The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a beacon

I just stumbled upon a statement on the website of the FSF (fsf.org) about the appointment of three new board members of the organisation. I am impressed. The FSF has been on my radar for many years, as I have followed developments in the Free Software world, and used Free Software for my own work. I have been a devotée of free software for over 40 years, as a user. These people at the FSF, as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and GNU: what's not to like? Who is more committed to the concept of free software, free information. freedom from repressive copyrights and patents? Fantastic! The FSF!

VIPSDISP: A quick viewer for jp2 files and for large files in general.

 https://forum.image.sc/t/new-version-of-vipsdisp-a-free-open-source-linux-image-viewer-for-very-large-images/70979

 

Seemed to work fine.  On Manjaro GNU/Linux I had to install a library: openslide.  After doing this, this program started fine.  

 

  

Some grousing: I've been experiencing loss of files and directories

I started working on a directory heavily, to aggregate and organize projects into folders, containing various files, mainly PDFs, images, and random other files, including drafts and "sweeps" related to some of the projects. I have some duplicates, for some of the projects; but with all of the work I've put in over the past few weeks, many files have been lost forever. It is my intention to document here any information relevant to this and other recent glitches or losses of data. I am convinced that MacOS is a scourge. I dropped around 1500.00 on a MacBook Pro, M2, 14", earlier this year. I have long avoided Macs; it was my hoep that I would be able to gain some advantages to my work. But I have lost,in aggregate, probably jmore than I have gained. Problems begin to crop up in regard to copying or syncing directory trees between the mac and the Linux box. - A suite of unresolved problems around the case-insensitive file system of the MacOS. - Dropbox sync issues. This has become a serious problem. I think either I have to completely quit MacOS or figure out a way to convert my data all to a filesystem that is case-sensitive, on the Mac. A plethora of small, hidden files now pollute my directories. Since I have lost files on the Linux Desktop, one obvious way to re-connect with many, or some, of those files has been to tar up an entire directory and copy it via ssh to my desktop. Thi does work, but this is where I introduced a massive number of these invisible files onto the GNU/Linux system. Apple's amazing Finder application is one of the culprits, if not the main one. These tiny files, according to one source in an online forum in which a problem, similar to mine, was discussed stated that these files cause directories to be unseen on other operating systems, possibly Windows. I have no way, yet, of finding out whether this has happened to my system; and, anyway, I have reconstructed some of the folders (directories) on my Linux desktop, which means I have commited mayhem on the filesystem as it existed previous to the apparent deletion of important directories. I have entertained the possibility that my incompetence has conspired with a new console based file manager, yazi, that i have come to depend on as I sorted---and contiue to sort---files into topical higher level folders/directories. Fumble fingers. GUI file managers like nautilus have given me fits in the past. Getting better.

Yazi: a swiss-army utility, for multiple platforms

 I have been using Manjaro for years, now.  Every so often I contemplate installing Arch, which I like, which is not polluted by Manjaro-specific tweaks; but (1) in spite of assurances, it is problematic to install; and (2) none of the other Arch-based distributions have worked well for me.  

Today I want to mention and recommend Yazi, a text/terminal-based "file manager," similar to ranger and a few clones of ranger.  Yazi is, in most respects, the best of the breed.  Yazi, with a few tweaks and some steep uphill learning, made short work of  culling some 150GB of images.  No other tool has been as efficient.   For me.

The home page for Yazi may be found here.

Configuration

Here is where I mention the steep learning curve.  The usage of this tool was not immediately apparent to me.  This is probably on me; eventually, I found the keybindings in the Quick Start page on Yazi's home page.  Not all of the key strokes were either easily understood, or found.  On my MacBook, the color of my terminal interfered with those of Yazi, so I had to read further, and learn to install a theme; the concept and terminology of themes in Yazi were not intuitive.  For me.  Once I figured out how, it was possible to install a theme in the configuration file; various config files are located at ~/.config/yazi.  

 Previewing images

I was able to view images as soon as I had installed yazi on both the macbook and my linux desktop.  But the image was a little small.  I found a couple of things that helped: I learned I could edit the configuration file that determined the maximum image width; after that, the system ran a triffle slower, but I could see the images.  A plugin called "max-preview" enabled expanding the preview even further, in some cases.  I won't explain.  More information is available on the image-preview page of Yazi's home page.

Previewing works nicely on the kitty terminal emulator.  I like kitty, because, out of the box, it is fast, and has a stark black background and intense coloration of text. 

 Bookmarks

Ranger allows definition of keybindings in a more intuitive way (to me) that enabled me to define keystrokes to jump to certain folders/directories that I used frequently.  I just learned to three bookmarking plugins for Yazi that enable something similar, and at least good enough.  bookmarks-persistent, and bookmarks. 

More information on plugins can be found here.

After all that

 A rabbit hole was involved.  But along the way I learned about several other tools that, amazingly, integrate seamlessly (sort of) with Yazi: fzf, zoxide, ripgrep, fd and others.  This is a remarkably polished tool, for a package that has been undergoing rapid and apparently continuous development.  

I recommend installing the development version, which is the default version of yazi in the Arch ecosystem's AUR repository.  This enables some of the more advanced tools.

Fortunately , ranger, a tool I have used for years to browse and sort files and directories, does not work anymore---at least easily---for previewing images and PDFs.  In desperation I reached out to Mr. Google, and discovered a few others.  Nnn is unworkable.  I has never worked out of the box, which was a show stopper for me.  Some others exist.  Yazi appeared out of the mists, and answered my call....  

For now, links on the website of Yazi---a site that is well laid out---point to more information about plugins and other vagaries.