Some Xfce News
Documentation
Nick Schermer is working on the infrastructure for the new documentation. It will be written in Mallard and translatable using Transifex. There are already a few drafts available: Nick made one for Xfce4 Panel (git branch) and Jim Campbell made one for Xfce4 Screenshooter (Bugzilla entry). Once the infrastructure is ready, contributions will be welcome! I will keep you posted.
Xfdesktop4
This is the second BIG thing currently going on: Jannis is porting Xfdesktop4 to GIO. He expects to have it done by the next weekend, the current work is available in a git branch. This is one of the last remaining by tasks for 4.8, so this is a really good news! <bisounours>Rock on!</bisounours>
Xfce Settings Helper
For those of you who care, I implemented two little features last week. First, Xfce now remembers the state of the Numlock when closing the session and restores it on startup. Gone are the days of numlockx \o/. Moreover, for people using xmodmap, the settings helper automatically processes .Xmodmap on start up and when changing the layout/variant using the Xfce settings dialog.
By the way, since my last post about the keyboard settings improvement, I also reviewed/applied a few patches by Martin Pitt and Lionel Le Folgoc which fix some crashes/bugs in the new code.
Xfce Utils
I fixed a bunch of easy bugs/enhancement requests for Xfrun. It can now handle URLs, opens files with the default handlers, folders with the default file manager... I also fixed history loading for the "Run in terminal" check box, fixed handling of command line options and added "#" as a shortcut to read man pages. I now plan to work on auto completion for path and command.
I also reworked an old patch by Mike Massonnet to improve the look of the Xfce documentation, it looks really neat now. I will try to see if we can use it with the new documentation.
Goodies
Florian Rivoal, maintainer of xfce4-cpugraph-plugin, launched a "all your unmaintained goodies are belong to me" operation. Basically he offered to maintain a huge number of unmaintained goodies for which there are a great number of patches waiting for review in the Xfce Bugzilla. You can find more details on this thread. This heroic move should not make you forget that contributors/new maintainers are welcome! Florian will not be able to implement new things (or only a limited number) given the work it represents but only to keep those apps functional which is already awesome!
XTerm as root-tail
The idea behind this title is to use XTerm as a log viewer over the desktop, just like root-tail works. The tool root-tail paints text on the root window by default or any other XWindow when used with the-id parameter.Using XTerm comes with little advantage, it is possible to scroll into the “backlog” and make text selections. On a downside, it won't let you click through into the desktop, therefore it is rather useful for people without desktop icons for example.
We will proceed with a first simple example, by writing a Shell script that will use the combo DevilsPie and XTerm. The terminals will all be kept in the background below other windows and never take the focus thanks to DevilsPie. DevilsPie is a tool watching the creation of new windows and applies special rules over them.
Obviously, you need to install the command line tool
devilspie. It's a command to run in the background as a daemon. Configuration files with a .ds extensions contain matches for windows and rules that are put within the ~/.devilspie directory.First example
The first example shows how to match only one specific XTerm window.The DevilsPie configuration:
- DesktopLog.ds
(if
(is (window_class) "DesktopLog")
(begin
(wintype "dock")
(geometry "+20+45")
(below)
(undecorate)
(skip_pager)
(opacity 80)
)
)
devilspie is running, and spawning a single xterm process:- desktop-log.sh
#!/bin/sh
test `pidof devilspie` || devilspie &
xterm -geometry 164x73 -uc -class DesktopLog -T daemon.log -e sudo tail -f /var/log/daemon.log &
To try the example, save the DevilsPie snippet inside the directory
~/.devilspie, and download and execute the Shell script. Make sure to quit any previous DevilsPie process whenever you modify or install a new .ds file.
Second example
The second example is a little more complete, it starts three terminals of which one is coloured in black.- DesktopLog.ds
(if
(matches (window_class) "DesktopLog[0-9]+")
(begin
(wintype "dock")
(below)
(undecorate)
(skip_pager)
(opacity 80)
)
)
(if
(is (window_class) "DesktopLog1")
(geometry "+480+20")
)
(if
(is (window_class) "DesktopLog2")
(geometry "+20+20")
)
(if
(is (window_class) "DesktopLog3")
(geometry "+20+330")
)
- desktop-log.sh
#!/bin/sh
test `pidof devilspie` || devilspie &
xterm -geometry 88x40 -uc -class DesktopLog1 -T daemon.log -e sudo -s tail -f /var/log/daemon.log &
xterm -geometry 70x20 -uc -class DesktopLog2 -T auth.log -e sudo -s tail -f /var/log/auth.log &
xterm -fg grey -bg black -geometry 70x16 -uc -class DesktopLog3 -T pacman.log -e sudo -s tail -f /var/log/pacman.log &
NB: You will probably notice that setting the geometry is awkward, specially since position and size are in two different files, getting it right needs several tweakings.
This blog post was cross-posted to the Xfce Wiki.
Towards an Xfce Foundation?
Jannis Pohlmann announced two days ago on the Xfce mailing lists that he started the paperwork needed to register Xfce as a non-profit organization under the German law which would be nice because, I quote:
The benefits are obvious: Xfce would become a legal entity with an official board of directors and we could raise funds in the form of donations and via supporting members in order to organize hackfests etc.
The current draft is available on gitorious. Expect more news on this in the following days and feel free to comment on our mailing lists.