| 1 | Xalf 0.7 (http://www.lysator.liu.se/~astrand/projects/xalf/) |
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| 2 | ---------------------------------------------------------- |
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| 3 | |
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| 4 | This a utility to provide feedback when starting X11 applications. |
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| 5 | |
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| 6 | Xalf is solving the same problem as Busycursor (also written by me), |
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| 7 | but in a more reliable and flexible way. The main differences are: |
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| 8 | |
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| 9 | 1) Xalf can reliable detect if newly mapped windows are belonging to a |
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| 10 | particular launched application. It does this by overloading the Xlib |
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| 11 | function XMapWindow with a version that signals the tracking xalf |
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| 12 | process. |
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| 13 | |
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| 14 | 2) Xalf provides (currently) four different types as "indicators", |
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| 15 | described below. |
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| 16 | |
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| 17 | Invisible Window: |
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| 18 | Xalf creates an invisible window, to be used in conjunction with a |
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| 19 | standard task pager like Gnomes tasklist_applet or the KDE |
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| 20 | Taskbar. The name of the window is the application name within |
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| 21 | parenthesis. The small window icon (KWM_WIN_ICON) is set to a small |
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| 22 | hourglass. This indicator is default. |
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| 23 | |
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| 24 | Splash screen: |
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| 25 | An generic splashscreen is displayed during application launch. |
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| 26 | |
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| 27 | Mouse cursor change: |
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| 28 | Xalf adds an hourglass symbol to the mousecursor for the root window |
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| 29 | and the Gnome panel. Note that the cursor is not changed for the Gnome |
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| 30 | foot-menu windows. |
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| 31 | |
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| 32 | Animated star: |
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| 33 | An animated indicator resembling the look of that on SGI/Irix |
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| 34 | machines (a kind of yellow star blinking while loading a program). |
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| 35 | |
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| 36 | |
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| 37 | INSTALL |
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| 38 | ------- |
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| 39 | See the file INSTALL. |
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| 40 | |
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| 41 | |
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| 42 | GNOME INTEGRATION |
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| 43 | ----------------- |
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| 44 | Gnome-libs 1.2.0 has built-in support for Xalf. It can be activated by |
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| 45 | setting the environment variable GNOME_USE_XALF before starting GNOME |
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| 46 | (eg. add: export GNOME_USE_XALF=1 to .bash_profile or other appropiate |
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| 47 | dotfile). This means that all applications will be started via Xalf. |
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| 48 | Note: The built-in hooks has some drawbacks: Xalf is always given the |
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| 49 | arguments --mappingmode and --invisiblewindow. |
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| 50 | |
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| 51 | I recommend using an updated version of Gnome-libs, which can be |
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| 52 | downloaded on the Xalf homepage. You should use version |
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| 53 | gnome-libs-1.2.1-0_helix_1xalf2.i386.rpm or newer. Starting with this |
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| 54 | version, GNOME_USE_XALF and GNOME_XALF_OPTIONS is obsolete and doesn't |
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| 55 | work anymore. Instead, Xalf behavior is controlled by the file |
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| 56 | /.gnome/xalf. Use control center to control it (see below). With this |
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| 57 | modified version, you can prepend NO_XALF to desktop entries |
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| 58 | commandlines to disable Xalf for a specific application. This is |
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| 59 | especially useful for launching applications that doesn't start new |
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| 60 | processes but only creates new windows. Gmc works like this, so I |
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| 61 | recommend change "Exec=gmc" in /usr/share/gnome/apps/Gmc.desktop to |
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| 62 | "Exec=NO_XALF gmc". |
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| 63 | |
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| 64 | |
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| 65 | GNOME CONTROL CENTER CAPPLET |
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| 66 | ---------------------------- |
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| 67 | From version 0.4, an GNOME Control Center capplet is included. It |
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| 68 | requires an updated version of gnome-libs |
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| 69 | (gnome-libs-1.2.1-0_helix_1xalf2.i386.rpm or newer). |
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| 70 | |
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| 71 | |
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| 72 | KDE INTEGRATION |
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| 73 | --------------- |
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| 74 | KDE has borrowed some Xalf techniques, and integrated them into |
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| 75 | KDE2. I don't know the current status of this work, though. |
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| 76 | |
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| 77 | |
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| 78 | USAGE |
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| 79 | ----- |
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| 80 | If you are not using GNOME with built-in hooks, prepend xalf to your |
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| 81 | commandlines. For example, create an desktop icon running: |
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| 82 | xalf netscape |
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| 83 | |
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| 84 | |
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| 85 | COMMANDLINE OPTIONS |
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| 86 | ------------------- |
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| 87 | -h, --help display this help and exit |
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| 88 | -v, --version output version information and exit |
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| 89 | -t, --timeout nseconds use a time-out period of nseconds seconds |
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| 90 | -n, --noxalf do nothing, besides launch application |
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| 91 | -m, --mappingmode compatibility mode: Do not distinguish between |
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| 92 | windows. All new mapped windows turns off indicator |
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| 93 | -i, --invisiblewindow use an invisible window as indicator (default) |
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| 94 | (for use with Gnome panel, KDE taskbar etc) |
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| 95 | -s, --splash use splashscreen as indicator |
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| 96 | -c, --cursor add hourglass to mouse cursor |
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| 97 | -a, --anim use animated star as indicator |
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| 98 | -l, --title titlestring Title to show in the tasklist |
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| 99 | |
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| 100 | Comments and bug-reports are appreciated. |
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| 101 | |
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| 102 | /Peter Åstrand <astrand@lysator.liu.se> |
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| 103 | |
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| 104 | |
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| 105 | |
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