Version 0.1 Developer Preview 1

[DrewNaylor]

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/ .

Please wait...

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" 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 The unpin icon is slightly too big, so it'll have to be resized at some point. #76 The unpin icon is slightly too big, so it'll have to be resized at some point. #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 two/three columns on rotating the phone.
• Nothing checks to ensure a tile isn't pinned before allowing the user to pin it, so you can pin multiple tiles from the same app in the All Apps list until that's fixed.
• Another issue is that pinned tiles get added to the left column, and this doesn't stop happening after pinning the second column by resizing any of the tiles like I thought. Not sure how to fix it. Maybe there's some way with the QML Grid/GridView/GridLayout, but I don't know.
• Tapping an app in the All Apps list then long-pressing it and leaving your finger on the screen when the app is open then closing the app and tapping "pin to start" won't take you back to the tiles list as it's supposed to. I don't know why this happens or how to fix it.
• Sometimes the tiles list doesn't scroll all the way to the bottom correctly.
• "Global edit mode" can't be exited by tapping anywhere outside the tiles for now.
• Some button text, including the All Apps button icon, resize button icon, and the All Apps list search icon are slightly off-position.

Please note that these known issues may not be recorded in the issue tracker, so they won't show up at the link below.

See all known issues: known issue

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This discussion was created from the release Version 0.1 Developer Preview 1.