Re: [dev] [wmii] running script on 'desktop'?

On Tue, 22 Mar 2011, Benjamin Cathey wrote:

> Just curious if it is possible to run a script on the background image
> (sort of conky-ish)? I'm thinking not due to the nature of wmii,
> however I thought it couldn't hurt to ask.

The root window's still there, and you can still draw on it.

I'd never heard of conky (I have GKrellM pegged to tag /./ with
-geometry -0+0), but trying it, I had to change 'own_window' from 'yes'
to 'no' in the config, and then it worked fine.

If you want 'real' transparency, you'll need something to do that for
you, IIRC.

Another stupid example drawing to the 'background':

Under 'zsh' (not sure if other shells have '=(cmd)'):

while {true} {qiv -n -y =(convert -size 120x16 xc:none -gravity NorthWest -pointsize 10 -fill Red -draw "text 0,0 '$(date)'" png:-)}

(constantly updates the 'desktop' with the current time tiled.)

> Well in wmii, I use terminator set to transparent so that my
> background image shows through (set using 'feh' in my wmiirc). I was
> wondering if there was a way to have a script running and have the
> output display over the background displayed by feh and under the
> terminator window (or any other window really).

If you want something *between* root and a background, you'll have to
draw it yourself. If it's textual, I think xrootconsole[1], as
mentioned in the other fork of this thread should be useful. Otherwise
you'd need to combine whatever images you want and update it that way.
e.g. my stupid ImageMagick date command from above, overlaid onto your
background:

while {true} {qiv -n -x =(convert your-normal-background.png \( -size 120x16 xc:none -matte -channel A -fx .5 -channel RGBA -gravity NorthWest -pointsize 10 -fill Red -draw "text 0,0 '$(date)'" \) -composite png:-)}

I'm only using 'qiv' because I had it in my zsh history. Don't really
know much about qiv vs. feh, except that neither seems to accept an
image on stdin.

-- 
Best,
Ben
[1] http://sf.net/projects/xrootconsole