NAME
gDesklets - provides an advanced architecture for desktop applets
SYNOPSIS
gdesklets open [ display ]
DESCRIPTION
gDesklets provides an advanced architecture for desktop applets -- tiny
displays sitting on your desktop in a symbiotic relationship of eye
candy and usefulness.
Populate your desktop with status meters, icon bars, weather sensors,
news tickers... whatever you can imagine! Virtually anything is
possible and maybe even available some day.
FIRST START
You can find an entry in the GNOME menu after a successful
installation. This will start the gDesklets Shell where you can
install and run desktop applets. When you log out or quit ’gDesklets’,
the settings will be remembered for the next session.
COMMAND LINE TOOL
The command line tool gdesklets lets you perform all administration
tasks from the command line.
Display files can be opened using
$ gdesklets open <displayfile>
If the gdesklets-daemon wasn’t running, this will start up the daemon
as well. You can only have one daemon per X-display. The daemon can be
stopped again by calling
$ gdesklets stop
Usage of the command line frontend:
gdesklets [option] <command> [arguments...]
<command>: open <files> (Opens the given display files)
start (Runs the gDesklets daemon)
stop (Stops the gDesklets daemon)
list (Lists open displays)
restart (Restarts the gDesklets daemon)
profile <profile> (Switches to the given profile)
profile (Shows the current and the available
profiles)
shell (Opens the graphical shell)
slay (Kills the daemon -- use in emergency)
status (Checks daemon status)
about (Prints information about gDesklets)
version (Prints gDesklets version)
configure (Opens the configuration dialog)
help (Displays this text)
check (Dependency check for python bindings)
[option]: --no-tray-icon (disables the systray icon)
If you don’t pass a command, the script will fall back to
gdesklets start which is the default.
GDESKLETS-SHELL
The shell is a graphical frontend for managing your desklets. You can
start it either by selecting it from the GNOME menu (Accessories ->
gDesklets), by selecting it from the tray icon popup menu, or by
calling:
$ gdesklets shell
The shell currently lets you create and switch between profiles,
install new desklets and search for desklets. New desklets can be
installed by dragging links from your web browser or files from the
file manager into its window, or by selecting the menu item "File ->
Install package...".
Displays (as we call the applets) will usually appear in the top left
corner of your screen when you first run them. You can move displays
around by pressing and holding down the middle mouse button.
’gDesklets’ will remember the new position of the display for the
future.
USAGE
If you press the right mouse button over a display, a popup menu will
open. It depends on the display what you will see there, but the
following items are always available:
Configure desklet
Opens the configuration dialog for this display. It depends on
the display what you can configure.
Move desklet
Attaches desklet to cursor for moving it around. Click to
release it.
View Source
Lets you view the desklet’s source file (.display).
Restart desklet
Restarts this display. This menu item is mainly for sensor
debugging.
Remove desklet
Removes this display from your desktop.
About
Lets you view desklet’s "About" information, license and readme
file.
LOGFILE
The gdesklets-daemon writes a log file. That file can be found in
~/.gdesklets/logs/gdesklets<display>.log where <display> is the name of
the X-Display.
You can select the item View log in the popup menu of the tray icon to
view the log messages.
SUPPORTED WINDOW MANAGERS
In order to run on as many desktops as possible, gDesklets relies on
the EWMH specification from freedesktop.org. This specification is
respected among many window managers. We currently know of the
following EWMH compliant window managers:
* metacity
* xfwm4
* openbox
* enlightenment (>= 0.16.6)
* fvwm (2.5.x, see http://www.fvwm.org/features.php)
* sawfish
* kwin
* evilwm
* fluxbox (recent versions)
* waimea
* ...and certainly some others which we forgot here.
MEMORY CONSUMPTION
This is taken seriously. In every release we’re addressing these
issues. Unfortunately, gDesklets is relying on libraries which contain
their own bugs or leaks. In some places it’s possible to create a work-
around. Sometimes, we
have to wait until an issue in bugzilla is fixed. gDesklets itself
shouldn’t leak. We’ve checked the relevant C code to make sure of that.
At startup the program claims approximately 16 MB of RAM. In the future
we’re going to decrease that number. Some people in the GNOME and GTK+
community are also addressing these problems at a lower level (gtk+ and
gnome libraries). gDesklets will automatically benefit from these
efforts.
COMMUNITY
The site ’http://www.gdesklets.de’ is the place where you can get new
desklets or upload your own creations for sharing them with other
users.
Discussion and Help http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gdesklets-
list
gDesklets Developer’s Book (for developing on the gDesklets platform)
http://develbook.gdesklets.de
A printed reference in German language is available from ’Software &
Support Verlag GmbH’. The book ’Exploring Python’ covers desklet
development on 34 pages.
You can meet the ’gDesklets’ developers and other fans on the IRC
channel #gdesklets on GIMPnet (irc.gimp.org).
AUTHOR
gDesklets was written by
* Martin Grimme <martin@pycage.de>.
* Christian Meyer <chrisime@gnome.org>.
* Jesse Andrews <jdandr2@cs.uky.edu>.
THANKS
I’d like to thank all people who supported (and are still supporting)
me so well with ’gDesklets’. Please complain if I forgot you... ;)
* Christian Meyer -- ideas and sensor programming
* Jesse Andrews -- sensor programming
* Johannes "Waldgeist" Rebhan -- artwork
* Christian Neumair -- installation
* Sebastien Bacher -- man page and lots of other stuff
* Luke Stroven -- gdesklets.gnomedesktop.org and ’gDesklets’ forum
* James Henstridge -- excellent GTK bindings for Python
* Joe Sapp -- documentation
* Bjoern Koch -- additional programming, documentation
* Robert Pastierovic -- additional programming, documentation
* Lauri Kainulainen -- additional programming, gdesklets website
BUGS
If you encounter bugs which are not listed here, please post a bug
report at https://launchpad.net/gdesklets/+filebug for gDesklets.
Please don’t report useless bug reports, like "gDesklets crashes"
without checking the log file first, because that doesn’t tell us much.
Also make sure, that you have all the necessary dependencies installed.
If the log says: "ImportError: No module named X" then you clearly
don’t have the python module "X" installed on your system. We are
going to close useless bug reports immediately(!), so please save your
time and ours and be smart!
LICENCE AND DISCLAIMER
This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTIBILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the file
’COPYING’ for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this software; if not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 390, Boston, MA
02111-1307 USA
This software is provided "as is" and the author is not and cannot be
made responsible for any damage resulting from the use of this
software.
COPYRIGHT
gdesklets is copyright (c) 2003 - 2007 by
* Martin Grimme <martin@pycage.de>,
* Christian Meyer <chrisime@gnome.org>,
* Jesse Andrews <jdandr2@cs.uky.edu>
* Benoît Dejean <tazforever@dlfp.org>
glibtop Python wrapper in libdesklets is copyright (c) 2003 - 2005 by
* Benoît Dejean <tazforever@dlfp.org>
The latest version of gDesklets can be found at
http://www.gdesklets.de/ The Desklets bzr repository can be found at
https://code.launchpad.net/gdesklets/
March 29, 2008 gdesklets(1)