Version 0.1 Developer Preview 2

Retiled Version 0.1 Developer Preview 2 Changelog

Released on 5/20/2023 (MM/DD/YYYY).

Note: if you wish, you can discuss this version here: #222

Two years and five months since the first release, I'm now ready to publish the second release. This version includes some major bug fixes that only showed up after the previous version was published (due to probably implementing things incorrectly and the behavior being fixed in Qt, but that lead to a regression in my code) and other annoyances that were in DP1. Here are some highlights:

• Now you can leave edit mode by tapping on the blank area outside tiles
• The wp-metro icon font I'm using for the arrow icon and the search button should now display properly
• I've also integrated icon support
  • It's a little choppy when scrolling the All Apps list though, likely due to not caching the Icon value from .desktop files when loading the All Apps list items
  • Also for some reason the icons are now blurry on first loading if using HiDPI and I only noticed this after updating to Qt6.5 on my PinePhone, but resizing tiles manually and scrolling the All Apps list far enough around to refresh the images seems to fix it temporarily
  • I'm using pyxdg for this capability, so it'll have to be installed if you don't already have it; package names for it in some distros are in README.md and also in the Readme included with the Zip file package for this version of Retiled.
• Added initial support for both tile backgrounds (like WP8.1, in the tiles) and standard backgrounds (behind tiles, like W10M added and most phone launchers have)
  • These currently have issues if using parallax scrolling, where the image starts disappearing if you have too many tiles, but you can turn off parallax via an accessibility option as described below
• Several theme-related customization options set via a config file (./RetiledSettings/configs/themes.config, but it can be copied to ~/.config/Retiled/RetiledSettings/configs/themes.config to make editing easier)
  • Accent color
  • Icon theme if you don't want Breeze Dark
  • An option for which image to use as a wallpaper based on file path
  • Even options to alter the wallpaper overlay layer color so it can be stuff besides a 20% opacity black rectangle
• Two accessibility options in its own config file (./RetiledSettings/configs/accessibility.config)
  • Whether to allow control tilting when pressed (by the way, I figured out how to do tilting for buttons and stuff, even though it doesn't yet follow the cursor except in one of the nine predefined directions [eight plus the middle])
    • More details on tilting support: #167
    • Even more, if a bit outdated, details on tilting support: #147
  • Whether to use parallax wallpaper scrolling
• I've also switched to using the Inter Display font if it's installed (tested with v4.0 beta 8)
  • Another related change is that controls that previously set their font.letterSpacing no longer do so, as it doesn't look as bad as Open Sans at the default letter spacing.
• This version deprecates setting raw tile width and height values in favor of integrating TilesGrid (my fork) in v0.1-DP3
  • We'll still load raw tile widths and heights for now, and you'll get a message on startup telling you about this with a way to convert your config file to the new format by manually forcing a save through entering edit mode then leaving it [this situation is handled specifically, but we won't allow force-saving if the config file has been converted to using TileSize with values of small, medium, and wide, with all other values defaulting to medium]).
• The All Apps list has a scrollbar
  • It's imperfect, looks like it's way too far into the edge of the window, and stays visible for longer than I'd like, but at least it exists.
• pyyaml has been removed from my distribution (of Retiled), so you'll have to install it yourself if it's not already installed. Names for its package in some distros are in README.md and also in the Readme included with the Zip file package for this version of Retiled.

There are several more changes than this, and I hope it's not too underwhelming for how long the wait was.

Please be sure to read the full changelog below as some highlights listed above are expanded upon.

Please be sure to read the Readme included in the package or online as it has important info, as well as the System Requirements.

Please note that this version doesn't yet support running as its own environment, so you'll have to run it in something else. Plasma Mobile is recommended, as both Retiled and Plasma use Qt. In fact, I'm planning on turning Retiled into mainly a Look-and-Feel package for Plasma Mobile so that it can take advantage of the features provided in Plasma Mobile but I'll be tweaking various UI elements to make it what I need.

If you are reading this in Notepad or another text editor, it displays best in Word Wrap view. Click on Format>Word Wrap on the top bar if using Notepad on Windows. Notepad++ users will find it under View>Word Wrap. Word Wrap is automatically done if viewing on GitHub, and should already be used in VS Code (if not, use View>Word Wrap), Kate, and KWrite.

The full changelog is available after the Hashes section. To make things easier, some items were at least partially copied from the highlights above.

Hashes

MD5 checksums/hashes are not used for Retiled as they are weaker than SHA-256. More details, though they're not as relevant to Retiled:

You can use sha256sum to confirm the hash of the files by running
"find . -type f -exec sha256sum {} ;" in the folder you extracted the archive to and comparing the output to my sums listed below. Be sure that you don't copy the quotes. This should work on non-Bash systems, like postmarketOS. I got this command from this Ask Ubuntu answer: https://askubuntu.com/a/486094 . HowToGeek has a nice article on checksums and stuff:
https://www.howtogeek.com/67241/htg-explains-what-are-md5-sha-1-hashes-and-how-do-i-check-them/ .

There are a lot of them, so you'll find the relevant ones in "sums-v0.1-DP2.txt" or online.

The checksum of that file is 092d2707d4e4f9ec49422ab76c682d191b31bb76f15f26d0be152e8224da765b

You can run a check on individual files by running "sha256sum -b (insert filename here)".

Added

• Initial support for both tile backgrounds (like WP8.1, in the tiles) and standard backgrounds (behind tiles, like W10M added and most phone launchers have)
  • These currently have issues if using parallax scrolling, where the image starts disappearing if you have too many tiles, but you can turn off parallax via an accessibility option as described below
  • Please note that the tile background/wallpaper effect can be slow on some devices, but in my experience it seems fine on the PinePhone (memory usage may be not fine, though, but I haven't checked).
  • See also this pull request for more details, such as how to set a wallpaper in the config file: #193
  • Something I should mention is I think I fixed the issue where the image wouldn't stay in the tiles page. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did.
• Icon support
  • It's a little choppy and slow when scrolling the All Apps list though, likely due to not caching the Icon value from .desktop files when loading the All Apps list items
  • Also for some reason the icons are now blurry on first loading if using HiDPI and I only noticed this after updating to Qt6.5 on my PinePhone, but resizing tiles manually and scrolling the All Apps list far enough around to refresh the images seems to fix it temporarily
  • I'm using pyxdg for this capability, so it'll have to be installed if you don't already have it; package names for it in some distros are in README.md and also in the Readme included with the Zip file package for this version of Retiled.
• Theme-related customization options set via a config file (./RetiledSettings/configs/themes.config, but it can be copied to ~/.config/Retiled/RetiledSettings/configs/themes.config to make editing easier)
  • Accent color
    • More details on accent color config file stuff: #140
  • Icon theme if you don't want Breeze Dark
  • An option for which image to use as a wallpaper based on file path
  • Even options to alter the wallpaper overlay layer color so it can be stuff besides a 20% opacity black rectangle
• Accessibility options in its own config file (./RetiledSettings/configs/accessibility.config, but it can be copied to ~/.config/Retiled/RetiledSettings/configs/accessibility.config to make editing easier)
  • Whether to allow control tilting when pressed (by the way, I figured out how to do tilting for buttons and stuff, even though it doesn't yet follow the cursor except in one of the nine predefined directions [eight plus the middle])
    • More details on tilting support: #167
    • Even more, if a bit outdated, details on tilting support: #147
  • Whether to use parallax wallpaper scrolling
• If you wish to load settings files yourself, RetiledStart should cover most of the settings available in the config files, and you can find the settingsReader.py library under `./RetiledSetti...

Version 0.1 Developer Preview 1

Retiled Version 0.1 Developer Preview 1 Changelog

Released on 12/12/2021 (MM/DD/YYYY).

After eight months of work and an entire rewrite, Retiled is ready for its first pre-release at version 0.1 Developer Preview 1! Couldn't have done it without Microsoft's documentation on how Windows Phone looks and behaves, PySide6 and Qt, PyYAML, the wp-metro font, and Open Sans. This project wouldn't even exist without Windows Phone existing first, as the UI is meant to resemble Windows Phone. Please be sure to read the Readme included with Retiled or online as it has important info. Also refer to the System Requirements.

Please note that this version doesn't yet support running as its own environment, so you'll have to run it in something else. Plasma Mobile is recommended, as both Retiled and Plasma use Qt.

If you are reading this in Notepad or another text editor, it displays best in Word Wrap view. Click on Format>Word Wrap on the top bar. Notepad++ users will find it under View>Word Wrap. Word Wrap is automatically done if viewing on GitHub.

Hashes

MD5 checksums/hashes are not used for Retiled as they are weaker than SHA-256. More details, though they're not as relevant to Retiled:

You can use sha256sum to confirm the hash of the files by running
"find . -type f -exec sha256sum {} ;" in the folder you extracted the archive to and comparing the output to my sums listed below. Be sure that you don't copy the quotes. Hopefully this'll work on non-Bash systems, like postmarketOS. I got this command from this Ask Ubuntu answer: https://askubuntu.com/a/486094 . HowToGeek has a nice article on checksums and stuff:
https://www.howtogeek.com/67241/htg-explains-what-are-md5-sha-1-hashes-and-how-do-i-check-them/ .

There are a lot of them, so you'll find the relevant ones in "sums-v0.1-DP1.txt" or online.

The checksum of that file is 5bb7b3726d1186d4e14ee248e1fba1d82e0a0668e29afc7dd4037d31104c6268

You can run a check on individual files by running "sha256sum -b (insert filename here)".

Features

Instead of a standard changelog, I'm going to list some features of Retiled.

• RetiledStart
  • Basically, if you know how to use Windows Phone's Start screen, you can use RetiledStart. If not, here are some things you can do:
  • You can pin apps to RetiledStart's Start screen by swiping from the right side of the screen toward the left or by tapping the right-facing arrow (All Apps button) at the bottom of the tiles to go to the All Apps list, then long-press on an app and tap "pin to start".
  • Any tiles can be resized from medium, to small, to wide, by long-pressing on a tile to enter "global edit mode", which displays edit buttons on tiles, then tap the resize button in the bottom-right of the tile. Save your changes by single-tapping any tile with edit buttons, but be sure not to tap the edit buttons themselves.
  • Unpinning tiles is done by tapping the unpin button in the top-right of any tile with edit buttons.
  • If you don't want to use tiles, you can unpin all of them, and you'll stay in the All Apps list until more are pinned. Unpinning the last tile will save the layout automatically.
• RetiledSearch
  • Typing anything into the search box then pressing "Enter" on your keyboard or tapping the "search" button below the search box will open your default browser to the Bing search results for what you typed.

How to Use

This is a more detailed guide on how to use Retiled than the brief features list above. Some content may be repeated toward the last few steps.

1. Extract the "retiled_v0.1-DP1.zip" (extract "retiled_v0.1-DP1_linux-only.zip" if you don't need Windows support; future versions won't have Windows support in the releases as that was a mistake and I forgot to delete the Windows build for a PyYAML library) archive to a folder. No package currently exists, though I'd like to make one.

2. Open a terminal in the root of the newly-extracted archive.

3. Run "sh ./Scripts/install-retiled.sh" to begin the installation process. You will be prompted for your password after Python pre-compiles the scripts for installation.

If you'd like to uninstall Retiled, you can run "sh Scripts/uninstall-retiled.sh" and it'll delete the installed files after asking for your password if it's been long enough. Please be aware that any user-made files in "/opt/Retiled" will be deleted, as that's how the uninstall process works right now. Config files in "~/.config/Retiled" will be kept.

4. Once you type in your password, the installer will create a directory in "/opt/Retiled", then it'll copy the main files there, the .desktop files to "/usr/share/applications", and scripts to run things to "/usr/bin". This may take a bit, though the pre-compilation may take longer.

5. Once you return to the prompt, Retiled should be installed, and you can launch RetiledStart and RetiledSearch from your mobile environment's apps list. Plasma Mobile might not properly reload and display the new files, so you may have to restart your phone. You can also run "retiledstart" and "retiledsearch" from the terminal, if you want. That's useful if you're having trouble running them, as any errors or packages that are missing should be displayed.

6. If running RetiledStart, you can pin apps from the All Apps list by long-pressing on the app's name and tapping "pin to start", resize tiles by long-pressing on a tile then tapping the resize button in the bottom-right corner until you're happy with the size (cycling through medium->small->wide->medium), and unpin tiles by long-pressing on a tile then tapping the unpin button in the top-right corner. Once you long-press a tile, you enter "global edit mode", which allows you to tap other tiles to move the edit buttons to that tile. Exiting global edit mode is done by tapping a tile with edit buttons on it (tiles with edit buttons on them are in "local edit mode"). Exiting global edit mode is required to save your layout changes.

7. Just to make sure no one misses it, you have to save your tile layout/size changes by exiting global edit mode, which is done by tapping a tile that has edit buttons on it. Pinning a tile automatically saves the tile to the config file.

8. With RetiledSearch, just tap the textbox and the touch keyboard should show up, allowing you to enter a search term. Pressing "Enter" or tapping "search" will open the Bing search results for the term you entered in your default browser.

Tip: Since moving tiles around isn't supported yet, you can manually change which app is assigned to any pinned tile by opening the config file ("~/.config/Retiled/RetiledStart/startlayout-modified.yaml") after doing anything that forces a save (entering global edit mode and resizing a tile from medium to medium won't cause the file to be saved, to reduce eMMC writes; this is also the reason why you have to exit global edit mode for changes to be saved). Once it's open in your text editor, change any of the .desktop filenames to the app you want that tile to be for. Please note that currently only .desktop files in "/usr/share/applications" are accessed. You'll have to restart RetiledStart for your changes to show up.

Known Issues

• The only fancy animations that exist are the ones that happen when going to/from the All Apps list via the All Apps button or when unpinning all the tiles/when pinning a tile, respectively.
• Moving tiles around isn't possible yet, though it should be possible with some work, even though I haven't experimented with it yet.
• Icons are not yet supported, but I know how to make them work I think, so it shouldn't be too long for them.
• Changing accent colors and switching to the light theme requires directly modifying code, mostly QML.
• The All Apps list doesn't have a scrollbar yet. I was going to add that to this version, but couldn't find anything that work work immediately and I wanted to save it for later so this would be out sooner.
• I still haven't figured out how to get the small tiles to go on both rows beside a medium tile. I have one idea involving the GridLayout/Grid/GridView and having tiles fill rectangles that are fixed sizes but have the tiles change their columnspan and rowspan when being resized or something, but it might not work, and I haven't found anything about masonry layouts in QML as far as I remember.
• One major issue is that unpinning all the tiles then pinning some more will cause all of them to be underneath the first tile in a column, which may be caused by using a Column layout to hold the tiles and the All Apps button, along with various spacer items. Maybe a Grid layout would fix it, but I want to wait for now. A workaround is to long-press a tile to go into "global edit mode", resize any tile to wide then medium, and exit "global edit mode" (single-tap a tile that has editing buttons on it) so the layout fixes itself.
• The "pin to start" button in RetiledStart and the "about" button in RetiledSearch's appbar drawer don't have proper spacing on the left.
• In RetiledStart, the tiles list isn't correctly centered in the page. Tried to fix this, but nothing seemed to work.
• The unpin icon is slightly too large (issue #76 #76)
• Currently only .desktop files in "/usr/share/applications" are accessed.
• The search button in the top-right of the All Apps list is unimplemented, but I kept it there because it would probably look weird without it.
• Tiles aren't kept into t...