How to place the task bar at the top of the screen using FvwmIconMan

Configuration General Questions
1

Since FvwmTaskBar has disappeared in version 2.6.7, I’ve had to switch from using FvwmTaskBar to FvwmIconMan and FvwmButtons. With FvwmTaskBar, I could locate the task bar at either the top or bottom of the screen, using these lines

 *FvwmTaskBar: Geometry +0+0

or

*FvwmTaskBar: Geometry +0-0

As far as I can tell, there isn’t an analogous pair of commands in either FvwmIconMan or FvwmButtons.

Could somebody please advise how to get the task bar to the top rather than the default, which is the bottom?

A less frustrating issue is that FvwmIconMan adds buttons for things like the stalonetray, which seem to me like a waste of real estate. Is there a way to specify the class of items that to which task bar buttons are allocated?

Thanks very much for any advice.

2

FvwmButtons and FvwmIconMan can both be configured in lots of ways, you should read their corresponding man pages.

FvwmButtons does honor the Geometry flag, so when building your buttons, you need to state their size and their location. Something like

*FvwmButtons: Geometry 1920x20+0+0

This gives the size of the buttons and their using X11 geometry information. You can call *FvwmButtons with any button alias you choose to use, even FvwmTaskBar as in the wiki example.

As for FvwmIconMan, you can configure it to use the WindowListSkip. The option is UseWinList, which already defaults to true.

Next you need to tell the various windows you want to be on the skip list, for example with stalonetray

Style stalonetray WindowListSkip

Via this and other methods you can configure FvwmIconMan to display only the windows you want.

3

Thanks jaimos

I’m making progress using FvwmIconMan and FvwmButtons but still having issues

The following code is working well when I run it on fvwm 2.6.5 (see screenshot below), but when I run it on fvwm 2.6.7, the taskbar does not show up.
I constructed the code from this wiki page: http://fvwmforums.org/wiki/Panels/FvwmTaskBar/#fvwmiconman-configuration

Could you explain why it would work in the old version of fvwm but not the new one, please?

The second issue that in 2.6.5, the WindowSkipList style does not work as you can see from the screen shot. I’ve tried to skip FvwmIconMan and stalonetray.

thanks very much for your help!

[code]#This came from

http://fvwmforums.org/wiki/Panels/FvwmTaskBar/#fvwmiconman-configuration

Set EwmhBaseStruts left right top bottom

EwmhBaseStruts 0 0 29 0

Taskbar display

DestroyModuleConfig FvwmTaskBar: *
*FvwmTaskBar: Geometry 1200x24+0+0
*FvwmTaskBar: Colorset 15
*FvwmTaskBar: Frame 0
*FvwmTaskBar: Font “xft:Sans:size=6:bold:antialias=True”
*FvwmTaskBar: Rows 1
*FvwmTaskBar: Columns 1200

Menu Button

*FvwmTaskBar: (55x1, Title “Fvwm”, ActiveColorset 16, Action(Mouse 1)
Menu MenuFvwmRoot Root 0 o100-24p, Frame 2)

Quick Launch Buttons
#*FvwmTaskBar: (25x1, Icon “icons/mini/xterm.png”, ActiveColorset 16, \

Action(Mouse 1) “Exec exec xterm”)

*FvwmTaskBar: (25x1, Icon “icons/mini/firefox.png”, ActiveColorset 16,
Action(Mouse 1) “Exec exec gimp”)
*FvwmTaskBar: (25x1, Icon “icons/mini/xteddy.png”, ActiveColorset 16,
Action(Mouse 1) “Exec exec xteddy”)

Swallow FvwmIconMan TaskBarIcons

*FvwmTaskBar: (1015x1, Left, Swallow TaskBarIcons ‘Module FvwmIconMan
TaskBarIcons’)

Time Button with id TaskTime

*FvwmTaskBar: (55x1, id “TaskTime”, ActiveColorset 16, Title “Time”)

#############IconMan display

DestroyModuleConfig TaskBarIcons: *
*TaskBarIcons: IconName TaskBarIcons
*TaskBarIcons: UseWinList true
*TaskBarIcons: Resolution global
*TaskBarIcons: Tips needed
*TaskBarIcons: Font “xft:Sans:size=8:antialias=True”

Manager Size

*TaskBarIcons: ButtonGeometry 120x24
*TaskBarIcons: MaxButtonWidth 120
*TaskBarIcons: ManagerGeometry 1x1

Button Styles

*TaskBarIcons: DrawIcons always
*TaskBarIcons: ReliefThickness 2
*TaskBarIcons: Format “%t”
*TaskBarIcons: IconButton down
*TaskBarIcons: IconAndSelectButton down
*TaskBarIcons: SelectButton up
*TaskBarIcons: Background #003c3c
*TaskBarIcons: Foreground #ffffff
*TaskBarIcons: PlainColorset 15
*TaskBarIcons: FocusColorset 16
*TaskBarIcons: FocusAndSelectColorset 16
*TaskBarIcons: SelectColorset 16
*TaskBarIcons: IconAndSelectColorset 16

Button Actions

*TaskBarIcons: Action Mouse 1 A sendcommand IconManClick
*TaskBarIcons: Action Mouse 2 A sendcommand Nop
*TaskBarIcons: Action Mouse 3 A sendcommand “Menu MenuIconOps Mouse 0 o100”

Styles panel

FvwmTaskBar styles

Style FvwmTaskBar !Borders, !Title, WindowListSkip,
StaysOnTop, Sticky

Colorsets

Colorset 15 fg #ffffff, bg #003c3c, hi #005c5c, sh #001c1c
Colorset 16 fg #2d2d2d, bg #ffffff, hi #005c5c, sh #001c1c

Run FvwmTaskBar

Module FvwmIconMan FvwmTaskBar

Style stalonetray WindowSkipList
Style FvwmIconMan WindowSkipList

Set the time to the current time

PipeRead ‘echo “SendToModule FvwmButtons ChangeButton
TaskTime Title “date +%R””’

Schedule the time to update every 10 seconds

Schedule Periodic 10000 PipeRead ‘echo “SendToModule
FvwmButtons ChangeButton TaskTime Title “date +%R””’[/code]

4

Sorry, I had a typo. The style is WindowListSkip (not WindowSkipList). I edited my original post so if someone reads it in the future, they get the actual style.

5

Thanks, that did get rid of the button for FvwmIconMan, but for some reason the stalonetray button won’t go away.

More important for me, however, is to get the Task bar working on my new machine, which is running version 2.6.7. Everything is exactly the same on the two machines, except for the different fvwm version. On the new machine, there’s no task bar. Do you have any suggestions for how to debug this, or better yet, does anybody have an FvwmModules script that’s known to generate a taskbar with 2.6.7? As noted in my original post, the file that I posted above was taken directly from the Wiki, but doesn’t work for me for some reason.

Thanks very much for your patience. Leo

6

Use FvwmIdentify or xprop to figure out the actual name/class/resource of the stalonetray window so you can correctly identify it with your style line if it is not working.

As for FvwmTaskBar, it was removed in 2.6.7, so you will have to build your own substitute. The wiki gave an idea on how to build one, but you’ll have to adjust to meet your needs. This will take a bit of time reading the man pages and messing with the configuration to get the taskbar like you want it.