• From: London, UK
  • Registered: 2011-10-15
  • Posts: 200

Topic: Living without a panel

In my continuing quest for WM perfection, am trying life without a panel, so tint2 is currently history for me, after a brief flirtation with fbpanel, I kept coming back to tint2 with the default #! settings which I have grown used to - took a while to get used to having a panel for each monitor / desktop.

Anyways, so far so good without a panel, but I do miss seeing the current time. Obviously I can show the desktop and see the time in conky, as am often working in full screen mode on both monitors. But wondering if there is an easy way to get the current time displayed in some way - I guess I could have a single line conky at the top / bottom showing just the current time, current workspace etc ? But am hankering after something like the text based views you see at the top of awesome and similar tiling window managers.

Anything spring to mind on this front ?

Cheers

Enoch

EnochRoot's Website

  • From: Dusk Till Dawn
  • Registered: 2009-07-02
  • Posts: 4,439

Re: Living without a panel

Hi,

what about a clock in openbox menu? http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=274922

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  • From: inside Ed
  • Registered: 2011-07-25
  • Posts: 2,865

Re: Living without a panel

You could make a super slim conky and have it stay above the other windows. I have no idea what the configuration for that is, but I've seen it done.

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  • wlourf
  • #! CrunchBanger
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2010-02-13
  • Posts: 153

Re: Living without a panel

Hi,

I had exactly the same problem as you ! I found this method to display the hour and it works all the time! Even with applications running in fullscreen mode and with the "above" setup in rc.xml

Here is the script, you have to bind it to a shortcut :

#!/bin/bash
#requires xosd-bin
echo -e "$(date +%H:%M)" | osd_cat -p top -o 20 -i 20 -c yellow -d 3 -f -*-lucida-bold-r-*-*-34-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
exit  0

HTH smile

wlourf's Website

  • From: Dusk Till Dawn
  • Registered: 2009-07-02
  • Posts: 4,439

Re: Living without a panel

Oh, of course you can assign a shortcut which calls notify-osd to display the time...

notify-send "Time:" "$(date)"
Nothing right in the left brain. Nothing left in the right brain.
  • Registered: 2011-03-09
  • Posts: 3,223

Re: Living without a panel

^ or use twmn instead of notify, because it is moar minimal. smile

if you are curious about the top-conky-bar with no window overlap, i have that setup right here. no clock in there (i do use tint2 so that's where my date+clock is) so you should figure that one out yourself. but at least i got the main config down for you.

imo, in your situation, i think the notifier-option proposed by machinebacon (but using twmn big_smile) is the most elegant. just couple it with a keyboard shortcut to make the time pop up anytime you need it.

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  • From: London, UK
  • Registered: 2011-10-15
  • Posts: 200

Re: Living without a panel

Sounds good guys, will give the notify method a try as thats exactly what I was after, a quick popup that won't distract me or encourage clock watching. Should have thought of that, so simple really.

Cheers

Enoch

EnochRoot's Website

  • From: Dusk Till Dawn
  • Registered: 2009-07-02
  • Posts: 4,439

Re: Living without a panel

rhowaldt wrote:

^ or use twmn

yesyesyes, buuuut it's not a default app (yet, unfortunately, grrr!) big_smile

Nothing right in the left brain. Nothing left in the right brain.
  • Registered: 2011-03-09
  • Posts: 3,223

Re: Living without a panel

^^ look here if you care to check out twmn. it is great, which is why i constantly promote it: http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic/15684/twmn/

^ yes! it should be default man! i gotta send emails to corenominal tongue

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  • From: London, UK
  • Registered: 2011-10-15
  • Posts: 200

Re: Living without a panel

I thought at first you were suggesting I use twm which took me back a bit I can tell you ! http://xwinman.org/vtwm.php

EnochRoot's Website

  • Registered: 2011-03-09
  • Posts: 3,223

Re: Living without a panel

^ haha nice, no i'd never suggest that stuff smile

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  • From: Fayetteville, Arkansas
  • Registered: 2011-04-25
  • Posts: 150

Re: Living without a panel

I wear a watch. wink

  • From: London, UK
  • Registered: 2011-10-15
  • Posts: 200

Re: Living without a panel

tmillic wrote:

I wear a watch. wink

Funnily enough me too, but the time and date were the only part of my panel I was finding I missed. Plus loving the new OpenBox 3.5, seems even faster if that is possible.

And once again the quality and speed of responses on here is awesome. And no am not moving to a tiling WM just yet tongue

EnochRoot's Website

  • From: Philadelphia
  • Registered: 2011-05-09
  • Posts: 312

Re: Living without a panel

What's your solution for a systray? Or you don't use one?

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  • Registered: 2011-03-09
  • Posts: 3,223

Re: Living without a panel

^ i don't even (really) use a systray. i mean, i have one, but all it holds is the volume-icon and 9 out of 10 times i control that through keyboard-shortcuts so i don't really need it there either. but i like how it looks smile
so i'd say a systray is the least of your worries.

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  • From: London, UK
  • Registered: 2011-10-15
  • Posts: 200

Re: Living without a panel

Currently not using one, I liked the crunchbang statler flavour of tint (coming from Xubuntu previously) but was always struggling with having a panel per workspace per monitor, but liked the funky icons rather than little windows in the XFCE pager. So now just use Meta-tab to show open windows in all my workspaces and like the new alt-tab vertical list in OB 3.5

Previously had network manager (no need when wired), tasque, date / time and whatever mpd client I was using in the system tray.

Would say give it a try, and see how you get on. Did find a utility which would give you a view of all windows on current workspace, but it didn't work when I compiled it, something like that would be nice, but so far am adjusting to my increased screen real estate !

EnochRoot's Website

  • From: London, UK
  • Registered: 2011-10-15
  • Posts: 200

Re: Living without a panel

For volume got my multimedia keys and have my horizontal wheel on my Logitech mouse bound to volume up and down - don't need a graphic visualisation of how loud it is - though I can see problems when the missus has been using the box and I get deafened when I start something up or get new mail !

EnochRoot's Website

  • wlourf
  • #! CrunchBanger
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2010-02-13
  • Posts: 153

Re: Living without a panel

machinebacon wrote:

Oh, of course you can assign a shortcut which calls notify-osd to display the time...

notify-send "Time:" "$(date)"

I choosed osd_cat instead of notify-send because when running vlc in full screen mode, and with the "above" layer option in openbox, notify-send stayed below vlc, but notify-send is more easy to use of course !

wlourf's Website

  • From: London, UK
  • Registered: 2011-10-15
  • Posts: 200

Re: Living without a panel

And I like the Ubuntu style notify osd - just don't tell rhowaldt cool

EnochRoot's Website

  • From: Kowloon
  • Registered: 2011-10-13
  • Posts: 407

Re: Living without a panel

@Enoch

How do you remember what you got on which desktop, without a panel? I have really bad memory, so I don't think I can live without a panel.

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kowloonboy's Website

  • From: London, UK
  • Registered: 2011-10-15
  • Posts: 200

Re: Living without a panel

kowloonboy wrote:

@Enoch

How do you remember what you got on which desktop, without a panel? I have really bad memory, so I don't think I can live without a panel.

I pretty much thunderbird and firefox on my home desktop / workspace, xterms and emacs on 2 / dev, other bits on 3 and virtual box / vnc / gotomypc (which should be called slowtomypc)

So normally know where things should be, but am using Meta tab (for me Windows Tab) to get the view of all apps on all desktops when I get forgetful / confused / low on caffeine. Wouldn't mind something which showed me all the workspaces in full screen mode like http://thegraveyard.org/skippy.html but working on all desktops. I tried skippy hd and it played up, may try the normal one at some point.

Hope that helps kowloonboy !

EnochRoot's Website

  • Registered: 2011-03-09
  • Posts: 3,223

Re: Living without a panel

EnochRoot wrote:

And I like the Ubuntu style notify osd - just don't tell rhowaldt cool

big_smile

to each his own!

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  • wlourf
  • #! CrunchBanger
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2010-02-13
  • Posts: 153

Re: Living without a panel

@ EnochRoot
There is also a "client-list-combined-menu", better than Meta Tab imho !

  <keybind key="C-S-a">
      <action name="ShowMenu">
        <menu>client-list-combined-menu</menu>
      </action>
    </keybind>

wlourf's Website

  • From: London, UK
  • Registered: 2011-10-15
  • Posts: 200

Re: Living without a panel

thats what I have bound to Windows Tab - ideally would like that menu showing only the four desktops, without the options to add new desktops etc

EnochRoot's Website

  • From: Japan
  • Registered: 2011-04-09
  • Posts: 474

Re: Living without a panel

I had a thought about the same thing as OP recently.  I've got a wristwatch.  It's a low-tech solution that saves me screen space :-p

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