bbbm: Blackbox background manager

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Q: How do I set a background image / view an image?

A: Right click on the image, then choose Set or View. What will happen depends on the commands set (see the next two questions).
Double clicking on an image will also call the Set command.

Q: How do I change the view / set command?

A: Open the Tools | Options menu item, or press ALT+P. Then change the command, and press OK.

Q: What do these options mean?

A: There are 2 tabs, General and Commands. The first has 6 options:

• set_command is used when Set is selected from the popup menu or an image is double clicked, and with the Random background option.
• view_command is used when View is selected from the popup menu.
• thumb_size is the size (WxH) of the thumbnails.
• thumb_cols indicates the number of columns of thumbnails.
• filename_label is a boolean (valid values: TRUE / FALSE) that indicates whether the basename of the current file should be used as the label of created Blackbox menus.
• filename_title is a boolean (valid values: TRUE / FALSE) that indicates whether the basename of the current file should be used as the title of created Blackbox menus.

The second tab has a table for extra commands. These commands are shown on the right click context menus for the images. The right fields in the table are for the commands to execute. The left fields are optional, for the labels to show in the context menus. If absent the command itself is shown.

All commands have %1 replaced with the image filename. If there is no %1, the image filename will be appended to the command as before.
See the Blackbox documentation for more information about the label and title of Blackbox menus.

Click here for an example configuration file.

Q: How do I remove an image?

A: Right click on the image, then choose Delete. Pressing the Delete button on the keyboard will not work.

Q: What do collection files look like?

A: A collection file is a plain text file with on the first line an image filename, on the second line that image's description, on the third line another image filename, etc. The last image description may be omitted; the description will equal the filename.

Q: What is the image description for?

A: The image description is shown in the statusbar when the mouse is over the image, but more importantly, this is the description you will see on the created Blackbox background submenu. Such a submenu will look like this:

[submenu] (Backgrounds)
  [exec] (description) {set_command filename}
  [exec] (description) {set_command filename}

Q: How do I include such a submenu?

A: See the Blackbox documentation for more information.

Q: What's the use of the list of images?

A: You decide. I myself use it as input for a little script I wrote earlier to set a random background, but you can use it for anything.

Q: 10 extra commands is not enough for me. How do I add more?

A: This is a compile time option. To change it, edit options.h in the src directory. Change the value after MAX_COMMANDS to whatever you need, and recompile bbbm.

The other compile time options can be changed this way too:

• SET_COMMAND is the default Set command. It must be enclosed in double quotes.
• VIEW_COMMAND is the default View command. It must be enclosed in double quotes.
• THUMB_WIDTH is the default thumbnail width. It should be at least 1, and not be enclosed in double quotes.
• THUMB_HEIGHT is the default thumbnail height. It should be at least 1, and not be enclosed in double quotes.
• THUMB_COLS is the default number of columns of thumbnails. It should be at least 1, and not be enclosed in double quotes.
• MAX_WIDTH is the maximum thumbnail width. The default setting is the screen width; do not make it larger. It should not be enclosed in double quotes.
• MAX_HEIGHT is the maximum thumbnail height. The default setting is the screen height; do not make it larger. It should not be enclosed in double quotes.
• MAX_COLS is the maximum number of columns of thumbnails. It should not be enclosed in double quotes.

Q: Why the rewrite in C?

A: At the time bbbm 0.1 was released, I was already thinking about rewriting it to C, but I had no valid reason; I would be doing it for the rewrite only.

When I was testing a Python version of bbbm 0.3 on my second test machine (Fedora Core 1), a very nasty and annoying bug appeared: after a few images were added, the menubar disappeared! I couldn't figure out why (it just lost its parent for no apparent reason), so I finally found the valid reason for the rewrite in C (which was a near exact port of the Python version; only this version DID work ;) ).