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View Full Version : Linux window list thingers. (taskbars! That's the word I was looking for.)



Shoeberto
09-17-2006, 12:07 AM
Is there a single one that I can set to auto-hide, but will raise itself from autohide when a window is flashing? I've not found a way to make kicker, gnome-panel, or kxdock do it, and it's really an annoyance.

Dr Unne
09-17-2006, 08:42 PM
The only other "sophisticated" docker I can think of is the one that comes with XFCE4. (It's nice anyways, for other reasons) I don't know if it has the behavior you specify. There's also pypanel and perlpanel, etc. And Enlightenment has some docks.

You could probably patch gnome-panel or Kicker to auto-raise when a window gives the URGENT hint. It'd probably be a simple patch. But reading the code enough to find the place to patch it would take a while.

I'm almost certain you can do this in FVWM. If you're in the mood for self-inflicted pain. You'd have to basically script your own dock/taskbar from scratch using FVWM's scripting language.

Shoeberto
09-17-2006, 08:57 PM
I'm almost certain you can do this in FVWM. If you're in the mood for self-inflicted pain. You'd have to basically script your own dock/taskbar from scratch using FVWM's scripting language.
Mm. Fun.

I tried playing around with KDE's window-specific settings, which had a bunch of options that seemed related but are completely undocumented. It was pretty fruitless, and Kicker crashes more often than not when set to autohide anyway. Le sigh.

Dr Unne
09-17-2006, 11:10 PM
On the off chance you're trying to get Gaim instant message windows to have this behavior, there are hacks you can use. One of the plugins or settings for Gaim will let you change the window title of a window where a new message is pending. You can set it to add some strange combination of characters, like [**] to any window with a pending new message. Then set your window manager to do something to windows with those characters in the title.

I doubt you can unhide kicker, but you may be able to do something to the window itself, like raise it or something. If you're able to capture the event you want, and if you have the option to script an action, you can do nearly anything. Stick an XOSD message on the screen saying "NEW MESSAGE", for example.

You may also want to check what DCOP commands are available for kicker and for other apps, if you're using KDE. You can do a lot of screwy stuff from the command line in KDE via DCOP.

Shoeberto
09-18-2006, 12:02 AM
The only thing I guess it really bothers me with it Xchat. It's already set up to give the URGENT hint when a highlight (or nick triggered otherwise by a script I wrote) is triggered, prettymuch for the same reason as a Gaim window - I use it as my primary means of communication.

Come to think of it, I could write it into my Xchat highlighting script to change the window title, I think. I'll have to fiddle around with setting the window manager to do the things that I want it to do. Thanks :)