Wbar: a fancy launchbar (using Imlib2)

Message

Dougal · #1 Post by **Dougal** » Wed 11 Jul 2007, 20:43

A while ago some people were asking about a good launch-bar to use with Enlightenment...

At some stage I discovered Wbar: pretty fancy, light and (obviously) not part of the g/K mafia.

Note that I didn't make a dotpet out of it, since you will need to set up the config file (/root/dot.wbar by default).

I've included Imlib2 with it.

You should also run "wbar --help" to see the various ways of running it -- unfortunately a lot of the options have to be supplied when launching it (rather than being set in the config file).
You will need to run it with "-above-desk", so it'll be seen over the Rox pinboard.

Here are two images: one when it's left alone, the other with the cursor over it (all the movement and resizing are controllable).

Lobster · #2 Post by **Lobster** » Thu 12 Jul 2007, 04:51

Have placed a link here, which also details the unusual Enlightenment window manager and running it on Puppy
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/EnlightenmentWM

tahaselim · #3 Post by **tahaselim** » Thu 12 Jul 2007, 08:02

Dougal

after installing Enlightment dotpup, am I good to go with your taskbar?

or should I do lots o' configurations and launching stuff?

Taha Selim

HairyWill · #4 Post by **HairyWill** » Thu 12 Jul 2007, 08:59

Dougal,
very shiny, nice toy

tahaselim
You don't need enlightenment to use this it, is just similar to the launchbar (?) used in enlightenment.
It is running quite happily for me in jwm.

tahaselim · #5 Post by **tahaselim** » Thu 12 Jul 2007, 09:06

HairyWill wrote:tahaselim
You don't need enlightenment to use this it, is just similar to the launchbar (?) used in enlightenment.
It is running quite happily for me in jwm.

so how do I configure JWM to use it? should I change .jwmrc-taskbar or something?

Taha Selim

HairyWill · #6 Post by **HairyWill** » Thu 12 Jul 2007, 11:16

To get the tray out of the way you can edit .jwmrc-tray and set the tray to autohide=true or you could set the y coordinate to 0 to move it to the top of the screen.

To get it to start on boot is not completely straightforward. It uses fake transparency by recording a picture of what is underneath it when it starts and if it starts before jwm has completed initialising its window ends up with a titlebar and all the other decoration.
I got success by starting it in .xinitrc using

Code: Select all

sleep 3 ; wbar -above-desk &

before the line

Code: Select all

#exec $CURRENTWM

I also made it work by putting a swallow entry in my .jwmrc-tray.

I've tried to put a group declaration .jwmrc to stop it appearing in the tasklist.

Code: Select all

<Group>
        <Name>wbar*</Name>
        <Option>nolist</Option>
</Group>

This doesn't work for me, it may be my misunderstanding of how the declaration should be made or it may be a problem with my JWM version 2.01 or it might be wbar itself.

tahaselim · #7 Post by **tahaselim** » Thu 12 Jul 2007, 11:40

Which means , in fact we have two trays on the screen JWM taskbar and Wbar.

I got how I can configure it to start except for the Swallow entry part.

I also made it work by putting a swallow entry in my .jwmrc-tray.

Taha Selim

Dougal · #8 Post by **Dougal** » Thu 12 Jul 2007, 11:49

HairyWill wrote:To get the tray out of the way you can edit .jwmrc-tray and set the tray to autohide=true or you could set the y coordinate to 0 to move it to the top of the screen.

There's also the option of running wbar at the top (or one of the sides). Example:

Code: Select all

sleep 3 ; wbar -above-desk -pos top &

Taha: it's best to look at the README file that's included in the package and also at the output of "wbar --help", to see all the available options and how to use them.

tahaselim · #9 Post by **tahaselim** » Thu 12 Jul 2007, 11:55

Dougal wrote:
Taha: it's best to look at the README file that's included in the package and also at the output of "wbar --help", to see all the available options and how to use them.

thanks Dougal

Maybe starting wbar as a quick launch tray would be better.

Taha Selim

dasch · #10 Post by **dasch** » Fri 13 Jul 2007, 14:12

just wondering on the questions regarding a launchbar for enlightentment. what about engage?

dreamlinux looks great having combined engage with xfce.

Rhino · #11 Post by **Rhino** » Fri 13 Jul 2007, 14:42

I must say that I am very impressed with wbar. It appears to be fairly simple to configure, stable and works well. To get it to work properly on startup with jwm I used swallow in the tray to get it to render properly.

Just add the following code to /root/.jwmrc-tray between xload and minixcal.

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<Swallow name="wbar">
	wbar -pos top &
</Swallow>

You can also edit the icons to use the default Puppy icons and clear away a lot of the desktop clutter by editing dot.wbar!

Rhino

HairyWill · #12 Post by **HairyWill** » Fri 13 Jul 2007, 22:07

I wrote a small script that parses your PuppyPin file and creates a wbar config file based on your desktop icons. You can then edit PuppyPin and remove the icons from your desktop.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
echo "# The Bar && Font
i: /usr/share/wbar/wbar.icons/osxbarback.png
t: /usr/share/wbar/wbar.icons/VeraBd/9
c:
" > /root/.wbar
sed  '/label/!d ; s/\(\(.*\)label="\)\(.*\)">\(.*\)<\/icon>/\3\n\4\n/g' /root/Choices/ROX-Filer/PuppyPin > /tmp/wbar
while read LABEL
do
	read COMMAND
	ICON=`grep -A1 -B1 "$COMMAND" /root/Choices/ROX-Filer/globicons | sed '/<icon>/!d ; s/<icon>\(.*\)<\/icon>/\1/'`
	if [ -f "$ICON" ] && [ `which $COMMAND` ]; then
		echo i:"$ICON" >> /root/.wbar
		echo c:"$COMMAND" >> /root/.wbar
		echo t:"$LABEL" >> /root/.wbar
		echo  >> /root/.wbar
	fi
	read LABEL
done < /tmp/wbar

No guarantees its not buggy. If it can't find an icon or the executable then it doesn't create an entry, it doesn't do folders. If it generates more icons than can fit across your screen rox and jwm start misbehaving. I can get 25 icons on my 1024 width screen.

Has anyone got jwm not to show an entry in the tasklist for it.

Dougal · #13 Post by **Dougal** » Fri 13 Jul 2007, 23:08

dasch wrote:just wondering on the questions regarding a launchbar for enlightentment. what about engage?

When I tried Engage (cvs ~ last November) it had some functionality problems.

It also depends on the Enlightenment core libraries, which means a whole bunch of dependencies.

I don't see the point in using Engage with XFCE -- you've got the XFCE panel, which is much better.

I find E17 quite unusable in general -- they've kinf of lost the plot and gone too far in the eye-candy direction (unlike E16).
They ruined the iconbox!

Rhino · #14 Post by **Rhino** » Fri 13 Jul 2007, 23:17

Has anyone got jwm not to show an entry in the tasklist for it.

Do you mean just down in the taskbar while it is running? If so, yes. If that is not what you mean, pardon my inability to grasp simple concepts

Here is a my current desktop with it running.

I got that to work using the swallow command in the .jwmrc-tray as indicated above.

Nice job with the pinboard parsing script...I will try that out!

Rhino

HairyWill · #15 Post by **HairyWill** » Sat 14 Jul 2007, 07:16

Thats interesting Rhino, I've tried using swallow but it is still on the tasklist. It may be because I am using jwm 2.01 I presume you are using the stock 1.8. I also notice that you haven't put in the -above-desk switch but it is still being shown above the pinboard.

dasch · #16 Post by **dasch** » Sat 14 Jul 2007, 07:58

@ dougal
guessed as much. makes the find you made all the more important and relevant now. with the rising popularity of dreamlinux and it's engage bar it does lead to people asking whether puppy does or have something suitable like that? and of course the answer is yes !

OT
@rhino
you know i like your art and taste in visuals quite a fair bit. Hope you don't mind. Have linked your desktop pic in the puppy logo thread over here...
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 1&start=75

willhunt · #17 Post by **willhunt** » Sat 14 Jul 2007, 09:10

when I run it with swallow evertime I restart jwm a new copy of wbar start
too not a good thing I think I noticed blinky and volume app never change d colors does anyone know how?

HairyWill · #18 Post by **HairyWill** » Sat 14 Jul 2007, 10:32

willhunt try changing the swallow entry to
killall wbar ; wbar ........

Rhino · #19 Post by **Rhino** » Sat 14 Jul 2007, 13:56

I am using a version of Puppy 2.16 unleashed, so there may be an improvement in JWM somewhere in there that allows swallow to work better, I'm not really sure though.

Getting Blinky to change color is a little tougher since it is an application embedded in the tray. The best I can give you is to edit the .jwmrc-tray file to change the colors of the xload indicator from red to some other color. You can also change its backgroundcolor. I think you may be able to edit the volume background as well in the same file.

I tried the -above desk switch but I kept having trouble with it rendering the faux transparency. After taking it off, it seems to work correctly. However this way, it does tend to get buried under open windows.

@Dasch
I take no credit for artistic flare

The wallpaper is from Pizzasgood but I did design the JWM theme. It is called jwm-vu and is buried deep somewhere here on the forum. Thanks for the link to the other thread!

willhunt · #20 Post by **willhunt** » Sat 14 Jul 2007, 19:16

I found it the way to change the color of the swallow apps
background you must edit the file /root/.jwm/jwmrc-personal

<TrayStyle>
<Font>DejaVu Sans 12</Font>
<Background>#0a99f9</Background>
<Foreground>yellow</Foreground>
</TrayStyle>

<Swallow name="blinky">
blinkydelayed -bg blue
</Swallow>
<Swallow name="wbar" >
killall wbar;wbar -above-desk -pos top
</Swallow>
<Swallow name="mini-volume.tcl">
mini-volume.tcl -bg #0a99f9 -mixer pvolume-mixer.tcl
</Swallow>

<Swallow name="freememapplet" width="48">

freememapplet
</Swallow>
<Swallow name="xload" width="32">
xload -nolabel -bg "#0a99f9" -fg red -hl white
</Swallow>
it seems blinky does not like the numbers it wants the color name I think the numbers did not work but the color name did

and the bar seems not to stay on top of other windows

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Wbar: a fancy launchbar (using Imlib2)

Wbar: a fancy launchbar (using Imlib2)