Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
On 12/22/2011 05:32 PM, Suraj N. Kurapati wrote: On Thu 22 Dec 2011 02:44:54 PM PST, dtk wrote: is there a way to have widgets in the status bar display images instead of utf8 symbols? I gave up on this approach for DWM and used dzen2 as my status bar instead: https://github.com/sunaku/.dwm/blob/master/dwm-statusbar (Pictured at bottom of this screenshot: http://ompldr.org/vYnUyNg) dzen2 supports XBM and XPM images, which I use from sm4tik's icon set: https://github.com/sunaku/.dwm/tree/master/dwm-statusbar-icons Uh. I like your differently colored symbols. Feeling a bit girlish today ;P Actually, I'm quite happy with your Rumai widgets right now, displaying dialogs with gmessage instead of xmessage for some eye candy and linking right click actions to gnome gui tools (power preferences comes handy with the battery widget). Might pimp them with some color ;) Thx anyway, might get handy if I have to drop WMII in the end :( dtk
[dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
Hey guys, is there a way to have widgets in the status bar display images instead of utf8 symbols? I know it's a question of philosophy whether you'll want that (and will therefore inevitably spawn holy flame wars ;)), but I just saw it yesterday in awesome[0] and think it was a pretty neat feature to display information in a compact yet intuitive way. Thx for your help dtk - [0]http://awesome.naquadah.org/
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
What are widgets?
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
On Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:44:54 -, dtk d...@gmx.de wrote: is there a way to have widgets in the status bar display images instead of utf8 symbols? s/(image|symbol)/glyph/g Modify your font. There are patches either on the website or on the Archlinux Forums that modify dwm to use more powerful font rendering code. If you really like wmii, you might even port it. -- -,Bjartur
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
On 12/22/2011 02:49 PM, hiro wrote: What are widgets? Encapsulated, reusable functionality that displays information in the status bar. Whole onmouseover thing and such... dtk
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
Hey, On 22 December 2011 14:44, dtk d...@gmx.de wrote: I just saw it yesterday in awesome[0] and think it was a pretty neat feature to display information in a compact yet intuitive way. The general consensus is that sprinkling icons everywhere actually makes the interface far more complicated and distracting, and generally quite *bad*. While there *are* some exceptions where icons are more compact, they are rare. Consider the meter widgets people are obsessed with putting on their status bars to tell you, say, the quality of your wifi signal. In 12 horizontal pixels you can very comfortably fit in two digits, which would tell you the signal as a percentage. The same number of pixels would, as a meter, offer only an tenth of the information, and it would be far more difficult to distinguish 80% from 70%. Yes, text is quite a concise medium. I'm actually finding it difficult to think of any examples in which a widget is more compact than text. Nothing I have on my status bar would be, certainly. Thanks, cls
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
Hello, The general consensus is that sprinkling icons everywhere actually makes the interface far more complicated and distracting, and generally quite *bad*. While there *are* some exceptions where icons are more compact, they are rare. Consider the meter widgets people are obsessed with putting on their status bars to tell you, say, the quality of your wifi signal. In 12 horizontal pixels you can very comfortably fit in two digits, which would tell you the signal as a percentage. The same number of pixels would, as a meter, offer only an tenth of the information, and it would be far more difficult to distinguish 80% from 70%. Yes, text is quite a concise medium. then how do you distinguish the percentage of battery load and the percentage of wifi signal strength? Sometimes, I don't care if wifi signal quality is exactly 87% or 78%, It would suffice if I knew if it is over 25%, 50% or 75% ... Plus, I don't have to think about if I'm looking at my battery or my wifi status, thats something where pictures are a little bit better. If I denote the textual percentage with letters, it would cost me some pixels too, so I think thats a rather weak argument. But if you are paving the whole UI with icons, it gets confusing, but same applies to textual information, if you write a huge string with shitloads of information into your status bar, it would be confusing too. So I think, minimalism is the most important design goal, wether using icons or text to display information. But for a project like dwm, whose focus lies on a simple implementation, icons would be simply to complicated to include. By the way, I think the general consensus applies only to this mailing list, the rest of the world (sane or not) believes in some usability bonus. Greetings, flo
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
Sidestepping the holy-war topic here, I'd like to point out that there are plenty of status bars out there like tint2 and dzen2 that you could use. I've even heard of people using DWM in conjunction with xfce-panel. A patch to add the same functionality that one of these examples already does very well would likely be huge and pointless to write. Don't reinvent the wheel and all that. On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 7:44 AM, dtk d...@gmx.de wrote: Hey guys, is there a way to have widgets in the status bar display images instead of utf8 symbols? I know it's a question of philosophy whether you'll want that (and will therefore inevitably spawn holy flame wars ;)), but I just saw it yesterday in awesome[0] and think it was a pretty neat feature to display information in a compact yet intuitive way. Thx for your help dtk - [0]http://awesome.naquadah.org/
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
I just looked at the screenshot linked by the OP, and thats indeed wrong usage of icons, IMHO. I argued againts the wifi signal example, not for replacing descriptive names of applications with crappy logos without any expressivenes. How the fuck can a wolf represent an audio application? At least most people are trained to recognize the wifi antenna symbol or a battery, not least from using cellphones. Greetings, flo
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
On 12/22/2011 04:27 PM, Florian Limberger wrote: The general consensus is that sprinkling icons everywhere actually makes the interface far more complicated and distracting, and generally quite *bad*. While there *are* some exceptions where icons are more compact, they are rare. Yupp. Don't wanna use 'em everywhere, but on some occasions, I think it would be nice'ish to have the option. Consider the meter widgets people are obsessed with putting on their status bars to tell you, say, the quality of your wifi signal. In 12 horizontal pixels you can very comfortably fit in two digits, which would tell you the signal as a percentage. The same number of pixels would, as a meter, offer only an tenth of the information, and it would be far more difficult to distinguish 80% from 70%. Yes, text is quite a concise medium. then how do you distinguish the percentage of battery load and the percentage of wifi signal strength? Sometimes, I don't care if wifi signal quality is exactly 87% or 78%, It would suffice if I knew if it is over 25%, 50% or 75% ... +1 If I want more information, I can haz it in a submenu. Plus, I don't have to think about if I'm looking at my battery or my wifi status, thats something where pictures are a little bit better. +1 Actually, I think it's even easier on the brain to distinguish two battery icons than the strings 50% and 75%. The brain is rather effective at reading, still I think it requires some sophisticated parsing and consciousness to do it. It's the whole analogue vs digital clocks argument. But if you are paving the whole UI with icons, it gets confusing, but same applies to textual information, if you write a huge string with shitloads of information into your status bar, it would be confusing too. So I think, minimalism is the most important design goal, wether using icons or text to display information. +1 But for a project like dwm, whose focus lies on a simple implementation, icons would be simply to complicated to include. Ok. Just thought, since awesome does it: how hard can it possibly be? ;P dtk
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
On 12/22/2011 04:38 PM, Justin Pogue wrote: Sidestepping the holy-war topic here, I'd like to point out that there are plenty of status bars out there like tint2 and dzen2 that you could use. k. Was just reluctant to integrate it. Redirecting all the information there. wmii's status bar basically does everything I want. Was just wondering if that feature existed yet. I've even heard of people using DWM in conjunction with xfce-panel. yeah, did same thing with fluxbox and the xfce-panel. things get nasty when you don't have a fixed num of desktops any more. Piping dynamic information about your tags in there is nasty. thx anyway dtk
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
On Thu 22 Dec 2011 02:44:54 PM PST, dtk wrote: is there a way to have widgets in the status bar display images instead of utf8 symbols? I gave up on this approach for DWM and used dzen2 as my status bar instead: https://github.com/sunaku/.dwm/blob/master/dwm-statusbar (Pictured at bottom of this screenshot: http://ompldr.org/vYnUyNg) dzen2 supports XBM and XPM images, which I use from sm4tik's icon set: https://github.com/sunaku/.dwm/tree/master/dwm-statusbar-icons Finally, the SVN version of dzen2 supports clickable areas, so I get nearly the same level of functionality as I did with WMII's statusbar. For instance, all of my statusbar widgets refresh the entire statusbar after their click handler has been executed. This makes it feel responsive. For example, if I change the current song using my MPD statusbar widget, I want to see the new song title immediately, rather than waiting for the next update (at most, 30 seconds later). Cheers. -- panic: can't find /
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
Is there a reason you're not just using awesome? -sth On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Suraj N. Kurapati sun...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu 22 Dec 2011 02:44:54 PM PST, dtk wrote: is there a way to have widgets in the status bar display images instead of utf8 symbols? I gave up on this approach for DWM and used dzen2 as my status bar instead: https://github.com/sunaku/.dwm/blob/master/dwm-statusbar (Pictured at bottom of this screenshot: http://ompldr.org/vYnUyNg) dzen2 supports XBM and XPM images, which I use from sm4tik's icon set: https://github.com/sunaku/.dwm/tree/master/dwm-statusbar-icons Finally, the SVN version of dzen2 supports clickable areas, so I get nearly the same level of functionality as I did with WMII's statusbar. For instance, all of my statusbar widgets refresh the entire statusbar after their click handler has been executed. This makes it feel responsive. For example, if I change the current song using my MPD statusbar widget, I want to see the new song title immediately, rather than waiting for the next update (at most, 30 seconds later). Cheers. -- panic: can't find / -- --sth
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
whoops, I missed the [wmii] tag. Please ignore my last post. --sth On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 11:54 AM, Seth Hover seth.ho...@gmail.com wrote: Is there a reason you're not just using awesome? -sth On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Suraj N. Kurapati sun...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu 22 Dec 2011 02:44:54 PM PST, dtk wrote: is there a way to have widgets in the status bar display images instead of utf8 symbols? I gave up on this approach for DWM and used dzen2 as my status bar instead: https://github.com/sunaku/.dwm/blob/master/dwm-statusbar (Pictured at bottom of this screenshot: http://ompldr.org/vYnUyNg) dzen2 supports XBM and XPM images, which I use from sm4tik's icon set: https://github.com/sunaku/.dwm/tree/master/dwm-statusbar-icons Finally, the SVN version of dzen2 supports clickable areas, so I get nearly the same level of functionality as I did with WMII's statusbar. For instance, all of my statusbar widgets refresh the entire statusbar after their click handler has been executed. This makes it feel responsive. For example, if I change the current song using my MPD statusbar widget, I want to see the new song title immediately, rather than waiting for the next update (at most, 30 seconds later). Cheers. -- panic: can't find / -- --sth -- --sth
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
On Thu 22 Dec 2011 11:54:21 AM PST, Seth Hover wrote: Is there a reason you're not just using awesome? Subjectively, I like C and Ruby better than Lua. Architecturally, I like that DWM is minimal, having a very limited statusbar, because I can use a better tool for the job (dzen2) or even go overboard (conky) without introducing complexity into the WM itself. -- news: gotcha
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 04:27:35PM +0100, Florian Limberger wrote: then how do you distinguish the percentage of battery load and the percentage of wifi signal strength? Sometimes, I don't care if wifi signal quality is exactly 87% or 78%, It would suffice if I knew if it is over 25%, 50% or 75% ... A one-letter prefix doesn't help you? b50% s70%? I don't even do that much. I used to just have it read, e.g., 50% 70% and I used my amazing pattern-recognition skills to discern that the battery life was mysteriously always first in that list! Now I let my battery LED turn orange to remind me to plug in (I can run a script in a terminal if I care about exact percentage) and I just report my current essid. Plus, I don't have to think about if I'm looking at my battery or my wifi status, thats something where pictures are a little bit better. If I denote the textual percentage with letters, it would cost me some pixels too, so I think thats a rather weak argument. But if you are paving the whole UI with icons, it gets confusing, but same applies to textual information, if you write a huge string with shitloads of information into your status bar, it would be confusing too. If you look at the same series of information every day for a month and are still confused by it, you may want to invest in some Apple products, or at least install Arch Linux. So I think, minimalism is the most important design goal, wether using icons or text to display information. By the way, I think the general consensus applies only to this mailing list, the rest of the world (sane or not) believes in some usability bonus. I don't find cartoons more usable than information. I don't, along the same lines, give a shit what the rest of the world thinks. The rest of the world has chosen an interface. They're free to wallow in it while I use something more effective.
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
On Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:34:12 -0500, Kurt H Maier wrote: A one-letter prefix doesn't help you? b50% s70%? I don't even do that much. I used to just have it read, e.g., 50% 70% and I used my amazing pattern-recognition skills to discern that the battery life was mysteriously always first in that list! Now I let my battery LED turn orange to remind me to plug in (I can run a script in a terminal if I care about exact percentage) and I just report my current essid. I know what you are displaying, I use a slightly modified version of the status.sh script you posted once. Thanks though. I don't find cartoons more usable than information. I don't, along the same lines, give a shit what the rest of the world thinks. The rest of the world has chosen an interface. They're free to wallow in it while I use something more effective. I know you are an ignorant bastard and therefore I don't give a shit about your opinion of the rest of the world, but not everybody is like that and the mail was addressed at them.
Re: [dev] [wmii] widgets with graphics?
On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 02:52:28AM +0100, Florian Limberger wrote: I know what you are displaying, I use a slightly modified version of the status.sh script you posted once. Thanks though. That script in its current incarnation is about 1/10th the size it was when I posted it. I know you are an ignorant bastard and therefore I don't give a shit about your opinion of the rest of the world, but not everybody is like that and the mail was addressed at them. Getting angry at me will not stop you from being too stupid to remember simple things.
