| 1 | Xalf (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 animated star). |
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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 | SUPPORTED PLATFORMS |
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| 43 | ------------------- |
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| 44 | The main platforms for Xalf are Linux and Solaris. People have |
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| 45 | reported that Xalf also runs on FreeBSD and Irix. Newer versions are |
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| 46 | only tested on Linux and Solaris. If you want support for other |
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| 47 | platforms and are willing to test beta-versions, contact me. |
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| 48 | |
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| 49 | |
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| 50 | GNOME INTEGRATION |
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| 51 | ----------------- |
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| 52 | Xalf is included with GNOME 1.4. Xalf also works with earlier GNOME |
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| 53 | versions if you have Gnome-libs version 1.2.11 or newer. |
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| 54 | |
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| 55 | You can control Xalf via GNOME Control Center (or by editing |
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| 56 | ~/.gnome/xalf). Note: |
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| 57 | |
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| 58 | You can prepend NO_XALF to desktop entries commandlines to disable |
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| 59 | Xalf for a specific application. This is especially useful for |
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| 60 | launching applications that doesn't start new processes but only |
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| 61 | creates new windows. Gmc works like this, so I recommend change |
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| 62 | "Exec=gmc" in /usr/share/gnome/apps/Gmc.desktop to "Exec=NO_XALF gmc". |
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| 63 | |
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| 64 | |
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| 65 | KDE INTEGRATION |
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| 66 | --------------- |
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| 67 | KDE has borrowed some Xalf techniques, and integrated them into |
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| 68 | KDE2. I don't know the current status of this work, though. |
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| 69 | |
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| 70 | |
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| 71 | USING SAWFISH "Matched Windows" |
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| 72 | ------------------------------- |
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| 73 | Beginning with version 0.11, Xalf sets different WM_CLASS names for |
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| 74 | the different indicators. The class name is always set to "xalf". The |
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| 75 | instance name is set to "invisiblewindow", "splash" and "anim", |
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| 76 | depending on the indicator that is used. |
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| 77 | |
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| 78 | This can be used with Sawfish to automatically iconify, for example, |
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| 79 | the invisible window. This can be done by: |
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| 80 | |
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| 81 | 1) Create and match on Class: xalf/invisiblewindow |
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| 82 | 2) Set its state to "Iconified" in the State pane. |
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| 83 | |
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| 84 | |
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| 85 | THE FUTURE |
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| 86 | ---------- |
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| 87 | Xalf needs to do quite many tricks to work. The principle with |
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| 88 | LD_PRELOAD is not very beautiful and there are many cases when it does |
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| 89 | not work. These issues were discussed on the Window manager |
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| 90 | specification mailing list. Most people (including myself) thinks that |
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| 91 | an Toolkit-based implementation is a better long term solution. Mary |
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| 92 | Dwyer at Sun Microsystems has begun working on such an |
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| 93 | implementation. |
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| 94 | |
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| 95 | |
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| 96 | USAGE |
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| 97 | ----- |
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| 98 | If you are not using GNOME with built-in hooks, prepend xalf to your |
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| 99 | commandlines. For example, create an desktop icon running: |
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| 100 | "xalf gnumeric" |
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| 101 | |
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| 102 | |
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| 103 | COMMANDLINE OPTIONS |
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| 104 | ------------------- |
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| 105 | -h, --help display this help and exit |
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| 106 | -v, --version output version information and exit |
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| 107 | -t, --timeout nseconds use a time-out period of nseconds seconds |
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| 108 | -n, --noxalf do nothing, besides launch application |
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| 109 | -m, --mappingmode compatibility mode: Do not distinguish between |
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| 110 | windows. All new mapped windows turns off indicator |
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| 111 | -i, --invisiblewindow use an invisible window as indicator (default) |
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| 112 | (for use with Gnome panel, KDE taskbar etc) |
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| 113 | -s, --splash use splashscreen as indicator |
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| 114 | -c, --cursor add hourglass to mouse cursor |
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| 115 | -a, --anim use animated star as indicator |
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| 116 | -l, --title titlestring Title to show in the tasklist |
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| 117 | |
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| 118 | Comments and bug-reports are appreciated. |
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| 119 | |
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| 120 | /Peter Åstrand <astrand@lysator.liu.se> |
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| 121 | |
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