[Announce] Desktop Activity Manager (actman)
 

I'm pleased to announce the initial version of actman . (currently) It is a command line activity manager (a'la KDE).

This applications is now called Desktop Activity Manager.

actman is a status-menu plugin that saves and restores desktop activities (or desktop profiles). An activity is defined as whatever exists on the 4 desktops of fremantle.

EDIT: All things below this point still work, but you should just use the GUI instead.
EDIT: It is available in extras-testing.
EDIT: It is available in extras.
EDIT: It has a wiki page.

So, you can do:
Using the command line utility you can do:
and an activity named "main" will be created that will hold the current desktop configuration. Then you can do:
and you will create (and switch to) a new activity named "empty". All desktop widgets, bookmarks etc will disappear. Then you can do:
which will switch to activity "clean" and restore previous widgets (since it is a clone of "main"). You can then remove whatever you don't like. After that you will have three activities:

* main: The initial configuration
* empty: A completely empty desktop (to remind you how fast N900 is)
* clean: A stripped-down version of the "main" activity.

Of course you can have as many activities as you like with different set of desktop configurations for each. The background is also saved/restored.

Currently the autobuilder is down so you'll have to get it from here. Just save the script in your home directory and run:
You'll need to have bash installed for the script to work. It is just a shell script so it will be easy to review if you like.

I've tested it on my N900 and on the SDK and seems to work without any problems at all.

Typical use cases:

• Have a "car" activity with very few buttons to make it easier to call from the car.
• Have an "empty" or "clean" activity to use it when you want to conserve battery.
• Have a "games" activity to include links of games and a proper background.
• Have a "work" activity without personal things on the desktop (like the calendar).
• Have a "phonebook" activity with contacts on the desktop
• ... and many more

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

this is a cool app...just something I am looking for...I would like to be able to swap my widgets and homescreen but hate to...much thanks for this...maybe we can soon have a gui and put the option in the menu with all the other settings for easy retrieving...or an actual widget on your homescreen to allow fast switching...nice app....

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

Hey, great idea.

Just curious. If someone has set more than 4 desktops or less than 4, does the script still work?

See e.g.
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...144#post567144

IIRC you can modify your desktop count up to 9. Haven't tried myself yet though as I have no need for that.

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

I believe yes. Haven't tested that but it dumps and restores the whole related tree of gconf so it should work.

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

Awesome app. Maybe this will go very well with DCE wideget. (ie. create buttons for each different profile)
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=39177

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

great app! will try this out a.s.a.p. :)

could be a problem when booting the device as all DCE-widgets get executed when starting up.

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

This looks very cool. Could be used in conjunction with alarmed to do timed switching. ie at 8am switch to work profile (and switch tweakr profiles for sounds), then at 5pm switch back to personal profiles.

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

great script dude... just a question... I get a "permission denied" message when I try "./activity help" even if I do it under root... what am i doing wrong?

[Edit] Ok... I'll answer myself... I had tu put read and write permissions and execute the command under root. Works great man... now i'm going to set up desktop shortcuts to switch between desktops easily... THANXXX[Edit]

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

You don't need root permissions to do this. In fact, I strongly recommend NOT to run this as root. You only need to put this in your home directory and give it execute permission (chmod +x activity).

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

You're right... much better as user... done it... now i have 2 icons... one in the main profile which sets to car profile... and another in main profile that sets to car profile... work perfect... GREAT!!!

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

:confused: Sounds to me like being two times the same?
Another question: did you add .desktop files or realize it via DCE?

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

It's not the same... I made 2 icons (.desktop file)... one with the command ./activity change car... and the other with the command ./activity change main...

So when I'm in main i change to car... and when i'm in car... i change to main...

What is DCE?

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

hehe... i've read my previous post again... you're right... i write twice the same... i meant...

one in the main profile which sets to car profile... and another in car profile that sets to main profile

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

Desktop Command Execution Widget; it was mentioned before but it has disadvantage that it gets executed at least at every bootup. Not so good for switching profiles or desktops automatically. :rolleyes:

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

sounds great, I'll try it when I have time!

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

There's just one problem... it works great just if the profiles have the same number of desktops...so... if you for example have one profile with 4 desktops and another with just one desktop, when you switch from the first one to the second and back to the first... all your widgets will be put together in one desktop leaving the other three blank.

Is there a way to solve that? Maybe making the bash script to set the number of desktops before setting the widgets? I'm not an expert at this so... i don't know if it is possible to fix this.

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

needs a GUI, but GREAT idea

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

when i type activity store main i get -
Saving to: main
Saving ......cp: cannot stat '/root/.config/hildon-desktop/home.plugins': No such file or directory.

question is does this matter or can i just ignore this error

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

i really want this app but i dont have a clue how to deal with scripts .... would love a car profile that has media player maps contacts etc only on one screen

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

Shouldn't it be run as user and not as root?

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

I'd love to have a UI for this app! Just if I knew how :(

Thanks V13, very nice idea!

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

Yes. All settings are stored under user's directory.

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

There is one on the way. Don't try to use the version of extras-devel yet. I'll inform you when it will be usable.

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

so true :) thanks

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

Here it is: Version 0.5 of actman seems to work quite well and includes a status-menu gui for managing activities. Please use it, abuse it and report problems.

You can get actman from the nearest extras-testing repository, assuming that you understand the implications of using software from extras-testing.

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

Hiya great app but it caused a problem with Browser bookmarks on the desktop, i had 6 bookmarks on the original desktop ,i created a new 'desktop' and deleted 4 of the bookmarks'.
When i reverted back to the original desktop, all the original 6 bookmarks where still there as expected, but 3 of them (3 of the 4 i deleted on the new desktop) had green chervons icons instead of the thumbnail image and where unclickable.
Also the status area was unclickable until after a reboot.
hope that makes sense
This is using Actman v0.5

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

actman v0.7.2-1 is now available in extras-testing.

Changes include:

• Icons
• Proper saving of thumbnails.
• Better restoring in case of different desktop numbers.
• Added missing dependencies.
• Asynchronous running in order to provide feedback.

You're all invited it to use it and don't forget to give it a thumbs up/down.

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

actman v0.7.4-1 is now available in extras-testing.

There are some minor changes from 0.7.2: Better installation and window title.

Attached are some screenshots.

Don't forget to vote.

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

now works perfect!!! even with diferent number of desktops per activity... and u made a GUI... thank u very much... it's great to see things really usefull here.

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

Don't forget to vote :-)

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

Having similar problem here. After copying my desktop, deleting four of six bookmarks on the new desktop and switching back to original desktop, all these four bookmarks have lost their graphic and title. Tapping on them results in a short kind of flicker but no browser gets opened. In the browser the bookmarks are still correctly stored.
Any idea how to solve this?

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

Which version are you using?

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

The latest one from -testing: 0.7.4-1
Also never used it before it had the GUI in the taskbar.

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

Were the other activities created with an older version? If you create a new activity with this version, does it happen too?

EDIT: Found the problem. New version is on the way.

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

I believe I got it.

Summary: This bug was not happening in SDK and I only had one bookmark on my desktop, which was not triggering it.

v0.8.0 seems to be OK. I tested it with 6 bookmarks and the test succeeded (it failed with 0.7.4)

So here it is. Get it from extras-testing and don't forget to vote both if it is working or not (as yes/no respectively).

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

v0.8 works perfectly! Switching activities doesn't destroy bookmarks anymore. sadly foreca widget seems to not cache it's data so after switching activity the widget is empty again until the device goes online again. Or is this also triggered by actman?

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

I have just started using this app and I totally loved it! I even wanted to vote for it in the link given by v13 but could not as I may not be qualified enough :) This is the comment I put in the testing section (If it's not appropriate, please let me know and I'll remove it if I can) -

I'm not an expert in apps; and I'm also not sure if it is appropriate for me to put a comment in this section. For someone like me who lacks the technical knowledge, the app works really well. I don't have to keep everything on the desktops now and can let others use it too without worrying that they will have 'easy' access to my personal info. That said, with the GUI in place, it's a very convenient application to use. Since I do not use any desktop widget (to conserve battery), I did not face the issue of non system widgets not showing up.

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

i love this....

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

aha ... just got my phone back from repair with carphone warehouse and been gagging to install this app ... searched the repo's ... couldnt find actman, refreshed ... still not there.
aha found it ... its called desktop activity manager .... so to all those who cant find it its called DESKTOP ACTIVITY MANAGER

cheers v13

Re: [Announce] Actman activity manager
 

"OH WOW"
This is excellent ... i now have a car mode which has just 2 desktops, 1 with all the essential items i may need in the car such as maps, media player, media player widgit, phonebook, conversations widgit and 6 contacts i call most often then another with a few shortcuts i might use when in my car such as calculator, browser, calender widget.

Brilliant this is an app that could literally save my life as at the moment i have to swipe through 4 desktops to get to the thing i want ... now everything i use in the car is on one desktop ... thanks again V13