WMPINBOARD(1)wmpinboardWMPINBOARD(1)NAMEwmpinboard - a Window Maker dock app resembling a miniature pinboard
SYNOPSISwmpinboard [options]
What wmpinboard is
wmpinboard is a Window Maker dock applet resembling a miniature pin‐
board. It's intended to somewhat relieve heavily littered desktops by
allowing you to place reminders on a graphical on-screen pinboard
rather than producing a mess of real notes all around your keyboard
(thus being environmentally A Good Thing, too ;-) ). It supports arbi‐
trary 6x10 X fonts and has XLocale support, enabling you to enter
locale-dependent special characters if set up appropriately. Besides
text, you can add small monochrome sketches to your notes or simply
encircle or underline words as a means of emphasis, and alarms can be
set to explicitly remind you of things. Above all, wmpinboard is ani‐
mated in redundant ways to make it look even more attractive, and the‐
meability provides for a way of adapting its appearance to that of the
rest of your desktop.
What wmpinboard ISN'T
Clearly, wmpinboard doesn't allow you to keep an unlimited number of
notes holding arbitrary amounts of information, and that's not what
it's meant to do. Just as real notes offer limited space, so do those
simulated by wmpinboard. Besides, as a dock applet, it aims at being
small and neat and yet useful in a way, and that's what it is, too, or
considered to be by some people, anyway. If you need room for more
comprehensive reminders, use another program, either additionally or
exclusively. There's a variety of such out there, but their niche is
different from that which wmpinboard claims.
OPTIONS
wmpinboard's command-line options can be roughly divided into four
groups: configuration directives, run-time options, command-line
actions, and general options. Generally, wmpinboard supports GNU-style
long options (which may be abbreviated unambiguously) as well as short
ones for parameters used more commonly.
Configuration directives
This type of command-line options changes some aspect of wmpinboard's
configuration that is saved along with the data and thus set in a more
permanent way. Only one such parameter may be specified per call, and
there mustn't be another instance running.
`--font=FONT'
Makes wmpinboard use the specified font; `FONT' can be one of the
shortcuts listed when running the program with "`--help'" as a param‐
eter, or a complete X descriptor of a fixed size 6x10 font. The pin‐
board must be empty in order for this option to be applicable. For
more details, see the section on "FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS".
`--theme=FILE'
Configures wmpinboard to load the specified theme when started inter‐
actively the next time. `FILE' is the location of a wmpinboard theme
file (typically with a file name extension of .wmpbtheme). If it
can't be loaded when run interactively, the program will revert to
its default theme. If `FILE' is an empty string or "default", the
use of a custom theme will be deactivated.
Themes affect wmpinboard's appearance, in particular, its pinboard,
edit mode and alarm panel pixmaps, the latter's digits, and possibly
the location of the pinboard mode label area (via which notes are
created). For downloading themes, or if you're inclined to create
one yourself and need instructions, check out the program's home page
(see the section on "AUTHOR" or wmpinboard's "`--help'" output for
the URL). The themes kit containing instructions and samples on how
to create theme files for wmpinboard that can be downloaded there is
also included with the source package of the program.
`--alarm-cmd=CMD'
Configures `CMD' as the command to be executed on alarms. E.g., you
could use "`xkbbell'" to cause the program to beep on such occas‐
sions, or make it run some sound-playing program. To reset the alarm
command to none, make `CMD' a zero-length string.
Run-time options
`-d DISPLAY' or `--display=DISPLAY'
Uses the specified X display rather than the default one.
`-c' or `--click-to-focus'
This turns on some emulation of a click-based keyboard focus mode.
See the section on "FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS".
`-t TIME' or `--timeout=TIME'
Sets the edit mode timeout (i.e., the number of seconds of idleness
after which edit mode is terminated automatically) to `TIME' seconds.
The compile-time default is 60s, but this may have been changed for
your particular build; run with `-v' if in doubt to check that.
Specifying a value of 0 (zero) will disable the timeout.
`-n' or `--normal-state'
Forces wmpinboard to run in so-called NormalState, which is preferred
by AfterStep's Wharf.
`-w' or `--withdrawn-state'
Forces the program to run in so-called WithdrawnState, as desired by
the Window Maker dock. This option and the previous one are mutually
exclusive. Note also that wmpinboard tries to auto-detect whether
Window Maker is running and sets itself up accordingly. Using `-n'
or `-w' should only be necessary in case those heuristics fail on
your system for some reason or other.
`--light'
Use this switch to suppress animations.
Command-line actions
Even though wmpinboard is by design an interactive application, there
may be occasions when it comes in handy to be able to access/manipulate
notes from the command line. That's why the program offers a set of
command-line options allowing for basic operations of that kind.
Still, it should be kept in mind that wmpinboard is primarily meant to
be used interactively.
All of the options below will, if an interactive instance of wmpinboard
is running in the background, cause that to save its data (and quit
edit mode, if necessary), and if any changes are made by the respective
option, the interactive instance will then be signalled to re-read the
data file. Even though the implemented methods of inter-process commu‐
nication should generally be sufficiently safe with respect to avoiding
data file corruption, it's in theory possible to undermine the concept
and cause damage that way--yet this won't happen unless you deliber‐
ately take pains to achieve the goal. Generally, everything should
work fine as long as you don't try running multiple non-interactive
instances of wmpinboard simultaneously.
Only one of the below actions can be specified per call to wmpinboard.
`--dump'
This dumps the contents of all notes, replacing line breaks by spaces
(unless preceded by a hyphen) and shortening sequences of blanks.
The list of dumped strings will be sorted by color groups. If you
use special characters in your notes, make sure your terminal's run‐
ning with the same character set as wmpinboard, or what you'll see
might have a garbage-like quality.
Each line of output represents one note and is prefixed by the inter‐
nal number currently identifying the respective note and, if an alarm
is configured for the respective note, time and date (or "daily").
`--dump-raw'
Unlike the "cooked" dump described above, this just dumps the raw
contents of all notes without applying any kind of formatting. May
come in handy if your notes happen to contain E-mail addresses or
other things for which lines 10 characters wide are too narrow.
`--del=NUMBER'
This option will remove the note identified by `NUMBER' from the pin‐
board. `NUMBER' is a number determined by the output of either dump
option, which should be consulted right before using this one, since
note numbers may change when notes are moved around on the board or
others are removed.
`--add=STRING'
When run with this option, wmpinboard will add a new note (provided
the maximal number of notes has not yet been reached) at a random
position on the board, with contents `STRING', word-wrapping the text
at the end of the note's lines where necessary (after white space and
hyphens). If due to this wrapping, the entire string cannot be
stored on the note, the remainder will be discarded silently.
In order to create a note with a certain color, the string can be
prefixed by a color code specifying the group of colors which a ran‐
dom color is to be selected from (code letters are recognized case-
insensitively):
%G - green
%Y - yellow/white
%R - reddish
%B - blue
Alternatively or additionally, you may specify a position code as
"%1" through "%9", defining an approximate position on the board
where the note is to be placed. Each of the nine figures corresponds
to a ninth of the board with its index assigned in accordance with
the layout of your keypad (i.e., "%1" meaning lower left, "%9" upper
right corner, and so forth).
Thus,
wmpinboard--add '%g%5test'
will place a green note saying "test" at the center of the board.
(Note: The "%" character can be escaped by a second one if you want
to add an un-prefixed string starting with a percent character.)
`--add-raw=STRING'
Via this option, a new note can be added from the command line (pro‐
vided that this won't exceed the maximum number of notes). `STRING'
specifies the raw contents of the note, as printed by `--dump-raw'.
The same set of color group and position codes as for the previous
option applies.
General options
`-h' or `--help'
This prints a help screen listing command line options together with
brief descriptions.
`-i' or `--info'
Prints information about the current user configuration (font, theme,
alarm command) and some useless statistics.
`-v' or `--version'
This prints some more detailed version information, in particular,
which compile-time settings this binary was built with.
DESCRIPTIONwmpinboard operates in basically two different modes, namely, the pin‐
board view and edit mode. Furthermore, a panel of buttons granting
access to extended options can be popped up in edit mode, which in turn
allows you to display the alarm panel to configure alarm settings for
the current note.
Pinboard view
This is wmpinboard's normal mode of operation. A potentially chaotic
arrangement of tiny squares on a beige-colored oblong (default theme)
is meant to resemble notes pinned to a cork board. Possible actions
include:
· Add a note, by left-clicking on the board's "TO DO" label. This cre‐
ates a new, blank, randomly-colored note at a random position on the
board and puts wmpinboard in edit mode (see below). If you prefer to
place a new note at a certain position before being prompted to enter
its contents, this can be done by moving the mouse cursor after hav‐
ing clicked on the label. This will realize the note and allow you
to drag it to a position of your choice. wmpinboard will switch to
edit mode as soon as you release the mouse button.
· Edit/view a note, by left-clicking on a note. This switches to edit
mode (described below).
· Move a note, by dragging it using the right mouse button. This also
raises the note in question on top of all others. Depending on its
horizontal position, the note will be tilted automatically. As a
side-effect, a single brief right-click can be used to raise a note
on top of overlapping ones without moving it.
By dragging a note with the left mouse button, you can move it with‐
out changing its level with respect to other notes, i.e., without
raising it on top of all others.
Edit mode
This mode serves two purposes: on the one hand, it presents you with a
"full-size" view of a note's contents, on the other, you can use the
occasion to edit it. Due to its limited size, a note can hold up to 10
characters on 6 lines (minus one on the last, i.e., 59 characters alto‐
gether), plus a monochrome sketch of some kind. Possibly actions:
· Enter text. wmpinboard supports user-selectable fonts and dead keys,
so you should be able to enter any characters that are usually acces‐
sible via your keyboard and have them displayed correctly. Further‐
more, the cursor can be moved around using the arrow keys (or EMACS-
style via [Ctrl]-[N]/[P]/[F]/[B], if you are so inclined). Alterna‐
tively, it can be placed explicitly by left-clicking where you want
it to be. Other special keys that are supported include:
[PgUp]/[PgDn]
Places the cursor on character 1/59, respectively.
[Home]/[End]
Places the cursor at the textual start or end of the current line.
[Del]
Deletes the character currently under the text cursor and shifts
the remaining text on the current line to the left; if the current
line is blank, removes it and shifts all lines below up by one
line.
[Backspace]
See [Del], but affects the character on the left of the cursor.
[Ins]
Toggles inserting/overwriting of existing text; the current mode is
indicated by a cursor change (block cursor means insert mode).
[Enter]
In insert mode, wraps the current line at the cursor's position; in
overwrite mode (underscore cursor), merely moves the cursor to the
start of the next line.
[Ctrl]-[Y], -[Z]
Removes an entire (intermediate) line, shifting those below up by
one, and places the cursor at the start of the current line.
[Esc]
Quits edit mode and returns to the pinboard view.
[Shift]-[Left]/[Right]
Cycles through all notes currently on the pinboard.
[Shift]-[Up]/[Down]
Cycles through all notes that are roughly the same color as the
current one. For this purpose, colors have internally been divided
into four groups: green, white/yellow, reddish, blue.
([Shift]-)[Tab]
Cycles (backwards) through availabe note colors.
· Cut'n'paste text. Despite the limitations implied, wmpinboard has
support for cutting & pasting to and from the X clipboard:
· In order to copy text to the clipboard, select the desired segment
via either the left or the right mouse button: the left one will
copy the text post-formatted as done by the command line switch
`--dump' (see the section on "OPTIONS"); the right button will copy
the raw selection. Similarly, a left double click will select the
word (i.e., all adjoining non-blank characters) at the respective
position, a right one will do the same but neglect line breaks as
delimiters. Additionally, you can copy a note's entire raw con‐
tents by pressing [Ctrl]-[R]; [Ctrl]-[C] will do the same with
applied post-formatting.
· To paste the clipboard's contents, press the middle button wherever
the insertion is supposed to happen. This will insert the clip‐
board's current contents, trying to word-wrap the text (at white
space and after hyphens). If in insert mode, following text will
be shifted towards the end of the note, trying to word-wrap that as
well.
If you wish to paste something without word-wrapping (e.g., an URL
containing a hyphen), paste it via [Ctrl]-[I] (think [i]nsert).
This will paste the clipboard's raw contents at the current loca‐
tion of the cursor, shifting subsequent text if in insert mode (not
trying to word-wrap that either).
Obvious limitations you should be aware of include:
· As is usually the case (about wmpinboard, anyway), size matters.
As you know, a note can hold only up to 59 characters, so trying to
paste longer strings will result in those being truncated.
· If the text to be pasted is formatted in some way or other, this
won't be the case any more after it has been pasted: wmpinboard
replaces new line characters by blanks and, when pasting using the
mouse, tries to word-wrap text.
· The information stored in the cut buffer needn't necessarily be
compatible with wmpinboard in that it may be encoded with another
character set.
· Leave edit mode. This is achieved by left-clicking on the triangle
in the lower right-hand side corner. If the note is completely
empty, it will be removed from the board. In any case, this returns
to the pinboard view.
· Pop up a panel with some further options to choose from. This is
done by right-clicking on the aforementioned triangle. To learn what
the panel is there for, see the corresponding section below.
· Draw a sketch. This mode can be activated via the panel, and deacti‐
vated by either right-clicking somewhere on the note or opening the
panel again. While in drawing mode, the mouse pointer is pencil-
shaped, and drawing can be done by keeping the left mouse button
pressed and dragging the mouse, just as you'd expect. Sketch and
text may overlap each other, but keyboard input is ignored while in
drawing mode.
· Erase a sketch. Just like DRAWing mode, this mode is entered via the
panel, and can be quit just like the former. In erase mode, the text
is hidden, so you needn't guess whether a pixel belongs to an entered
character or a drawn sketch. Note that the erase cursor's point is
slightly larger than the one used when drawing.
Note: wmpinboard remembers where you left the text cursor after you
last edited a note and restores this position when you edit it the next
time.
Edit mode panel
This panel is intended to provide easy access to some options affecting
edit mode or the current note in general. The panel looks like this
(letters denoting the buttons for reference below):
+---+---+---+---+
⎪ a ⎪ c ⎪ e ⎪ g ⎪
+---+---+---+---+
⎪ b ⎪ d ⎪ f ⎪ h ⎪
+---+---+---+---+
The buttons bear tiny icons which are meant to suggest what they do,
which isn't all that easy on a 12x12 pixels area. `:^)'
Here's a description of what each button does:
(a) Left-clicking on this button opens and closes the alarm panel (see
below), which allows you to configure alarm settings for the note
being edited. When the alarm panel is visible, the alarm is acti‐
vated. To turn it off, press the button again and make the panel
disappear.
(b) This button allows one to cycle through all colors available for
notes (20 of them). Clicking on it won't close the panel, so this
can be done repeatedly. Using the left mouse button traverses the
colors in ascending, using the right button in descending order.
Note: colors can also be changed via a keyboard shortcut in edit
mode (see that section).
(c) This button closes the panel and returns to edit mode, with the
sketch-drawing feature enabled (see above).
(d) Closes the panel and returns to edit mode, with the sketch-erasing
feature enabled (see above). Don't panic if entered text vanishes
all of a sudden when you do this: this is because wmpinboard inten‐
tionally hides it to eradicate the need for you to make wild
guesses as to what's entered text and which pixels belong to a
sketch.
(e) This button removes all entered text on the current note and places
the text cursor on the very first character. Besides, it closes
the panel, thus returning to edit mode.
(f) Pressing this button completely removes a drawn sketch on the cur‐
rent note and returns to edit mode.
(g) This option removes the *entire* note from the board and returns to
pinboard view.
(h) This button merely closes the panel (and thus puts you back in edit
mode). The same can be achieved by simply right-clicking in this
view.
Alarm panel
This panel can be accessed from the edit mode panel described above.
If the panel is visible while the edit mode panel is on, the alarm is
set, otherwise, it's disabled.
The alarm panel consists of six distinct clickable areas. The digits
to the left and right of the colon are the hour and minute which an
alarm is to be set for. Below them, a date can be specified in month,
day order. On the right, there are two toggle buttons (which can be
either green (on) or red (off) and are mutually exclusive). The top
one represents a daily alarm whereas the bottom one indicates/sets a
date-specific one.
The hour, minute, month, and day of month fields can each be incre‐
mented or decremented by left- or right-clicking on them, respectively.
Clicking on one of the toggle buttons configures the alarm as the
respective type.
As the above description implies, there are two distinct kinds of
alarms: daily and date-specific ones.
Alarms are generally executed only when in pinboard view and not moving
any notes about. If you're keeping the program busy at the time an
alarm would have to occur, it will be delayed until you're finished
(i.e., let the program return to idle pinboard view). The same holds
if an alarm occurs while another one is running.
If all prerequisites are given and an alarm becomes due, the corre‐
sponding note is displayed in edit view, and the display starts to
flash on and off, along with the alarm command being executed (see the
section on "OPTIONS"). To stop the blinking, click on the note. From
then on, the note will be in edit mode.
For daily alarms, the entered date is ignored, and as the name sug‐
gests, they're run every day at the specified time. To deactivate such
an alarm, you have to open the edit mode panel and click button (a) to
make the alarm panel disappear, which turns the alarm off.
In contrast, date-specific alarms are executed only once, at the speci‐
fied day and time. Since a year cannot be specified (explicitly), the
alarm will be run on this date's next occurrence within a year from
when the alarm was set. After that, the alarm will automatically be
disabled. If a date-specific alarm becomes due while wmpinboard isn't
running, it will be displayed as soon as the program is started the
next time--which does not go for daily alarms.
The default mode for alarms is date-specific, and time and date are
initialized with the next full hour when the alarm panel is opened the
first time for a given note.
Internally, alarm times are stored in universal format, i.e., if you
change the time zone after having set an alarm, the time will stay uni‐
versally the same but will differ relative to the new time zone from
what absolute time you originally set. This behavior is intended.
Finally, it should be mentioned that there are a few limitations with
respect to command line actions (such as `--add', `--del', `-i', etc.).
See the section on "RESTRICTIONS".
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
· Q: Is a "pinboard" this small really of any use?
A: Of course the limited size imposes certain restrictions, but if
you think about it, you'll agree that a real life pinboard reminds
you of things by the mere existence of notes being pinned to it. In
order to read what they say, you have to step close and, possibly,
detach the note.
Quite similarly, wmpinboard reminds you of things by facing you with
colored representations of notes on your screen. To find out what it
was you intended them to remind you of, all you have to do is click
on a note, which will then be displayed full size. Furthermore, the
alarm feature introduced in a later version allows for even more
explicit reminders and thus renders wmpinboard even more powerful in
a way than any real-life cork board. `:-)'
By choosing from a variety of possible colors, you can assign partic‐
ular colors to certain kinds of reminders, which may further enhance
wmpinboard's usability. Moreover, you can place certain notes on
certain areas of the board to emphasize their category, urgency, etc.
It's up to you what to make of it.
Finally, by adding drawing capabilities, I've definitely overcome the
contents quantity barrier imposed by the maximum number of 59 charac‐
ters, for as everyone knows, a picture is worth more than a thousand
words. *grin*
· Q: I don't live in an English-speaking country, so what about
extended characters (umlauts, accents, cyrillic alphabet)?
A: wmpinboard allows you to use an arbitrary 8bit X font, provided
that its characters are of a fixed size of 6x10 (or, deprecated but
possible, anything <= 7x10) pixels. The default font is "6x10" (more
precisely, it's called "-misc-fixed-medium-r-nor‐
mal--10-100-75-75-c-*-ISO8859-1"), an ISO8859-1 (Latin1) font which
should be part of every XFree installation.
In order to make wmpinboard use another font, run it as
$ wmpinboard --font=FONT
where FONT is either a shortcut for a compiled-in font name (see the
section on "OPTIONS" for a list of those) or a valid, complete X font
descriptor. This is a configuration directive, meaning that no other
instance of wmpinboard may be running at the time. Note that this
only works if there are no more notes on the board. It's intention‐
ally been made impossible to change the font while there are notes
saved in wmpinboard's data file, since this might result in garbage
being displayed. Of course even a font specified via a shortcut has
to exist on your system in order to be usable.
If a configured custom font cannot be loaded or has invalid dimen‐
sions, wmpinboard will try to revert. Note that this won't affect
the font name saved along with the data, though.
· Q: How can I disable those vexing, superfluous animations?
A:
$ wmpinboard--light
· Q: Why aren't those animations smooth all of the time? Sometimes it
looks like they're being skipped entirely.
A: This presumably is a multitasking issue: depending on the current
system load and wmpinboard's/the X server's recent CPU usage history,
it may take a moment until the scheduling has been adapted to the
suddenly increased CPU load implied by displaying the animation, and
short as it is, it may already be finished until this has happened,
i.e., it's the X server lagging behind in updating the program's dis‐
play if wmpinboard's been idle for some time prior to that. It may
sound paradoxical, but the effect is the more likely to show the
lower the system's load is. I don't see a way to avoid this
effect--either this, or you turn off animations altogether.
· Q: When I leave wmpinboard idle in edit mode for some time, edit mode
is terminated automatically. Is that intended?
A: Yes. After 60 idle seconds (that's the default; see the section
on "OPTIONS") in edit mode (no mouse click and no keyboard input),
edit mode is terminated automatically. If the note being edited hap‐
pens to be blank, it will be discarded (or removed if an existing
note is being edited).
This timeout can, however, be adjusted according to your preferences
or turned off using the `-t' parameter. See the section on "OPTIONS"
for this.
· Q: When does wmpinboard save its data?
A: Notes data is saved on each of these occasions:
· whenever edit mode is terminated
· when you switch notes in edit mode (via [Shift]-[arrow key])
· when a note has been moved on the board
· when an interactive instance is running and you run wmpinboard from
the command line, making it dump, add, or delete notes
· when killed via SIGINT or SIGTERM and edit mode is active
Notes are saved to a file called .wmpinboarddata in your home direc‐
tory (see the section on "FILES").
· Q: I've tried my best and littered the entire pinboard with quite a
lot of notes. Now I can't seem to be able to add another one.
A: There's a compile-time limit of 20 notes. I think more notes on
this tiny a board really don't make any sense.
· Q: I've explicitly configured my window manager for click-based
rather than mouse-following focus, but wmpinboard's focus follows the
mouse regardless. Can I change this?
A: By default, wmpinboard actively claims the keyboard input focus
(if it's in note edit mode) whenever the pointer is moved over the
application's area. Since wmpinboard is a dock applet, i.e., a with‐
drawn rather than a "real" X window, it can't be assigned a focus in
the same way as to the latter ones. However, running wmpinboard with
the parameter `-c' will make it emulate some sort of click-based
focusing. This means, it actively claims the keyboard focus only on
these occasions:
· when a new note is created (not when you click on an existing
note--you'll have to explicitly click on the editing area to make
it claim focus; this way, you can just view a note without any
change to keyboard focus)
· when you click somewhere on the text area in edit mode
Once keyboard-focused, wmpinboard will keep it until another window
is explicitly focused (usually by clicking on its title bar or bor‐
der). To focus wmpinboard again when it's lost focus, you'll have to
click on its text area in edit mode. This click will only focus the
application and not have the usual cursor-positioning effect.
This feature is to be considered experimental since I'm not sure of
how much use it really is. A mouse-following focus is the recom‐
mended mode of operation.
· Q: I've noticed that after a while, some sort of darker stains appear
on my notes. Is that a bug in some drawing routine?
A: No, this is not a bug. These "stains" are meant to resemble
creases, caused by frequent handling of a particular note (wear &
tear, you see?). In fact, they're added with a certain probability
whenever you view a note by clicking on it (note that leafing through
notes via [Shift]-[arrow keys] is not affected), when you clear its
textual or drawn contents via the edit mode panel (very outwearing,
that ;-) ), and when a note is moved. This feature can be disabled
at compile time by running configure with `--disable-creases' as a
parameter.
To prevent the question, no, worn-out notes cannot be ironed to get
rid of the creases. Sorry. `:-p'
· Q: Is wmpinboard compatible with AfterStep's Wharf?
A: wmpinboard tries to autodetect whether Window Maker is running and
sets itself up accordingly. If this doesn't work for you for some
reason, you can explicitly make it run in either Withdrawn- or Nor‐
malState using the `-w' or `-n' flag, respectively. See the section
on "OPTIONS".
Swallowing evidently works with AfterStep 1.6.10; I don't know about
earlier versions. A Wharf config line you might try is this:
*Wharf wmpinboard nil MaxSwallow "wmpinboard" wmpinboard &
Besides, wmpinboard has been reported to work with Blackbox.
· Q: I have X running at a color depth of 8 bits, i.e., in palette
mode, and wmpinboard obviously requires too many colors and thus
looks real messy (or doesn't run at all, complaining about "not
enough free color cells"). What can I do about this?
A: As of version 0.99.1, the recommended solution is to upgrade what‐
ever component of your system restricts you to a palette mode.
· Q: Can I run multiple instances of wmpinboard as the same user,
simultaneously?
A: No, this is certainly not a good idea. The run-time behavior may
be unpredictable, and your data file can get corrupted. Therefore,
any wmpinboard process that's to be run interactively first checks
whether another interactive instance is running, and if so, refuses
to run.
· Q: I've just upgraded from a pre-0.7 version of wmpinboard and
noticed that its data file format has changed completely since. Is
there a way to upgrade and yet keep my existing notes?
A: There's a Perl script doing the conversion included with the dis‐
tribution (the source one, anyway). If your package didn't include
that, feel free to mail to the author (see the section on "AUTHOR" at
the end of this documentation).
· Q: I find a mere 59 characters per note to be a real limitation. How
about making wmpinboard pop up an external window with more room for
that? Or how about assigning that job to an external editor?
A: There's a variety of comprehensive programs for keeping notes out
there, offering this functionality but being rather heavy-weight
since they are linked against one GUI library or another (CoolNotes
or KNotes come to mind). On the other hand, I couldn't find a
WM-conforming reminder I could omnipresently stick to my desktop any‐
where, so I wrote wmpinboard. I wanted it to be small, neat, easy to
use, and yet useful in a way.
I hope that's about what the program is currently like. And I'd pre‐
fer to keep it like that rather than inflate it by linking against a
GUI library--eventually, the note editing code would outweigh the
rest of the application by a factor, and people would probably still
create notes mostly shorter than 60 characters. If you restrict your
memos to keywords and abbreviations, that's quite a lot.
I want wmpinboard to remain an applet in that it doesn't open up
external windows and use (if just temporarily) additional desktop
space. I explicitly wrote it to have something omnipresent at a
fixed position on my desktop. I find it preferable to have the notes
pop up in place rather than somewhere else on the screen.
Personally, I use other programs for larger notes too; wmpinboard has
been designed for things smaller in size and greater in urgency, it's
in no way meant to be a comprehensive knowledge base application of
any kind.
Summing up, I think a dock applet should be small both regarding its
on-screen representation and the resources it uses. That's why I
don't intend to add any pop-up dialogs or similar things to wmpin‐
board.
· Q: I've tried the program, yet I can't help finding it utterly use‐
less. What shall I do?
A: The solution is simple. Just don't use it.
· Q: Will your answer to this question be "no"?
A: Nope.
HINTS
· A good way of making the best of the organizational features offered
by wmpinboard is to use certain colors and locations on the pinboard
to indicate urgency and contents of a note. For example, you might
use each of the color groups for a certain kind of reminder, because
that enables you to leaf through all notes with related contents via
[Shift]-[arrow keys] in edit mode. Besides, you might assign each
corner of the board a specific urgency, altogether allowing you to
derive a note's type from its color and its urgency from its location
on the board. Thanks again to the ability to leaf through all notes
belonging to the same group of colors, notes with similar contents
will still be clustered in a way.
UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES
This piece of documentation doesn't cover any undocumented features.
FILES
~/.wmpinboarddata
the user's wmpinboard data file
~/.wmpinboarddata.new
temporary file created momentarily when saving data
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
$HOME
the user's home directory
RESTRICTIONS
· wmpinboard relies on a dock app tile size of at least 64x64 pixels.
In fact, using smaller tiles renders the applet rather useless, as,
e.g., opening the edit mode panel becomes impossible.
· Unpredictable effects may be the results if a command line action is
taken while an alarm is running and others are due simultaneously.
If just a single alarm is active and no others are due, that alarm
will be cancelled when the two instances of wmpinboard synchronize.
If more instances are due during the process, a race conditions
arises that can't be solved satisfactorily due to the program's
internal structure and organization. Still, in theory, nothing crit‐
ical will happen, and the most you'll lose will be an alarm or two.
· wmpinboard data files are not designed to be portable across archi‐
tectures. Due to differences in data type representations that are
likely otherwise, a datafile can only be reliably used by program
binaries running on machines of the same architecture.
· Certainly of no interest to anyone, but mentioned for the sake of
completeness: wmpinboard's alarm features will start to fail past
04:14:07 on Jan 19, 2037, which is due to the legacy Un*x time for‐
mat.
BUGS
If you stumble on any bugs, feel free to mail the author. The same
goes if you encounter any problems running/using the program. Be sure
to include any information you consider relevant, i.e., at a minimum,
the version of wmpinboard you're using as well as your OS and X ver‐
sions.
Also, further suggestions are always welcome. Please check the TODO
file that's part of the distribution to see if what you're about to
suggest isn't already on my "to do" list, or has been suggested earlier
and was rejected for one reason or other.
SEE ALSOwmaker(1)AUTHORwmpinboard is copyrighted (c) 1998-2000 by Marco Goetze, <gomar@mind‐
less.com>. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
License, revision 2 or any later revision thereof. Use at your own
risk.
New releases of and themes for wmpinboard can be found at
<http://www.tu-ilmenau.de/~gomar/stuff/wmpinboard/>, or that was true
at least by the time this document was last updated.
3rd Berkeley Distribution 0.99.3 WMPINBOARD(1)
