234 lines
11 KiB
HTML
Executable File
234 lines
11 KiB
HTML
Executable File
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
|
|
<HTML>
|
|
<HEAD>
|
|
<TITLE> tkgoodstuff Preferences Manager</TITLE>
|
|
<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Mozilla/3.01Gold (X11; I; Linux 2.0.29 i586) [Netscape]">
|
|
</HEAD>
|
|
<BODY TEXT="#000000" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#800080" ALINK="#FF0000">
|
|
|
|
<H1>Configuring TkGoodStuff with the Preferences Manager</H1>
|
|
|
|
<P>The preferences manager lets you view and set all preferences and configuration
|
|
parameters for tkgoodstuff. You enter it from the tkgoodstuff menu (which,
|
|
by default, is available by clicking on the clock and also within a menu
|
|
on the Menu client button).</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>In addition to selecting and arranging the elements of your panels,
|
|
you can adjust fonts, colors, icons, "tiled" backgounds, the
|
|
default screen-edge or orientation, and a zillion other things, including
|
|
the setup for each client (e.g., the Menu client's menu, the Biff client's
|
|
mailboxes, etc.).</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>Changes do not take effect until they are saved and tkgoodstuff is restarted.
|
|
All configuration information is saved to the configuration file (by default,
|
|
".tkgrc" in the user's home directory---which you can edit
|
|
by hand if things go so wrong that the preferences manager won't
|
|
work). </P>
|
|
|
|
<P><A NAME="variables"></A></P>
|
|
|
|
<H2>Setting Preferences </H2>
|
|
|
|
<P>It should be fairly obvious how to set various preferences: you find
|
|
them through the notebook pages and menus in the preference manager and
|
|
set them, e.g., by clicking on an indicator or by entering text.</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>You might want to set a preference based on an environment variable.
|
|
You can do this by using "$env" as follows. To set a certain
|
|
preference to a value based on the user's home directory, you can enter
|
|
this: </P>
|
|
|
|
<PRE>$env(HOME)/whatever
|
|
</PRE>
|
|
|
|
<P><A NAME="client"></A></P>
|
|
|
|
<H2>Including and Configuring a Client </H2>
|
|
|
|
<P>To include a client (for example, Clock), you enter the preferences
|
|
manager and use mouse button 3 at the desired point in the configuration
|
|
(which is presented as a hierarchical list) to choose "Insert",
|
|
at which point you enter the name of the client.</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>You configure a client in the preferences manager (double click on its
|
|
entry in the configuration).</P>
|
|
|
|
<P><A NAME="addbutton"></A></P>
|
|
|
|
<H2>Adding a Button</H2>
|
|
|
|
<P>You can easily add a button to display an icon and/or a bit of text,
|
|
which runs a command when pressed. You need to decide:</P>
|
|
|
|
<UL>
|
|
<LI>If you want an icon on your button, then the icon filename. <B>The
|
|
file can contain an image of any of several formats (see <A HREF="icons.html">Icons
|
|
</A>for more).</B> </LI>
|
|
|
|
<LI>If you want a bit of text on the button (either under the icon or by
|
|
itself), then the text string (a "\n" in the string makes a line
|
|
break for multi-line text). E.g., "Telnet to/nwork". </LI>
|
|
|
|
<LI>The (unix) command to run. E.g.: </LI>
|
|
|
|
<PRE> xdir "xless /var/adm/syslog"
|
|
rxvt -T Syslog -sl 400 -e {"tail -400 -f /var/adm/syslog"}
|
|
rxvt -T Syslog -sl 400 -e \"tail -400 -f /var/adm/syslog\" </PRE>
|
|
|
|
<P>(The last two are equivalent.)</P>
|
|
</UL>
|
|
|
|
<P>You add the button in the Prefernces manager by choosing "Insert"
|
|
with mouse button 3 at the desired place in your configuration, and entering
|
|
the desired information. Double-click on the Button's entry in the configuration
|
|
to configure it. </P>
|
|
|
|
<P>Notes: </P>
|
|
|
|
<UL>
|
|
<LI>The expression "@selection@" in a unix or tcl command will
|
|
be replaced by the current X selection. </LI>
|
|
|
|
<LI>By default, a unix command button stays down and inoperative after
|
|
you press it until the launched unix command terminates. This is so you
|
|
can see that you're already running that command. You can configure the
|
|
button to pop back up after launching the command, ready to launch the
|
|
command again. </LI>
|
|
|
|
<LI>When you press an already-depressed unix command button, <B>if</B>
|
|
you are running tkgoodstuff as an fvwm module, by default you move to the
|
|
next window that is named by the name of the unix command of the button.
|
|
But you can configure the button to look for an alternative window name
|
|
(for instance, the program tkman names its window "TkMan", netscape
|
|
"Netscape" and so on). </LI>
|
|
</UL>
|
|
|
|
<P><A NAME="addpanelbutton"></A></P>
|
|
|
|
<H2>PanelButtons</H2>
|
|
|
|
<P>A PanelButton is like a standard tkgoodstuff button, except that what
|
|
it does is to produce an additional tkgoodstuff panel adjacent to the panel
|
|
containing the PanelButton (this allows you to group a of buttons together
|
|
and have them appear when you press a single button in your main panel).
|
|
To add such a button use the "Insert" mouse-3 menu item, and
|
|
double-click to configure. </P>
|
|
|
|
<P>See below on how to create Panels. <A NAME="putpanel"></A></P>
|
|
|
|
<H2>PutPanel</H2>
|
|
|
|
<P>Instead of having a Panel produced by a PanelButton, you might want
|
|
an additional Panel to be placed on the screen at startup. To do this,
|
|
(as always) use the "Insert" mouse-3 menu item, and double-click
|
|
to configure. </P>
|
|
|
|
<P>See below for how to create Panels. <A NAME="addlabelbox"></A></P>
|
|
|
|
<H2>Adding a Label Box </H2>
|
|
|
|
<P>To add a box containing a bit of text (which differs from a button in
|
|
look, in color, and in that it doesn't run any command), use the good old
|
|
"Insert" trick. <A NAME="swallow"></A></P>
|
|
|
|
<H2>Swallowing an Application </H2>
|
|
|
|
<P>If you want to include a utility that tkgoodstuff doesn't provide, you
|
|
can incorporate it in your tkgoodstuff panel as a "Swallow" item.
|
|
Use the preferences manager to do this. </P>
|
|
|
|
<P>WARNING: this can be tricky. Some hints: </P>
|
|
|
|
<UL>
|
|
<LI>Before starting, be sure you know the windowname of the window that
|
|
you want to swallow. By default we look for the name of the application,
|
|
but many applications produce windows with different names. If you don't
|
|
specify the correct name, tkgoodstuff will wait forever for the window
|
|
to show up. </LI>
|
|
|
|
<LI>It sometimes helps to specify in the application command line a geometry
|
|
for the application that is larger than the window you want to produce.
|
|
</LI>
|
|
|
|
<LI>If the application has a set size, you can find out what it is with
|
|
fvwm's Identify module (if you use fvwm). </LI>
|
|
|
|
<LI>In your application command line, you can specify the tkg background
|
|
color (for your application to use) as <B>\$background</B> (same for foreground
|
|
and some other resources). Also, use <B>\$width</B> to specify the Swallow
|
|
window width (same for height). </LI>
|
|
|
|
<LI>If you are running tkgoodstuff as an fvwm module, you can swallow other
|
|
fvwm modules (like FvwmPager) simply by using the module name in place
|
|
of a unix command. </LI>
|
|
</UL>
|
|
|
|
<P><A NAME="fill"></A></P>
|
|
|
|
<H2>Filling Space </H2>
|
|
|
|
<P>If you are using screen-edge mode (for a bar covering one edge of the
|
|
screen), then by default all the buttons, clients, etc., are stacked together
|
|
in the middle of the bar. But you can indicate where the buttons, clients,
|
|
etc., are to be broken apart by the item "Fill" (which you insert
|
|
into your configuration like anything else). For example, suppose you have
|
|
screen-edge mode set to "bottom", you have four buttons in your
|
|
bar, and you include "Fill" items between the first and second,
|
|
and between the third and fourth Button items. Then, your bar will contain
|
|
the first button at the far left, the second and third buttons together
|
|
in the middle, and the fourth button at the far right. (The WindowList
|
|
client behaves like a "Fill" region; in particular, in the absence
|
|
of Fill commands, it uses all available space.) <A NAME="stacks"></A></P>
|
|
|
|
<H2>Stacks</H2>
|
|
|
|
<P>The Screen Geometry screen-edge and orientaton preferences govern the
|
|
main orientation of your panel; it may be either horizontal or vertical.
|
|
If you simply add elements (Clients, Buttons, etc.), these elements will
|
|
be stacked all in a row left-to-right (if horizontal) or top-to-bottom
|
|
(if vertical). This probably is what you want in an always-on-top desktop
|
|
button bar. However you may want to stack two or three small buttons together,
|
|
or to generate a fancier panel, with several rows or with several bundles
|
|
of related buttons and label-boxes of different sizes, as in this <A HREF="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~markcrim/tkgoodstuff/stacks.jpg">screenshot
|
|
</A>(available only on the tkgoodstuff web page; to see it otherwise, just
|
|
run "tkgoodstuff -f stacks" in the sample-rc directory). </P>
|
|
|
|
<P>A Stack is itself an item, which is placed in your panel just like a
|
|
Button. The difference is that a Stack can have items placed within it.
|
|
These items are stacked together in the orientation you choose (you can
|
|
also configure other features of a Stack). To explain the stacking commands
|
|
it is easiest just to explain how the fancy example was created. We start
|
|
horizontally (the Orientation preference is set to horizontal). We will
|
|
put together two things horizontally, both of them vertical Stacks. These
|
|
are the only items that are in the main stack itself. The first vertical
|
|
Stack starts with the Clock client and a labelbox ("Utilities").
|
|
Then we want three buttons side-by-side, so we start a new horizontal Stack.
|
|
In this Stack we insert three Buttons. This puts us back in the construction
|
|
of our first (vertical) Stack, which so far contains the Clock, the "Utilities"
|
|
label, and the Stack we have just finished. The last thing in this vertical
|
|
Stack will be another horizontal Stack, this one with a colored border
|
|
four pixels wide. Two Buttons are inserted in this bordered Stack. Now
|
|
we're done with the first main vertical Stack. </P>
|
|
|
|
<P>This puts us back in the orignal (horizontal) orientation, outside of
|
|
all Stacks. So the next item we define will go to the right of the big
|
|
vertical Stack we have just defined. This item will be an even bigger vertical
|
|
Stack, which contains a label box, a horizontal Stack (which contains the
|
|
Net Client, the Load Client, and a vertical Stack of three Buttons) and
|
|
a (gold-bordered) vertical Stack, which contains a label box and a horizontal
|
|
Stack (which contains three Buttons and a vertical Stack containing three
|
|
Buttons). </P>
|
|
|
|
<P>I hope that makes the working of the stacking apparatus clear. If not,
|
|
play around with it and you will figure it out. <A NAME="panels"></A></P>
|
|
|
|
<H2>Panels</H2>
|
|
|
|
<P>You create a Panel by "Inserting" it anywhere in your configuration.
|
|
It doesn't matter where you insert it, since it is not an item that is
|
|
placed inside the main panel, but rather is placed by a PutPanel item or
|
|
a PanelButton. Various features of the Panel can be configured. </P>
|
|
|
|
</BODY>
|
|
</HTML>
|