Hi:

I installed the Drawers app (which I have used extensively through several LTS releases), but it doesn't seem to function. The icon in the sidebar wiggles as if it is working, but nothing happens.

Has anyone gotten this to work on 16.04 and, if so, how?

It also looks like the app isn't being maintained any more? Does anyone know if this is the case?

Does anyone know of a replacement (I know - dump Unity and/or Ubuntu) for this? I really want a menu/sub-menu sort of thing with the single sidebar that leaves my vertical screen space alone and permits easy access to apps, files, and so forth, but without having so many icons that I need to scroll the list.

Thanks for any ideas ...

As a followup, I found an *.info file in the /opt/extras.ubuntu.com directory that mentions the following:

Requires: gi.repository.GLib
Requires: gi.repository.GMenu
Requires: gi.repository.GObject
Requires: gi.repository.Gdk
Requires: gi.repository.GdkPixbuf
Requires: gi.repository.Gio
Requires: gi.repository.Gtk
Requires: gi.repository.Unity

I searched through Synaptic and couldn't locate anything that looked like those entries, and it isn't clear to me what the gi.repository might be. Does this suggest anything to anyone? Is this a set of libraries I need to load?

Thanks.

For anyone who uses Drawers, I found a work-around of sorts.

In the Compiz-Config Manager, go to Window Management > Window Rules > Matches, and then to the 'No ARGB Visuals' line.

Don't use the built-in selector to choose the Drawers individually, as that uses class names, and only one of the drawers will be "fixed." Enter something like the following:
(name=First-Drawer-Name | name=Second Drawer Name) and so forth, using the name that is displayed when you right click on one of the drawers in the launcher panel.

Note that there must be no spaces surrounding the = character, although the Drawer name itself may have spaces if that's what the name actually is. There is no need for any quotation marks. These drawer names are actually something like First-Drawer-Name.desktop on disk, but do not enter the .desktop extension.

This 'No ARGB Visuals' line was apparently added to compiz many years ago to assist with "some broken legacy applications which might be always transparent..."

The only drawback to doing this apparently that the window background will be totally black, so a very few icons might not show up very well, but those can easily be changed in the normal manner. I could find no way to alter the background color or transparency (although admittedly it took me over a month to find this work-around).

I hope this helps some other forlorn Drawers users who have switched to Ubuntu 16.04 (and apparently the derivatives have the same issue).

1 members found this post helpful.

Please can you post one screenshot for the setting ? I don't find the setting in compiz manager in italian language. Thank you ....

See the attached.

If you can't find anything similar, let me know and we can compare versions and so forth ...

Please post back any discoveries you make - or if you decide to take over the code and bring it up to date !!

Have a great weekend.

Frank

Attached Thumbnails

 

Hi Frank,
this is my windows manager, and I have not that setting .....

http://i64.tinypic.com/2u7vgwh.jpg

Sorry:

I had totally forgotten that I added additional modules to Compiz-Config.

Try:

sudo apt install compiz-plugins-extra

If you don't use the command line, this can be installed from the Synaptic Package Manager. It doesn't show up in the Ubuntu Software application, but that's been broken since 16.04 was introduced.

That should get you going.

Let me know if you have other issues.

Frank

OK, now I have all the setting, but I have a problem with the correct string ...

(name=First-Drawer-Name | name=Second Drawer Name)

If the name under my icon drawer is "Cassetti", how it should be write ? Can you help me ?

It looks to me as if you have the syntax correct. If it's the only drawer the string would be:
(name=Cassetti)

If there are two the string would be:
(name=Cassetti | name=Cassetti2)
and so forth.

My string begins with:

(name=Office Utilities | name=Financials et cetera

and ends with a ")" of course.

If that doesn't work for you, the only thing I can think of is that something other than the pipe symbol (|) is set as the delimiter in Italian, although I doubt that.

I now recall that I had to create the string in a text editor (gedit is probably your default in Ubuntu, but any text editor - NOT word processor - will do) and then paste it into Compiz-Config. My recollection is that Compiz-Config can only take so many characters if you are typing. You could try just entering a couple drawer names first to make sure they work.

Another thing to be careful of is that - if you use certain characters, they may need to be escaped. In mine, for example, I have a drawer titled "Graphics & Photo Utilities", which will confuse Compiz. The solution is to title it: "Graphics and Photo Utilities" or "Graphics \& Photo Utilities" which is what I did for spacing reasons. If you don't know what an "Escape" character is, you can google it for an Italian explanation. The "" is the escape character which tells my system to treat the next character as if it had no special meaning.

Good Luck. I sure wish some programmer would grab the source code and try to update it for current systems. I had contacted the author, and he no longer has the time to work on it.

Frank

OK, thank you for help and your patience .....