NAME¶
wmpinboard - a
Window Maker dock app resembling a miniature
pinboard
SYNOPSIS¶
wmpinboard [options]
What wmpinboard is
wmpinboard is a
Window Maker dock applet resembling a miniature
pinboard. It's intended to somewhat relieve heavily littered desktops by
allowing you to place reminders on a graphical on-screen pinboard rather than
producing a mess of real notes all around your keyboard (thus being
environmentally A Good Thing, too
;-) ). It supports arbitrary 6x10 X
fonts and has XLocale support, enabling you to enter locale-dependent special
characters if set up appropriately. Besides text, you can add small monochrome
sketches to your notes or simply encircle or underline words as a means of
emphasis, and alarms can be set to explicitly remind you of things. Above all,
wmpinboard is animated in redundant ways to make it look even more
attractive, and themeability provides for a way of adapting its appearance to
that of the rest of your desktop.
What wmpinboard ISN'T
Clearly,
wmpinboard doesn't allow you to keep an unlimited number of
notes holding arbitrary amounts of information, and that's not what it's meant
to do. Just as real notes offer limited space, so do those simulated by
wmpinboard. Besides, as a dock applet, it aims at being small and neat
and yet useful in a way, and that's what it is, too, or considered to be by
some people, anyway. If you need room for more comprehensive reminders, use
another program, either additionally or exclusively. There's a variety of such
out there, but their niche is different from that which
wmpinboard
claims.
OPTIONS¶
wmpinboard's command-line options can be roughly divided into four
groups: configuration directives, run-time options, command-line actions, and
general options. Generally,
wmpinboard supports GNU-style long options
(which may be abbreviated unambiguously) as well as short ones for parameters
used more commonly.
Configuration directives
This type of command-line options changes some aspect of
wmpinboard's
configuration that is saved along with the data and thus set in a more
permanent way. Only one such parameter may be specified per call, and there
mustn't be another instance running.
- `--font=FONT'
- Makes wmpinboard use the specified font;
`FONT' can be one of the shortcuts listed when
running the program with " `--help'" as a
parameter, or a complete X descriptor of a fixed size 6x10 font. The
pinboard must be empty in order for this option to be applicable.
For more details, see the section on "FREQUENTLY ASKED
QUESTIONS".
- `--theme=FILE'
- Configures wmpinboard to load the specified theme
when started interactively the next time. `FILE' is
the location of a wmpinboard theme file (typically with a file name
extension of .wmpbtheme). If it can't be loaded when run
interactively, the program will revert to its default theme. If
`FILE' is an empty string or "default",
the use of a custom theme will be deactivated.
Themes affect wmpinboard's appearance, in particular, its pinboard,
edit mode and alarm panel pixmaps, the latter's digits, and possibly the
location of the pinboard mode label area (via which notes are created).
For downloading themes, or if you're inclined to create one yourself and
need instructions, check out the program's home page (see the section on
"AUTHOR" or wmpinboard's
"`--help'" output for the URL). The themes
kit containing instructions and samples on how to create theme files for
wmpinboard that can be downloaded there is also included with the
source package of the program.
- `--alarm-cmd=CMD'
- Configures `CMD' as the command to be
executed on alarms. E.g., you could use "`xkbbell'" to cause the
program to beep on such occassions, or make it run some sound-playing
program. To reset the alarm command to none, make
`CMD' a zero-length string.
Run-time options
- `-d DISPLAY' or
`--display=DISPLAY'
- Uses the specified X display rather than the default one.
- `-c' or
`--click-to-focus'
- This turns on some emulation of a click-based keyboard
focus mode. See the section on "FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS".
- `-t TIME' or
`--timeout=TIME'
- Sets the edit mode timeout (i.e., the number of seconds of
idleness after which edit mode is terminated automatically) to
`TIME' seconds. The compile-time default is 60s, but
this may have been changed for your particular build; run with
`-v' if in doubt to check that. Specifying a value
of 0 (zero) will disable the timeout.
- `-n' or
`--normal-state'
- Forces wmpinboard to run in so-called NormalState,
which is preferred by AfterStep's Wharf.
- `-w' or
`--withdrawn-state'
- Forces the program to run in so-called WithdrawnState, as
desired by the Window Maker dock. This option and the previous one
are mutually exclusive. Note also that wmpinboard tries to
auto-detect whether Window Maker is running and sets itself up
accordingly. Using `-n' or `-w'
should only be necessary in case those heuristics fail on your system for
some reason or other.
- `--light'
- Use this switch to suppress animations.
Command-line actions
Even though
wmpinboard is by design an interactive application, there may
be occasions when it comes in handy to be able to access/manipulate notes from
the command line. That's why the program offers a set of command-line options
allowing for basic operations of that kind. Still, it should be kept in mind
that
wmpinboard is primarily meant to be used interactively.
All of the options below will, if an interactive instance of
wmpinboard
is running in the background, cause that to save its data (and quit
edit
mode, if necessary), and if any changes are made by the respective option,
the interactive instance will then be signalled to re-read the data file. Even
though the implemented methods of inter-process communication should generally
be sufficiently safe with respect to avoiding data file corruption, it's in
theory possible to undermine the concept and cause damage that way--yet this
won't happen unless you deliberately take pains to achieve the goal.
Generally, everything should work fine as long as you don't try running
multiple non-interactive instances of
wmpinboard simultaneously.
Only one of the below actions can be specified per call to
wmpinboard.
- `--dump'
- This dumps the contents of all notes, replacing line breaks
by spaces (unless preceded by a hyphen) and shortening sequences of
blanks. The list of dumped strings will be sorted by color groups. If you
use special characters in your notes, make sure your terminal's running
with the same character set as wmpinboard, or what you'll see might
have a garbage-like quality.
Each line of output represents one note and is prefixed by the internal
number currently identifying the respective note and, if an alarm
is configured for the respective note, time and date (or
"daily").
- `--dump-raw'
- Unlike the "cooked" dump described above, this
just dumps the raw contents of all notes without applying any kind of
formatting. May come in handy if your notes happen to contain E-mail
addresses or other things for which lines 10 characters wide are too
narrow.
- `--del=NUMBER'
- This option will remove the note identified by
`NUMBER' from the pinboard.
`NUMBER' is a number determined by the output of
either dump option, which should be consulted right before using this one,
since note numbers may change when notes are moved around on the board or
others are removed.
- `--add=STRING'
- When run with this option, wmpinboard will add a new
note (provided the maximal number of notes has not yet been reached) at a
random position on the board, with contents `STRING',
word-wrapping the text at the end of the note's lines where necessary
(after white space and hyphens). If due to this wrapping, the entire
string cannot be stored on the note, the remainder will be discarded
silently.
In order to create a note with a certain color, the string can be prefixed
by a color code specifying the group of colors which a random color is to
be selected from (code letters are recognized case-insensitively):
%G - green
%Y - yellow/white
%R - reddish
%B - blue
Alternatively or additionally, you may specify a position code as
"%1" through "%9", defining an approximate position on
the board where the note is to be placed. Each of the nine figures
corresponds to a ninth of the board with its index assigned in accordance
with the layout of your keypad (i.e., "%1" meaning lower left,
"%9" upper right corner, and so forth).
Thus,
wmpinboard --add '%g%5test'
will place a green note saying "test" at the center of the board.
(Note: The "%" character can be escaped by a second one if you
want to add an un-prefixed string starting with a percent character.)
- `--add-raw=STRING'
- Via this option, a new note can be added from the command
line (provided that this won't exceed the maximum number of notes).
`STRING' specifies the raw contents of the
note, as printed by `--dump-raw'. The same set of
color group and position codes as for the previous option applies.
General options
- `-h' or
`--help'
- This prints a help screen listing command line options
together with brief descriptions.
- `-i' or
`--info'
- Prints information about the current user configuration
(font, theme, alarm command) and some useless statistics.
- `-v' or
`--version'
- This prints some more detailed version information, in
particular, which compile-time settings this binary was built with.
DESCRIPTION¶
wmpinboard operates in basically two different modes, namely, the
pinboard view and
edit mode. Furthermore, a
panel of
buttons granting access to extended options can be popped up in
edit
mode, which in turn allows you to display the
alarm panel to
configure alarm settings for the current note.
Pinboard view
This is
wmpinboard's normal mode of operation. A potentially chaotic
arrangement of tiny squares on a beige-colored oblong (default theme) is meant
to resemble notes pinned to a cork board. Possible actions include:
- •
- Add a note, by left-clicking on the board's "TO
DO" label. This creates a new, blank, randomly-colored note at a
random position on the board and puts wmpinboard in edit
mode (see below). If you prefer to place a new note at a certain
position before being prompted to enter its contents, this can be done by
moving the mouse cursor after having clicked on the label. This will
realize the note and allow you to drag it to a position of your choice.
wmpinboard will switch to edit mode as soon as you release
the mouse button.
- •
- Edit/view a note, by left-clicking on a note.
This switches to edit mode (described below).
- •
- Move a note, by dragging it using the right mouse
button. This also raises the note in question on top of all others.
Depending on its horizontal position, the note will be tilted
automatically. As a side-effect, a single brief right-click can be used to
raise a note on top of overlapping ones without moving it.
By dragging a note with the left mouse button, you can move it without
changing its level with respect to other notes, i.e., without raising it
on top of all others.
Edit mode
This mode serves two purposes: on the one hand, it presents you with a
"full-size" view of a note's contents, on the other, you can use the
occasion to edit it. Due to its limited size, a note can hold up to 10
characters on 6 lines (minus one on the last, i.e., 59 characters altogether),
plus a monochrome sketch of some kind. Possibly actions:
- •
- Enter text. wmpinboard supports
user-selectable fonts and dead keys, so you should be able to enter any
characters that are usually accessible via your keyboard and have them
displayed correctly. Furthermore, the cursor can be moved around using the
arrow keys (or EMACS-style via [Ctrl]-[N]/[P]/[F]/[B], if you are so
inclined). Alternatively, it can be placed explicitly by left-clicking
where you want it to be. Other special keys that are supported
include:
- [PgUp]/[PgDn]
- Places the cursor on character 1/59, respectively.
- [Home]/[End]
- Places the cursor at the textual start or end of the
current line.
- [Del]
- Deletes the character currently under the text cursor and
shifts the remaining text on the current line to the left; if the current
line is blank, removes it and shifts all lines below up by one line.
- [Backspace]
- See [Del], but affects the character on the left of the
cursor.
- [Ins]
- Toggles inserting/overwriting of existing text; the current
mode is indicated by a cursor change (block cursor means insert mode).
- [Enter]
- In insert mode, wraps the current line at the cursor's
position; in overwrite mode (underscore cursor), merely moves the cursor
to the start of the next line.
- [Ctrl]-[Y], -[Z]
- Removes an entire (intermediate) line, shifting those below
up by one, and places the cursor at the start of the current line.
- [Esc]
- Quits edit mode and returns to the pinboard
view.
- [Shift]-[Left]/[Right]
- Cycles through all notes currently on the pinboard.
- [Shift]-[Up]/[Down]
- Cycles through all notes that are roughly the same
color as the current one. For this purpose, colors have internally been
divided into four groups: green, white/yellow, reddish, blue.
- ([Shift]-)[Tab]
- Cycles (backwards) through availabe note colors.
- •
- Cut'n'paste text. Despite the limitations implied,
wmpinboard has support for cutting & pasting to and from the X
clipboard:
- •
- In order to copy text to the clipboard, select the desired
segment via either the left or the right mouse button: the left one will
copy the text post-formatted as done by the command line switch
`--dump' (see the section on "OPTIONS");
the right button will copy the raw selection. Similarly, a left double
click will select the word (i.e., all adjoining non-blank characters) at
the respective position, a right one will do the same but neglect line
breaks as delimiters. Additionally, you can copy a note's entire raw
contents by pressing [Ctrl]-[R]; [Ctrl]-[C] will do the same with applied
post-formatting.
- •
- To paste the clipboard's contents, press the middle button
wherever the insertion is supposed to happen. This will insert the
clipboard's current contents, trying to word-wrap the text (at white space
and after hyphens). If in insert mode, following text will be shifted
towards the end of the note, trying to word-wrap that as well.
If you wish to paste something without word-wrapping (e.g., an URL
containing a hyphen), paste it via [Ctrl]-[I] (think [i]nsert). This will
paste the clipboard's raw contents at the current location of the cursor,
shifting subsequent text if in insert mode (not trying to word-wrap that
either).
Obvious limitations you should be aware of include:
- •
- As is usually the case (about wmpinboard, anyway),
size matters. As you know, a note can hold only up to 59 characters, so
trying to paste longer strings will result in those being truncated.
- •
- If the text to be pasted is formatted in some way or other,
this won't be the case any more after it has been pasted:
wmpinboard replaces new line characters by blanks and, when pasting
using the mouse, tries to word-wrap text.
- •
- The information stored in the cut buffer needn't
necessarily be compatible with wmpinboard in that it may be encoded
with another character set.
- •
- Leave edit mode. This is achieved by
left-clicking on the triangle in the lower right-hand side corner. If the
note is completely empty, it will be removed from the board. In any case,
this returns to the pinboard view.
- •
- Pop up a panel with some further options to
choose from. This is done by right-clicking on the aforementioned
triangle. To learn what the panel is there for, see the
corresponding section below.
- •
- Draw a sketch. This mode can be activated via the
panel, and deactivated by either right-clicking somewhere on the
note or opening the panel again. While in drawing mode, the mouse
pointer is pencil-shaped, and drawing can be done by keeping the left
mouse button pressed and dragging the mouse, just as you'd expect. Sketch
and text may overlap each other, but keyboard input is ignored while in
drawing mode.
- •
- Erase a sketch. Just like DRAWing mode, this mode is
entered via the panel, and can be quit just like the former. In
erase mode, the text is hidden, so you needn't guess whether a pixel
belongs to an entered character or a drawn sketch. Note that the erase
cursor's point is slightly larger than the one used when drawing.
Note:
wmpinboard remembers where you left the text cursor after you last
edited a note and restores this position when you edit it the next time.
Edit mode panel
This
panel is intended to provide easy access to some options affecting
edit mode or the current note in general. The
panel looks like
this (letters denoting the buttons for reference below):
+---+---+---+---+
⎪ a ⎪ c ⎪ e ⎪ g ⎪
+---+---+---+---+
⎪ b ⎪ d ⎪ f ⎪ h ⎪
+---+---+---+---+
The buttons bear tiny icons which are meant to suggest what they do, which isn't
all that easy on a 12x12 pixels area.
`:^)'
Here's a description of what each button does:
- (a)
- Left-clicking on this button opens and closes the alarm
panel (see below), which allows you to configure alarm settings for
the note being edited. When the alarm panel is visible, the alarm
is activated. To turn it off, press the button again and make the panel
disappear.
- (b)
- This button allows one to cycle through all colors
available for notes (20 of them). Clicking on it won't close the
panel, so this can be done repeatedly. Using the left mouse button
traverses the colors in ascending, using the right button in descending
order. Note: colors can also be changed via a keyboard shortcut in
edit mode (see that section).
- (c)
- This button closes the panel and returns to edit
mode, with the sketch- drawing feature enabled (see above).
- (d)
- Closes the panel and returns to edit mode,
with the sketch- erasing feature enabled (see above). Don't panic
if entered text vanishes all of a sudden when you do this: this is because
wmpinboard intentionally hides it to eradicate the need for you to
make wild guesses as to what's entered text and which pixels belong to a
sketch.
- (e)
- This button removes all entered text on the current note
and places the text cursor on the very first character. Besides, it closes
the panel, thus returning to edit mode.
- (f)
- Pressing this button completely removes a drawn sketch on
the current note and returns to edit mode.
- (g)
- This option removes the *entire* note from the board and
returns to pinboard view.
- (h)
- This button merely closes the panel (and thus puts
you back in edit mode). The same can be achieved by simply
right-clicking in this view.
Alarm panel
This panel can be accessed from the
edit mode panel described above. If
the panel is visible while the
edit mode panel is on, the alarm is set,
otherwise, it's disabled.
The
alarm panel consists of six distinct clickable areas. The digits to
the left and right of the colon are the hour and minute which an alarm is to
be set for. Below them, a date can be specified in month, day order. On the
right, there are two toggle buttons (which can be either green (on) or red
(off) and are mutually exclusive). The top one represents a daily alarm
whereas the bottom one indicates/sets a date-specific one.
The hour, minute, month, and day of month fields can each be incremented or
decremented by left- or right-clicking on them, respectively. Clicking on one
of the toggle buttons configures the alarm as the respective type.
As the above description implies, there are two distinct kinds of alarms: daily
and date-specific ones.
Alarms are generally executed only when in
pinboard view and not moving
any notes about. If you're keeping the program busy at the time an alarm would
have to occur, it will be delayed until you're finished (i.e., let the program
return to idle
pinboard view). The same holds if an alarm occurs while
another one is running.
If all prerequisites are given and an alarm becomes due, the corresponding note
is displayed in edit view, and the display starts to flash on and off, along
with the alarm command being executed (see the section on
"OPTIONS"). To stop the blinking, click on the note. From then on,
the note will be in
edit mode.
For daily alarms, the entered date is ignored, and as the name suggests, they're
run every day at the specified time. To deactivate such an alarm, you have to
open the
edit mode panel and click button (a) to make the
alarm
panel disappear, which turns the alarm off.
In contrast, date-specific alarms are executed only once, at the specified day
and time. Since a year cannot be specified (explicitly), the alarm will be run
on this date's next occurrence within a year from when the alarm was set.
After that, the alarm will automatically be disabled. If a date-specific alarm
becomes due while
wmpinboard isn't running, it will be displayed as
soon as the program is started the next time--which does
not go for
daily alarms.
The default mode for alarms is date-specific, and time and date are initialized
with the next full hour when the alarm panel is opened the first time for a
given note.
Internally, alarm times are stored in universal format, i.e., if you change the
time zone after having set an alarm, the time will stay universally the same
but will differ relative to the new time zone from what absolute time you
originally set. This behavior is intended.
Finally, it should be mentioned that there are a few limitations with respect to
command line actions (such as
`--add',
`--del' ,
`-i', etc.). See the
section on "RESTRICTIONS".
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS¶
- •
- Q: Is a "pinboard" this small really of
any use?
A: Of course the limited size imposes certain restrictions, but if
you think about it, you'll agree that a real life pinboard reminds you of
things by the mere existence of notes being pinned to it. In order to read
what they say, you have to step close and, possibly, detach the note.
Quite similarly, wmpinboard reminds you of things by facing you with
colored representations of notes on your screen. To find out what it was
you intended them to remind you of, all you have to do is click on a note,
which will then be displayed full size. Furthermore, the alarm feature
introduced in a later version allows for even more explicit reminders and
thus renders wmpinboard even more powerful in a way than any
real-life cork board. `:-)'
By choosing from a variety of possible colors, you can assign particular
colors to certain kinds of reminders, which may further enhance
wmpinboard's usability. Moreover, you can place certain notes on
certain areas of the board to emphasize their category, urgency, etc. It's
up to you what to make of it.
Finally, by adding drawing capabilities, I've definitely overcome the
contents quantity barrier imposed by the maximum number of 59 characters,
for as everyone knows, a picture is worth more than a thousand words.
*grin*
- •
- Q: I don't live in an English-speaking country, so
what about extended characters (umlauts, accents, cyrillic alphabet)?
A: wmpinboard allows you to use an arbitrary 8bit X font,
provided that its characters are of a fixed size of 6x10 (or, deprecated
but possible, anything <= 7x10) pixels. The default font is
"6x10" (more precisely, it's called
"-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-c-*-ISO8859-1"), an
ISO8859-1 (Latin1) font which should be part of every XFree installation.
In order to make wmpinboard use another font, run it as
$ wmpinboard --font=FONT
where FONT is either a shortcut for a compiled-in font name (see the
section on "OPTIONS" for a list of those) or a valid, complete X
font descriptor. This is a configuration directive, meaning that no other
instance of wmpinboard may be running at the time. Note that this
only works if there are no more notes on the board. It's
intentionally been made impossible to change the font while there are
notes saved in wmpinboard's data file, since this might result in
garbage being displayed. Of course even a font specified via a shortcut
has to exist on your system in order to be usable.
If a configured custom font cannot be loaded or has invalid dimensions,
wmpinboard will try to revert. Note that this won't affect the font
name saved along with the data, though.
- •
- Q: How can I disable those vexing, superfluous
animations?
A:
$ wmpinboard --light
- •
- Q: Why aren't those animations smooth all of the
time? Sometimes it looks like they're being skipped entirely.
A: This presumably is a multitasking issue: depending on the current
system load and wmpinboard's/the X server's recent CPU usage
history, it may take a moment until the scheduling has been adapted to the
suddenly increased CPU load implied by displaying the animation, and short
as it is, it may already be finished until this has happened, i.e., it's
the X server lagging behind in updating the program's display if
wmpinboard's been idle for some time prior to that. It may sound
paradoxical, but the effect is the more likely to show the lower the
system's load is. I don't see a way to avoid this effect--either this, or
you turn off animations altogether.
- •
- Q: When I leave wmpinboard idle in edit mode
for some time, edit mode is terminated automatically. Is that intended?
A: Yes. After 60 idle seconds (that's the default; see the section
on "OPTIONS") in edit mode (no mouse click and no keyboard
input), edit mode is terminated automatically. If the note being edited
happens to be blank, it will be discarded (or removed if an existing note
is being edited).
This timeout can, however, be adjusted according to your preferences or
turned off using the `-t' parameter. See the section
on "OPTIONS" for this.
- •
- Q: When does wmpinboard save its data?
A: Notes data is saved on each of these occasions:
- •
- whenever edit mode is terminated
- •
- when you switch notes in edit mode (via
[Shift]-[arrow key])
- •
- when a note has been moved on the board
- •
- when an interactive instance is running and you run
wmpinboard from the command line, making it dump, add, or delete
notes
- •
- when killed via SIGINT or SIGTERM and edit mode is
active
Notes are saved to a file called
.wmpinboarddata in your home directory
(see the section on "FILES").
- •
- Q: I've tried my best and littered the entire
pinboard with quite a lot of notes. Now I can't seem to be able to add
another one.
A: There's a compile-time limit of 20 notes. I think more notes on
this tiny a board really don't make any sense.
- •
- Q: I've explicitly configured my window manager for
click-based rather than mouse-following focus, but wmpinboard's
focus follows the mouse regardless. Can I change this?
A: By default, wmpinboard actively claims the keyboard input
focus (if it's in note edit mode) whenever the pointer is moved over the
application's area. Since wmpinboard is a dock applet, i.e., a
withdrawn rather than a "real" X window, it can't be assigned a
focus in the same way as to the latter ones. However, running
wmpinboard with the parameter `-c' will make
it emulate some sort of click-based focusing. This means, it actively
claims the keyboard focus only on these occasions:
- •
- when a new note is created (not when you click on an
existing note--you'll have to explicitly click on the editing area to make
it claim focus; this way, you can just view a note without any change to
keyboard focus)
- •
- when you click somewhere on the text area in edit mode
Once keyboard-focused,
wmpinboard will keep it until another window is
explicitly focused (usually by clicking on its title bar or border). To focus
wmpinboard again when it's lost focus, you'll have to click on its text
area in edit mode. This click will only focus the application and not have the
usual cursor-positioning effect.
This feature is to be considered experimental since I'm not sure of how much use
it really is. A mouse-following focus is the recommended mode of
operation.
- •
- Q: I've noticed that after a while, some sort of
darker stains appear on my notes. Is that a bug in some drawing routine?
A: No, this is not a bug. These "stains" are meant to
resemble creases, caused by frequent handling of a particular note (wear
& tear, you see?). In fact, they're added with a certain probability
whenever you view a note by clicking on it (note that leafing through
notes via [Shift]-[arrow keys] is not affected), when you
clear its textual or drawn contents via the edit mode panel (very
outwearing, that ;-) ), and when a note is moved. This feature
can be disabled at compile time by running configure with
`--disable-creases' as a parameter.
To prevent the question, no, worn-out notes cannot be ironed to get rid of
the creases. Sorry. `:-p'
- •
- Q: Is wmpinboard compatible with
AfterStep's Wharf?
A: wmpinboard tries to autodetect whether Window Maker
is running and sets itself up accordingly. If this doesn't work for you
for some reason, you can explicitly make it run in either Withdrawn- or
NormalState using the `-w' or
`-n' flag, respectively. See the section on
"OPTIONS".
Swallowing evidently works with AfterStep 1.6.10; I don't know about
earlier versions. A Wharf config line you might try is this:
*Wharf wmpinboard nil MaxSwallow "wmpinboard" wmpinboard &
Besides, wmpinboard has been reported to work with Blackbox.
- •
- Q: I have X running at a color depth of 8 bits,
i.e., in palette mode, and wmpinboard obviously requires too many
colors and thus looks real messy (or doesn't run at all, complaining about
"not enough free color cells"). What can I do about this?
A: As of version 0.99.1, the recommended solution is to upgrade
whatever component of your system restricts you to a palette mode.
- •
- Q: Can I run multiple instances of wmpinboard
as the same user, simultaneously?
A: No, this is certainly not a good idea. The run-time behavior may
be unpredictable, and your data file can get corrupted. Therefore, any
wmpinboard process that's to be run interactively first checks
whether another interactive instance is running, and if so, refuses to
run.
- •
- Q: I've just upgraded from a pre-0.7 version of
wmpinboard and noticed that its data file format has changed
completely since. Is there a way to upgrade and yet keep my existing
notes?
A: There's a Perl script doing the conversion included with
the distribution (the source one, anyway). If your package didn't include
that, feel free to mail to the author (see the section on
"AUTHOR" at the end of this documentation).
- •
- Q: I find a mere 59 characters per note to be a real
limitation. How about making wmpinboard pop up an external window
with more room for that? Or how about assigning that job to an external
editor?
A: There's a variety of comprehensive programs for keeping notes out
there, offering this functionality but being rather heavy-weight since
they are linked against one GUI library or another ( CoolNotes or
KNotes come to mind). On the other hand, I couldn't find a
WM-conforming reminder I could omnipresently stick to my desktop
anywhere, so I wrote wmpinboard. I wanted it to be small, neat,
easy to use, and yet useful in a way.
I hope that's about what the program is currently like. And I'd prefer to
keep it like that rather than inflate it by linking against a GUI
library--eventually, the note editing code would outweigh the rest of the
application by a factor, and people would probably still create notes
mostly shorter than 60 characters. If you restrict your memos to keywords
and abbreviations, that's quite a lot.
I want wmpinboard to remain an applet in that it doesn't open up
external windows and use (if just temporarily) additional desktop space. I
explicitly wrote it to have something omnipresent at a fixed position on
my desktop. I find it preferable to have the notes pop up in place rather
than somewhere else on the screen.
Personally, I use other programs for larger notes too; wmpinboard has
been designed for things smaller in size and greater in urgency, it's in
no way meant to be a comprehensive knowledge base application of any kind.
Summing up, I think a dock applet should be small both regarding its
on-screen representation and the resources it uses. That's why I don't
intend to add any pop-up dialogs or similar things to wmpinboard.
- •
- Q: I've tried the program, yet I can't help finding
it utterly useless. What shall I do?
A: The solution is simple. Just don't use it.
- •
- Q: Will your answer to this question be
"no"?
A: Nope.
HINTS¶
- •
- A good way of making the best of the organizational
features offered by wmpinboard is to use certain colors and
locations on the pinboard to indicate urgency and contents of a note. For
example, you might use each of the color groups for a certain kind of
reminder, because that enables you to leaf through all notes with related
contents via [Shift]-[arrow keys] in edit mode. Besides, you might
assign each corner of the board a specific urgency, altogether allowing
you to derive a note's type from its color and its urgency from its
location on the board. Thanks again to the ability to leaf through all
notes belonging to the same group of colors, notes with similar contents
will still be clustered in a way.
UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES¶
This piece of documentation doesn't cover any undocumented features.
FILES¶
- ~/.wmpinboarddata
- the user's wmpinboard data file
- ~/.wmpinboarddata.new
- temporary file created momentarily when saving data
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES¶
- $HOME
- the user's home directory
RESTRICTIONS¶
- •
- wmpinboard relies on a dock app tile size of at
least 64x64 pixels. In fact, using smaller tiles renders the applet rather
useless, as, e.g., opening the edit mode panel becomes impossible.
- •
- Unpredictable effects may be the results if a command line
action is taken while an alarm is running and others are due
simultaneously. If just a single alarm is active and no others are due,
that alarm will be cancelled when the two instances of wmpinboard
synchronize. If more instances are due during the process, a race
conditions arises that can't be solved satisfactorily due to the program's
internal structure and organization. Still, in theory, nothing critical
will happen, and the most you'll lose will be an alarm or two.
- •
- wmpinboard data files are not designed to be
portable across architectures. Due to differences in data type
representations that are likely otherwise, a datafile can only be reliably
used by program binaries running on machines of the same architecture.
- •
- Certainly of no interest to anyone, but mentioned for the
sake of completeness: wmpinboard's alarm features will start to
fail past 04:14:07 on Jan 19, 2037, which is due to the legacy Un*x time
format.
BUGS¶
If you stumble on any bugs, feel free to mail the author. The same goes if you
encounter any problems running/using the program. Be sure to include any
information you consider relevant, i.e., at a minimum, the version of
wmpinboard you're using as well as your OS and X versions.
Also, further suggestions are always welcome. Please check the
TODO file
that's part of the distribution to see if what you're about to suggest isn't
already on my "to do" list, or has been suggested earlier and was
rejected for one reason or other.
SEE ALSO¶
wmaker(1)
AUTHOR¶
wmpinboard is copyrighted (c) 1998-2000 by Marco Goetze,
<gomar@mindless.com>. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU
General Public License, revision 2 or any later revision thereof. Use at your
own risk.
New releases of and themes for
wmpinboard can be found at
<
http://www.tu-ilmenau.de/~gomar/stuff/wmpinboard/>, or that was true at
least by the time this document was last updated.