Re: How to open a window at login with specific attributes?

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Thu, Jul 13, 2000 at 02:01:39PM -0400 or thereabouts, Yan Seiner wrote:

> Here's what I'm trying to do:
> open a gnome-terminal window on login that 
> 
> a) has no frame
> b) has no menu bar
> c) has a translucent background that's shaded
> d) appears in a specific location
> e) is sticky
> and f) runs a specified command.

I can do (b), (c), (d) (f) and I'm not quite sure about (e) :)
 
> I can't even get past a) - if I set up a gnome terminal with all these
> attributes, all later terms open with the same attributes, which is not
> what I want.

Ah. You want to define a 'terminal class' with those attributes, and then
you can start a gnome-terminal with that particular terminal class when
you want to, but retain your normal settings for normal terminals. I had
about a dozen different terminal classes at one stage. They're fun :)

Open your terminal. Open the preferences dialogue.

In 'general' --	check 'hide menu bar'.
In 'image' -- 	check 'transparent' and 'background should be shaded'
In 'colors' -- 	check some appropriate foreground (for text) and 
		background (for inverse video stuff if your command
		output is going to inverse it)

Then after selecting all those, go back to 'general' and click in
'terminal class' and give this set of options a name. This is the
important bit :) 'test', 'see-through', 'transparent', whatever, 
and then apply it. Now you have a new terminal class. Assume it's
called 'see-through' for now.

You get this little dialogue about switching the terminal class of the
window: I usually say 'yes'. You can always switch it back to default
later. 

To run a terminal with that set of options, you want the --tclass option.

To run a terminal with a command in it, there's --command.

And there is a --geometry option:  help says gnome-terminal --geometry="AxB" 
or something. This only sets the number of columns and rows. But there's
something else you can add onto it: the relative position of the thing
in pixels (I think?) from the top left, separated by plus signs.  You 
can do this plus and minus stuff that xterm does even though it's not in 
the gnome-terminal help (yet :)).

So: gnome-terminal --geometry="80x25+100+100" --tclass="see-through" \
--command="whatever the command was and you can have spaces, yes"

..._should_ start you a terminal with no menu bar, with a transparent
shaded background, in a specific location (the 100+100 thing: adjust
to fit), and runs the command. (And yes, that should all be one line without
the backslash but you said you were used to UNIX so I probably didn't
need to put that in :))

I believe 'sticky' is a window manager thing? And I don't really know
what no frame means: can you get that appearance with the window manager,
perhaps?

But it's a start :)
 
> Are there cli options for this?  How do I spec a translucent color?

Well. To avoid the gui stuff, you could add a bunch of terminal classes, 
look at the resulting ~/gnome/Terminal file, and edit your Terminal file 
to have a few more, I suspect. But don't do what I did and try to be 
clever and make a 'default' because you think 'Default' shouldn't start 
with a capital. Bad Stuff happens :)

Telsa