Re: [tlug] Recent conversation on devel@fedoraproject

["Curt J. Sampson" <cjs@example.com>]

On 2021-04-24 06:27 -0400 (Sat), Scott Robbins wrote:

> >  > >  > xbiff
> 
> On rare occasions, I still use this.
> ...
> Farewell Biff. :-(

There are a couple of general concepts in modern X11 windowing systems that
are related to this: the "panel" which is like the bar in Windows that
contains the Start menu, and the "systray" you may put within that bar to
which arbitrary programs can add their own icons. The systray is definitely
cross-platform in that, e.g., Telgram and Dropbox add their icons and
pop-up menus from those to any system.

I avoid all the desktop suites in favour of a plain old fvwm2 window
manager instance, but I do run `xfce4-panel` with a systray in it so that
GUI programs can display their little icons.

There's a handy little program called `genmon` ("generic monitor") that you
can put in the panel to run a program at intervals display its output. I
use this for my customized clock[1], and had I a need for anything else
biff-like I would almost certainly use this method again. I'm not sure
whether the panel plugin interface is standardized, though; it might be
worth instead looking at the systray interface.

[1]: https://github.com/dot-home/cjsdesktop/blob/master/bin/genmon-vclock

cjs
-- 
Curt J. Sampson      <cjs@example.com>      +81 90 7737 2974

To iterate is human, to recurse divine.
    - L Peter Deutsch