Xalf (http://www.lysator.liu.se/~astrand/projects/xalf/)
--------------------------------------------------------
This a utility to provide feedback when starting X11 applications.
Xalf is solving the same problem as Busycursor (also written by me),
but in a more reliable and flexible way. The main differences are:
1) Xalf can reliable detect if newly mapped windows are belonging to a
particular launched application. It does this by overloading the Xlib
function XMapWindow with a version that signals the tracking xalf
process.
2) Xalf provides (currently) four different types as "indicators",
described below.
Invisible Window:
Xalf creates an invisible window, to be used in conjunction with a
standard task pager like Gnomes tasklist_applet or the KDE
Taskbar. The name of the window is the application name within
parenthesis. The small window icon (KWM_WIN_ICON) is set to a small
hourglass. This indicator is default.
Splash screen:
An generic splashscreen is displayed during application launch.
Mouse cursor change:
Xalf adds an hourglass symbol to the mousecursor for the root window
and the Gnome panel. Note that the cursor is not changed for the Gnome
foot-menu windows.
Animated star:
An animated indicator resembling the look of that on SGI/Irix
machines (a kind of yellow star blinking while loading a program).
INSTALL
-------
See the file INSTALL.
GNOME INTEGRATION
-----------------
Gnome-libs 1.2.0 has built-in support for Xalf. It can be activated by
setting the environment variable GNOME_USE_XALF before starting GNOME
(eg. add: export GNOME_USE_XALF=1 to .bash_profile or other appropiate
dotfile). This means that all applications will be started via Xalf.
Note: The built-in hooks has some drawbacks: Xalf is always given the
arguments --mappingmode and --invisiblewindow.
I recommend using an updated version of Gnome-libs, which can be
downloaded on the Xalf homepage. You should use version
gnome-libs-1.2.1-0_helix_1xalf2.i386.rpm or newer. Starting with this
version, GNOME_USE_XALF and GNOME_XALF_OPTIONS is obsolete and doesn't
work anymore. Instead, Xalf behavior is controlled by the file
/.gnome/xalf. Use control center to control it (see below). With this
modified version, you can prepend NO_XALF to desktop entries
commandlines to disable Xalf for a specific application. This is
especially useful for launching applications that doesn't start new
processes but only creates new windows. Gmc works like this, so I
recommend change "Exec=gmc" in /usr/share/gnome/apps/Gmc.desktop to
"Exec=NO_XALF gmc".
GNOME CONTROL CENTER CAPPLET
----------------------------
From version 0.4, an GNOME Control Center capplet is included. It
requires an updated version of gnome-libs
(gnome-libs-1.2.1-0_helix_1xalf2.i386.rpm or newer).
KDE INTEGRATION
---------------
KDE has borrowed some Xalf techniques, and integrated them into
KDE2. I don't know the current status of this work, though.
USAGE
-----
If you are not using GNOME with built-in hooks, prepend xalf to your
commandlines. For example, create an desktop icon running:
xalf netscape
COMMANDLINE OPTIONS
-------------------
-h, --help display this help and exit
-v, --version output version information and exit
-t, --timeout nseconds use a time-out period of nseconds seconds
-n, --noxalf do nothing, besides launch application
-m, --mappingmode compatibility mode: Do not distinguish between
windows. All new mapped windows turns off indicator
-i, --invisiblewindow use an invisible window as indicator (default)
(for use with Gnome panel, KDE taskbar etc)
-s, --splash use splashscreen as indicator
-c, --cursor add hourglass to mouse cursor
-a, --anim use animated star as indicator
-l, --title titlestring Title to show in the tasklist
Comments and bug-reports are appreciated.
/Peter Åstrand <astrand@lysator.liu.se>
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