Worker - An Introduction

Some Background

Unfortunately the documentation on Ralf Hoffmann's site (he is the creator of Worker, amongst other app's), is far from complete. You are basically left to work much of it out for yourself without having your hand held.

Worker is an extremely capable file manager, that I believe was inspired by Jonathan Potter's brilliant Amiga file manager - Directory Opus 4.**. In many ways Worker exceed the capabilities of DOpus, though it doesn't internally multitask to quite the same extent that DOpus did.

Ralf has been developing Worker for many years now. You really only get an introduction to its power on this page: [1]

What can this Filemanager called Worker do?

Worker is incredibly versatile, having buttons that you can configure to run commands that are built into Worker; run external applications that you have set up to work on one or multiple files that you have selected in one of Worker's file list display; you can use Worker to call applications that don't have anything to do with the files that are showing in Worker's file list displays; you can run short or complex scripts that you or others have created; combine any number of commands to execute in sequence, & I'm sure the list goes on.

Custom tasks, ranging from the very simple to the extremely complex all fall within the capacity of Worker, they are usually handled with ease.

Worker is usually installed with a pretty bare bones button setup. It is then up to the user to make Worker the way that they want Worker to be. This is done by using the Worker Configuration panel. Which is found by hitting the C - Configuration in the top left of the Worker window, it is right next to the A - About.

Select your Colours, Fonts, Paths, Bookmark paths

A good number of screenshots of Worker can be found here: [2]

As informative as the screenshots shown at the above link are, they don't show you what can be done colour wise with Worker. Using various colours to suit your eyes/taste & to make Worker more easily used & more practical, as you can use certain colours to good effect (especially where there is danger, like with the DELETE , Reboot , Shutdown & any buttons that you have set up to use Sudo or root privileges one way or another.

When you set Worker up, you can select the font & font size that you would like to use, as well as choose how many colours, what the colours of the different parts of Worker will be. You can also setup custom Path buttons (the Path bank of buttons is the left hand column in the main button bank) you can have as many of these as you want, you right mouse click to see the next bank of buttons.

More on paths

Whilst we are on the Path subject, I'll mention that you can also use bookmarks to bounce between oft used locations (paths) in your system. The tabs go across the top of each file list window, you move to a list of files in a different part of your system by hitting the tab that will show that list.

Custom Button Configuration

You also can set up all of the buttons (choose how many rows of them & how many banks as well, I have a second bank behind the main bank of 42 buttons, which has buttons for many different types of file compression, plus some for audio file type ripping & conversion) to do what you want. You cycle to the next main button bank by hitting the bottom bar in the Worker window - it holds the date/time, free RAM, swap - it is configurable too.

I use a number of buttons that came as part of my initial Worker install, though most of the buttons in my config have been made by me. When you see a button in a screenshot that has a "dog eared" top right corner, that means that if you use your right mouse button (RMB), you will have access to another button option that is hiding underneath. (You could for example have the top button saying Edit & the RMB accessed button underneath saying Edit New for your text files.)

Use external applications on files

Even though Worker comes with inbuilt text & image viewing abilities, I prefer to set Worker up to use more powerful external programs. So for viewing images, I use Geegie. By associating Geegie with the various types of images available (using the Worker Configuration GUI), when I double click on an image file in the Worker display, Geegie displays it for me (you could set different image types to be opened by different image viewing or editing programs if you had the need).

I can then scroll through all of the images in that directory with my mouse wheel, or tell Geegie to go full screen & play a slide show of the images, or do whatever else Geegie will allow me to do with any of the images in that directory.

If I RMB click on the F3 - Show Pics button (yes you can easily set up function keys too), instead of calling Geegie, I see Edit Pics (the RMB buttons are all in different colours than the top LMB accessed buttons) & if I have an image file highlighted in Worker, then Pinta (my choice, you can use whatever image editor you wanted to) will open up with the highlighted file ready for me to edit.

This can be done for any type of file on your system that you have a program that you want to use to edit/view it. The file type list included in the Worker Configuration GUI is huge, plus you can add custom file types quite easily.

For example, I use Evince for .pdf files, Firefox for .html files, Leafpad for .txt & unknown files, I have sudo Leafpad buttons for both creating New files & of course to work on existing files. So I can select a config file in say the /etc & then use the Worker sudo Leafpad button on it, which will cause Worker to throw up a terminal window where I have to input my sudo password, then the config file from /etc will be available for me to edit & then save the changes.

You can of course call programs from the buttons that have nothing to do with any of the files in your Worker display. You can run scripts, simple or complex from a button, as normal user or with root privileges. It is up to your imagination &/or needs, to do what you want to do with Worker.

Worker is built for those that like to customise

This is a part of what I really love about Worker. You can make Worker do what you want it to do & not have to put up with having to do things the way someone else wants you to do it.

This is all fine & good, unless you are someone who loves working with windows & icons. Under those circumstances you would find Worker to be just exactly what you don't want (you may even think that Worker is prehistoric).

For me Worker is perfect. After all these years of using Worker, I'm still finding things that I can do with Worker to make it suit me even better (that's apart from the changes I may make from time to time with different programs that I call from the buttons).

Back up your ~/.worker/config & use it elsewhere

You can save your custom ~/.worker/config file (it is a REALLY good idea to keep a backup of this file) you can transfer it to other installations of Linux (it can run on OS/X too, but it is messy to get it functioning there). You can edit the ~/.worker/config file directly with a text editor, which can be useful sometimes.

Edit the ~/.worker/config file directly

I'll give an example: I use a 24" 1920x1200 res' display on my main machine. The fonts that I use in Worker range in size from 18 to 24 points. If I transfer my ~/.worker/config file to another system that is using a smaller lower res' monitor, when I then run Worker with my transferred custom config on that machine, the display will be very wrong making Worker pretty unusable. I won't be able to use the Worker Configuration GUI to modify the font size, as the large fonts have made it impossible to do so (can't see/access all the necessary parts of the Worker Configuration GUI).

So I just go in to the ~/.worker/config file with a text editor, scroll down to the font section & change the sizes. Save it, restart Worker, go into the Worker Configuration GUI (which I can now use) & then adjust/fine tune the config to suit the new machine.

Making Worker work how you want it to

The above will hopefully give you more of an idea about how Worker functions, you have to make Worker your own, this doesn't happen quickly, but it does get easier once you have understood the basics. You really have to get into the Worker Configuration GUI & have a look around to start to get familiar with it.

For setting up buttons, look at how other buttons are setup, you will start to see that there are certain options that are native to Worker (like the {f} in the following example) that are commonly used when you want to open a file that you have highlighted in the Worker display. The following example (is much clearer & simpler than it looks here, when you are actually looking at it in Worker running on your own system):

Using an external Text Editor on an existing file

For the button that I use to edit existing text, I use the following command (bold italic) accessed this way:

Worker Configuration > Button Configuration > F4 Leafpad > own command > Configure > program: > leafpad {f}

For the button that I use to create a new text file, I use the following command (bold italic) accessed this way:

Worker Configuration > Button Configuration > F4 Leafpad > own command > Configure > program: > leafpad {Rs{Enter Filename:}{}}

Options, Options...

There are currently 47 Options that can be seen when you hit the O at the end of the program: field, where you enter in your own command as seen in the above two examples, it is right before leafpad .

Of those 47 Options, I have the need to use very few of them. When you look at what the options can do, you will see that you can get very sophisticated. Me, I only have comparatively simple requirements of Worker.

Inbuilt Commands

I guess I should also mention that Worker currently also has 61 commands built into it. They are listed when you wish to create a new button & choose the Add Command button (& elsewhere). The first in this list of 61 commands is own command , which is the one I use most often because I'm a power tripper. (wink)

Sequencing Commands

You can also have more than one command listed in sequence. Meaning that when setting up a button to do what you want, after the creation of a command, instead of OK'ing out of that window, you add another command, & if needed you keep doing this.

I've only had a need to do this when I had setup a script that turned dcompmgr on, then ran VLC & the movie that I'd selected in Worker (before hitting this button). The movie would finish & then there was another command that killed dcompmgr. I set this up for both VLC & smplayer.

Summary

The Worker filemanager is certainly not one that everyone would want to set up & use. Though for those of us that it does suit, the more we use it, the more Worker just keeps on becoming more & more the way we like it. We can change the applications that we call from inside of Worker to work on whatever kind of files in whichever way. Worker doesn't mind, that is what it is made for (well some of what it is made for).

When foundational changes are made to GNU/Linux, the creator of Worker updates Worker (when required) so that Worker will continue to function at least as well as it did before such changes came down to us from the uptream GNU/Linux masters.