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Running TkGoodStuff
Running TkGoodStuff
Table of Contents (this document)
Invocation
You invoke tkgoodstuff by issuing a command of the following form:
tkgoodstuff [-geometry -3+0] [-f configfilename ]
Here, the brackets indicate optional arguments, which are discussed below.
Geometry
tkgoodstuff looks in two places for geometry (screen location)
instructions, and, failing that, picks a default in the upper right
corner of the screen. A geometry specification is a string that
identifies a point on the screen by its x and y distances in pixels
from the top (or bottom) and left (or right) edges of your screen:
Specification | Puts the tkgoodstuff Panel . . . |
+1-123 | 1 pixel from the left and
123 pixels from the bottom of the screen |
-1+123 | 1 pixel from the right and
123 pixels from the bottom of the screen |
tkgoodstuff chooses the first geometry specification it finds in the
following ways:
- In the command line, as follows:
tkgoodstuff -geometry +34-88
- In the active configuration file, by a line such as:
set TKG_geometry +34-88
Determination of Configuration File
tkgoodstuff needs a configuration file to run. It uses the first
file it finds in the following ways:
- Named on the command line, as follows (where "configfilename" is the name
of your file):
tkgoodstuff -f configfilename
- Named in the environment variable TKGOODSTUFFRC (if it is set).
- In your home directory (as set in the environment variable
HOME) under the name .tkgoodstuffrc.
- In the tkgoodstuff directory (by default,
/usr/local/lib/tkgoodstuff), under the name system-tkgoodstuffrc.
Using the "-f configfilename" form allows you to have many different
panels defined for different purposes.
Button Actions
Buttons behave slightly differently from what you may be used to, in
that their function is executed as soon as you click on the button
(rather than when you release the button). The reason for this is not
some religious preference: the handling of event bindings in tk, as
far as I can see, makes it difficult to implement our "icon+text"
buttons in any other way (save in a C extension to tk and an
accompanying new wish interpreter, which I wanted to avoid for a
"lite" utility like this).
Using the Popup Menu
To invoke the popup menu, move the pointer over the tkgoodstuff clock
and hold down the first mouse button. When you release the button
with the mouse pointer over a menu (or sub-menu) item, the
corresponding action will be performed.
Among the items on the popup menu are:
- Sub-menus for provided by some of the clients.
- Check-buttons to enable/disable beeping (which clients might
do for various purposes), and to enable/disable notices in
general.
- "About tkgoodstuff (help)" with buttons to launch a browser
to read these html pages.
- "View tkgoodstuff Log": view the debugging output
of tkgoodstuff.
- Entries for iconifying, restarting (useful when toying with
your configuration file), and exiting tkgoodstuff.
Exiting
One of the entries on the popup menu is "Exit tkgoodstuff". Use it,
or use your window manager function to destroy the tkgoodstuff window,
or kill the process, or turn your machine off.
Sep 14, 1995. Mark Crimmins markcrim@umich.edu
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