mdw@git.distorted.org.uk Git - xtoys/blob - README

   1 X tools, -*-text-*-
   2
   3
   4         This is just a small collection of small X-based toys.  There's
   5         nothing especially clever here, just some stuff I've found to be
   6         useful.  It's a bit of a mixed bag, really; just saves me some
   7         effort if I package them all up together.  The collection may
   8         grow in future, if I can be bothered to write any more X toys.
   9
  10         A couple of the toys require GTK.  Sorry: I like GTK and I don't
  11         want to play with Athena or Xt or anything like that again,
  12         because they're nasty.
  13
  14         The tools are described more fully in the accompanying manual
  15         pages.  There's not much to know about any of them, though.
  16
  17
  18 xgetline
  19
  20         Pops up a little window (with configurable text in it) asking
  21         the user to type in a piece of text, and then writes it to
  22         stdout.  It's useful when a shell script wants to solicit a
  23         string from the user, and particularly handy in window manager
  24         config files.  You can also turn off echo of the string being
  25         typed in, which may be useful for input of passwords, but that's
  26         not ever-so recommended.
  27
  28         The basic idea is that you say something like
  29
  30                 if name=`xgetline -p Name`; then
  31                   echo "Hello, $name, pleased to meet you!"
  32                 else
  33                   echo "You're no fun, are you?"
  34                 fi
  35
  36         and everything is lovely.
  37
  38
  39 xscsize
  40
  41         Returns the size of an X display.  The idea is that you can do
  42         something like
  43
  44                 eval `xscsize`
  45
  46         in a `.xinitrc' file and then play with XWIDTH and XHEIGHT to
  47         decide exactly where to put various windows depending on how big
  48         the screen is.  This sort of thing is quite handy if you use the
  49         same setup on lots of different systems or screens.
  50
  51
  52 xwait, xtell, xshutdown
  53
  54         The traditional thing to do at the end of a `.xinitrc' file is
  55         to wait for the window manager to exit.  This is unhelpful when
  56         the window manager doesn't like its configuration file, for
  57         example, because your entire session goes away.  The idea
  58         (filched shamelessly from SGI, actually) is to end the script
  59         with a program which hangs around until told to go away by
  60         another X client.  (I could have used any old IPC mechanism
  61         here, but it seemed silly to use something other than X.)
  62
  63         The manual pages provide the low-level detail.  Basically,
  64         though, you run `xwait', and it sleeps.  When you run `xtell',
  65         it tells the `xwait' program to kill itself.  `xshutdown' does
  66         essentially the same thing, only it pops up a pretty window
  67         asking you if you're sure before it does it.
  68
  69
  70 Notes and things
  71
  72         All the code here is released under the GNU General Public
  73         License (included in the file COPYING in the distribution).
  74
  75         I tested the code under Linux and not much else, but I'm usually
  76         fairly conservative about portability and there shouldn't be
  77         much hassle involved.
  78
  79         If anyone wants to do an Xaw version of the GTK bits then I'll
  80         include that in the distribution; people using Motif or Qt need
  81         not apply.