. A panel will popup with the file attributes. Check that the rights on the file are the way you want them.

Select the Tools section from the Inspector:

The only available application on my system to open this kind of file is TextEdit, so it is the only available choice.

Because we are the one that created the file through GWorkspace it is completely empty. The only way the computer guesses the type of application is because we gave it a .txt extension (text file).

To prove that it is an empty file select Contents from the Inspectors list.

Clicking Edit in the Inspector opens TextEdit with our file. So add the following line to the file:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Save the document and see the Content view in the Inspector change.

Moving, Copying or Linking files

When you select a file from the Icon Path and start to move it around, you will notice that the pointer changes. It is changed to the NoAccess pointer. Which means that if you release your mouse button, nothing happens. Every area where you release the file, while the systems says you can not drop a file, means the system will not do anything and everything will stay as it was.

If however the pointer changes into a green arrow it means you can perform an operation, which will change your system. The green arrow means that the file is moved from its current position to the position the pointer is pointing to.

Before releasing your mouse button, you can press the right ALT-key and you again see a change in pointer. If you release the mouse button now, the file will be copied. So an identical file will be created in the folder you are pointing to and the original will stay where it was.

And the last option you have is to not press the ALT-key, but use your left CTRL-key. This will create a link if you release the mouse button. A link means that the file stays at its original place and in the new position a file is created with an identical name, which tells the system where the original is.

Create a copy of the Text.txt file in the Backup folder and a link to the Test.txt file in the Test folder.

Deleting files and folders

The easiest and quickest way to delete a file or folder is to select it in the File Viewer window and to press ALT-r one single popup asks for a confirmation and pressing Enter is all that is needed to definitively remove the file.

The same thing can be accomplished through the File menu and selecting Destroy.

The downside of this way of working is the definitive nature. Files deleted this way can not be retrieved, there are gone, for good!

A more subtle way of doing things is through the use of the Recycler. This gives you the benefit of undoing the delete action.

The search area

You can search in a single folder, or you could build a list of folders where you want to search. Select the Specific places item and use the Add button to build a list of places to search in.

Define a search

Live Search Folders

By dragging the Live Search Folder from your Search results window to e.g. the Desktop you can store the search for future use. A Live Search Folder is a Finder search saved in a file and capable of auto-updating itself.

To reuse this search double click the Live Search Folder. The LSF window that will open has two buttons and a popup; the Edit button opens the folder editor where you can modify the search criteria used by the folder, the popup let you choose the auto-update cycle time and the Update now button updates the results.

The Dock Revisited

The Dock is a place to store applications that you want to be ready at hand. From the Icon Path you can drag applications to the Dock.

Using run

With the Run command from the File menu, you can start applications if you know the name. Just type the name in the panel and click Ok.

The Fiend

The Fiend is another way of storing applications, files or folders. From the Tools, Fiend menu you can select the Show Fiend command. Which gives you the fiend, which is probably empty on your system:

By giving each layer another name you can create distinguishable shelfs e.g. related to type of application, or by project.

The TabbedShelf

The Tabbed Shelf is comparable with the Shelf. One can stick applications, documents and folders for future use on the Tabbed Shelf. To activate the Shelf select from the Tools menu the Tabbed Shelf entry. This will activate the Shelf at the bottom of your screen.

Double clicking an folder object in the TabbedShelf opens a new viewer with the folder. If you click the object with the CTRL pressed opens the selection in the current viewer.