XNotify displays a notification on the screen. XNotify receives a notification specification in stdin and shows a notification for the user on the screen.
XNotify comes with the following features:
- Image support (see below).
- Support for fallback fonts (you can set more than one fonts, that will be tried in order).
- Queue of notifications (each notification is displayed above the previous one).
- X resources support (you don't need to recompile Xnotify for configuring it).
The files are:
./README: This file../Makefile: The makefile../config.h: The hardcoded default configuration for XNotify../config.mk: The setup for the makefile../xnotify.{c,h}: The source code of XNotify.
First, edit ./config.mk to match your local setup.
In order to build XNotify you need the Imlib2, Xlib and Xft header files.
The default configuration for XNotify is specified in the file config.h,
you can edit it, but most configuration can be changed at runtime via
X resources and via command-line options.
Enter the following command to build XNotify.
This command creates the binary file ./xnotify.
make
By default, XNotify is installed into the /usr/local prefix. Enter the
following command to install XNotify (if necessary as root). This command
installs the binary file ./xnotify into the ${PREFIX}/bin/ directory, and
the manual file ./xnotify.1 into ${MANPREFIX}/man1/ directory.
make install
XNotify receives as input a notification specification where each line is a notification entry. Each line is made out of a notification title and a notification body separated by any number of tabs. Lines without title are ignored.
The following is an example of how to run XNotify
$ cat /tmp/xnotify.fifo | xnotify -m 0 -G NE -g -10+10 -s 15
This line means: read notifications from /tmp/xnotify.fifo, display
the notifications on the north east (-G NE) of the monitor 0 (-m 0),
that is, on the upper right corner of the first monitor. The
notifications should be placed -10 pixels to the left and +10 pixels
down (thus creating a 10 pixel gap with the upper right corner).
Each notification stay alive for 15 seconds.
To create a fifo for XNotify, you can place the following in your ~/.xinitrc:
mkfifo /tmp/xnotify.fifo
while true
do
[ -p /tmp/xnotify.fifo ] || break
cat /tmp/xnotify.fifo
sleep 3
done > /tmp/xnotify.fifo &
To create a notification with a image, input to XNotify a line beginning
with IMG:/path/to/file.png followed by a tab. For example:
$ printf 'IMG:/path/to/file.png\tThis is a notification\n' > /tmp/xnotify.fifo