statnot

statnot is a notification-daemon replacement for lightweight window managers like dwm and wmii. It receives and displays notifications from the widely used Desktop Notifications speficiation.

• source repository

Background

In some lightweight window managers, the text in the status bar is fed from an external process. For example dwm (version 5.4 and above) reads the status message from the X root window name, set by

xsetroot -name 

while true
do
    xsetroot -name "$(date +"%F %R")"
    sleep 30s # update every thirty seconds
done &

This solution works well for status messages that are managed from a single point, for example when printing the same information every time. statnot lets you combine regular status messages with Desktop Notifications in a straightforward way.

Desktop Notifications

If you have used a "regular" window manager like KDE or Gnome, you have probably come across notifications. The are typically small windows with text messages and sometimes an icon that shows for a couple of seconds before they fade out. They are for example used to let the user know that a new instant message has arrived or that the battery is running low. Desktop Notifications is a specification created for freedesktop.org that many applications use. For example Pidgin and Evolution can be configured to notify for new messages using Desktop Notifications.

Installation

To install statnot, first install the required dependencies:

• python 3.5+
• dbus-python
• PyGObject
• gtk3 - (not for GUI support)

Follow the PyGObject installation instructions for your system. That should take care of most of your dependencies.

Next, adjust the target directories in the

config.mk

To install, run as root:

# make install

Finally, statnot needs to start with the window manager. You can for example add the following to .xinitrc:

killall notification-daemon &> /dev/null
statnot & 

Note that the statnot needs to be the only notification tool running. The example above makes sure that

notification-daemon

Configuration

The major, likely only, part you want to configure in statnot is what the status message should look like. During installation, a file called

.statusline.sh

$HOME/

echo 

During normal status updates, .statusline.sh is called without parameters. Here, you typically fetch and

echo

Any pending notification is passed as the first argument to .statusline.sh. This way you can include additional information to the actual notification.

Below is an example of .statusline.sh. It prints something like

[load 0.12 0.10 0.7]   11:42

NOTIFICATION: 

if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
    loadavg="`cat /proc/loadavg | awk '{print $1, $2, $3}'`";
    echo "[load ${loadavg}]   `date +'%R'`";
else
    echo "NOTIFICATION: $1";
fi

For more advanced configuration, a configuration file can be passed to statnot on the command line, which overrides the default settings. This configuration file must be written in valid python, which will be read if the filename is given on the command line. You do only need to set the variables you want to change, and can leave the rest out.

Below is an example of a configuration which sets the defaults.

# Default time a notification is show, unless specified in notification
DEFAULT_NOTIFY_TIMEOUT = 3000 # milliseconds

Maximum time a notification is allowed to show
MAX_NOTIFY_TIMEOUT = 5000 # milliseconds
Maximum number of characters in a notification.
NOTIFICATION_MAX_LENGTH = 100 # number of characters
Time between regular status updates
STATUS_UPDATE_INTERVAL = 2.0 # seconds
Command to fetch status text from. We read from stdout.
Each argument must be an element in the array
os must be imported to use os.getenv
import os
STATUS_COMMAND = ['/bin/sh', f'{os.getenv('HOME')}/.statusline.sh'] 
Always show text from STATUS_COMMAND? If false, only show notifications
USE_STATUSTEXT=True
Put incoming notifications in a queue, so each one is shown.
If false, the most recent notification is shown directly.
QUEUE_NOTIFICATIONS=True
update_text(text) is called when the status text should be updated
If there is a pending notification to be formatted, it is appended as
the final argument to the STATUS_COMMAND, e.g. as $1 in default shellscript
dwm statusbar update
import subprocess
def update_text(text):
    # Get first line
    first_line = text.splitline()[:-1]
    subprocess.call(["xsetroot", "-name", first_line])

Possible errors

If no status message shows, verify that statnot is running. Also make sure your $HOME/.statusline.sh works and prints properly.

If notifications are not shown, make sure that no other notification-daemon is running.

killall notification-daemon

Supported software

More and more applications use Desktop Notifications. Use Google to find solutions for your applications.

libnotify

You can also send your own notifications to statnot. This is easily done with the

notify-send

notify-send "Hello World"

Hello World

notify-send can also be used for other, more direct messages. For exampe, I call a script called

dwm-volume

vol [52%] [on]

#!/bin/sh
if [ $# -eq 1 ]; then
    amixer -q set Master $1
fi
notify-send -t 0 "`amixer get Master | awk 'NR==5 {print "vol " $4, $6}'`"

As you can see, I use the option

-t 0

Final notes

I'm sure there are other ways to use statnot. For example, one can create an update_text() that sends notifications as e-mail or instant messages, or that stores them to a log file. If you create any cool applications with statnot, I'd be happy to hear about them.

Released under the GPL. Please report any bugs or feature requests by email. Also, please drop me a line to let me know you like and use this software.

Authors: * Henrik Hallberg ([email protected]); [email protected] * Olivier Ramonat; [email protected] * Xavier Capaldi; [email protected]