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 Starting with this version, GNOME_USE_XALF and GNOME_XALF_OPTIONS is obsolete and doesn't work anymore.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>
