Hi,
I just started using fvwm a few days ago, and have got my desktop set up pretty well already. I’ve made extensive use of fvwmbuttons, and was able to get a pager swalled in fvwmbuttons, as well as a word of the day script I found online somewhere (thanks to the author!). What I was wondering is if it would be possible to somehow have a one line terminal swallowed up in fvwmbuttons, so that you could input quick commands like to a regular terminal, and also scroll back and see the output of your last commands. This would be really cool. Has this been done before or any ideas?
My second question is whether the same functionality would be possible for a gaim conversation using gaim_remote. I only talk to basically one person, so could I have a tiny fvwmbuttons swallow some sort of gaim function that allows me to chat with them without opening a gaim window at all?
These two things aren’t necessary, I have already fallen in love with fvwm with what I have already. I just think that they would provide some really cool functionality if possible.
Note the geometry option above — it’s that that’s going to set the size of the terminal. You can see a screenshot of it.
You might get a few issues with it though – most terms work on a character-fixec size of columns, for things to be displayed. Whilst you can set the style to use the ‘NoResizeHint’ to override such features, you can find things being displayed oddly. I’d probably go for two lines at best, if you really want somerthing that small swallowed.
You have some other options, of course – one of which is to swallow and use tkrunit – which comes in really handy for just this purpose.
It should be – FvwmButtons can swallow anything, can you provide us with more information about what gaim-remote is, and how it differs from plain ‘gaim’ - perhaps provide a screenshot of it as well, along with “FvwmIdent” showing on the window?
Thomas - Thanks for the help with the terminal… I have it all set up just like I want it now and it looks very good . I’m starting to get a better grip on the whole Swallow thing now too.
about the gaim thing…
gaim-remote is just a plugin for regular gaim that allows you to execute commands from outside of the framework of the application. I thought it would enable sending somebody a message from the shell, but it seems that all it can do is open up a window to send a message from. This probably won’t help with the fvwmbuttons then.
Any other ideas for how to approach the gaim feature?
what protocol dou you want to use? centericq can do pretty much everything gaim can and works from the command line, so it might do waht you want
Another possibility would be to have a minimised gaim instance running, with NoIcon and gaim included in the skip list so you never see it. Then you could use a system tray applet, or maybe swallow the conversation window.
Failing that, the only other thing I can think of is to write a command line gaim interface.
Yes, the more I’ve thought about it I’ve realized that gaim won’t work without hacking a command line interface for it… I think it will probably be necessary to use a different client… I will look into centerICQ.
Anyway thanks again for the help, and more ideas are welcome .
-Mike
Does anyone have some system tray working with fvwm? I tried docker in FvwmButtons (and without fvwmbuttons), but couldn’t get it to show anything.
With some systray app you could swallow the systray in FvwmButtons, and use gaim in minimized state in systray.
If you use, say, irssi, you could use bitlbee to use with irssi inside a FvwmButtons swallowed terminal.
Why won’t it compile for you? Paste the errors here, and I can take a look. As for alternatives, there’s peksystray, but it’s most limited. IMO, it’s worth sticking it out with xystray if you can…
Whoops, the reason was that I needed sleep
(makefile said /usr/X11/lib, whereas it’s /usr/X11R6/lib on this sys)
Good to know all the alternatives, as my google searches didn’t prove very succesful. Xystray does indeed look very promising as it has no heavy dependancies.
. I’m starting to get a better grip on the whole Swallow thing now too.
