XBMBROWSER(1) XBMBROWSER(1)
26 May 1995
NAME
xbmbrowser - view and manage X bitmap and X pixmap files.
SYNOPSIS
xbmbrowser [ -options... ] [ directory ]
DESCRIPTION
xbmbrowser will show you all the bitmaps or pixmaps in the directory
if it is specified otherwise it will look in the current directory.
Note that if the program can not change directory to the directory in
the command line it will exit and print an error message.
Once started the User can change the directory being displayed by
either
+ Editing the displayed current directory string on the main
application window.
+ Selecting a directory from a popup menu, by pressing a mouse
button over the displayed current directory string. This is
the recommended method when you are moving around a
directory tree that you know very well.
+ Clicking with the first (left-most) mouse button on a
directory file symbol.
+ Or even through one of the user configurable popup menu
actions (See below). This is usfull to define a specific
directory that you wish to change to regularly.
This latest version of xbmbrowser will also display small symbols for
all the other files and directories present in the displayed
directory. These symbols can be turned of if desired either through
command line options, resources, or interactivly within the program.
You can perform a many different operations on bitmap (or pixmap) file
that is being displayed, or even any of the other files in the current
directory. These operations include, Rename, Copy, Delete, Edit and
Set it as the background root window pattern.
These operations are initialized from a default library configuration
file "/usr/lib/X11/xbmbrowser/xbmbrowser.menu", or from the users own
version of this file ".xbmbrowserrc" in the user's home directory.
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OPTIONS
Xbmbrowser will take all the normal Xtoolkit options as well as the
following command line options. All but the -cf option can also be
turned on and off as and when required from an "Options" menu (middle
button along the top of the main application window) or its default
set via X resource.
-cf "file"
-config "file"
Load the menu configuration from the given file instead of
either the users rc file ".xbmbrowserrc" or the library
configuration file
"/usr/lib/X11/xbmbrowser/xbmbrowser.menu".
-solid
This controls the two different styles in which xbmbrowser
can display the icons. The first -solid option uses a solid
background with the icons displayed in shaped windows. This
option is generally only usful on color displays and is by
default enabled if this is the case. You can override this
automatic setting with the X resource below.
Resource: XbmBrowser.solid_bgnd: True
-stipple
This other option is just the oppisite of the -solid option
above. Display a stipple (checker board grey pattern) as
the background and display the icon images in boxed (un-
shaped) windows. This option is the original default of
xbmbrowser. It also produces a better display on monocrome
displays and as such is automatically selected as the defult
for such displays. You can override this automatic setting
with the X resource below.
Resource: XbmBrowser.solid_bgnd: False
-(no)label
Display (or not) the filenames under the icon or symbols
shown.
Resource: XbmBrowser.label_all: False
-(no)iconsonly
Only display (or not) the actual icons (bitmaps and pixmaps)
found in the current directory. In other words do not
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display and file symbols for directories or other files
found in the current directory. This option is provided to
allow the user to turn of the display of a large number of
file symbols that can appear at times, and return xbmbrowser
back to the `older' version style.
Resource: XbmBrowser.icons_only: False
-(no)dir
Display (or not) directory symbols for any sub-directories
found. The ".." directory symbol will also be removed.
Resource: XbmBrowser.show_dir: True
-(no)xpmbad
Display (or not) any pixmaps which failed to load properly.
This Pixmaps usally couldn't be displayed as they were
unable to allocate enough colors on the current display. To
display these, try quiting some other applications, removing
any root background image you may have on your display, or
even delete or move other pixmaps in the current directory
elsewhere.
Resource: XbmBrowser.show_xpmbad: True
-(no)other
Display (or not) the other files found in the current
directory. As part of the attempt to load these files as
icons for display, xbmbrowser has determined weather or not
these files are either binary, plain text, or some other
special file type. It will use an appropiate file symbol to
show the user its findings. NOTE: Picture Image formats
such as gif and jpeg will appear as binary files.
Resource: XbmBrowser.show_other: False
-(no)hidden
Include in the display (or not) the UNIX hidden (or `dot')
files found in the directory. Note that this only allows
these hidden files to be shown, other options (above) may or
may not permit these files to be visible. EG: hidden
directories will not be visible in the display if either
hidden files or directories are not visible.
Resource: XbmBrowser.show_hidden: False
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-R or -recursive
This option can slow xbmbrowser enormously. When it is
turned on, initially by this command line option, or
interactively through the "Options" menu, xbmbrowser will
recursively scan and display all the files in the
directories under the current directory. This directory
search can take a very very long and could result in system
limitations crashing the program. As such this option will
be automatically turned off any time xbmbrowser successfully
changes the current directory.
Resource: XbmBrowser.recursive: False
This option was provided at the request of Steve Kinzler to
allow xbmbrowser to scan the directory tree structure of his
``picons'' collection (See SEE ALSO below).
OTHER X RESOURCES
Other than those associated with command line others the following
resources are also available and usful in your .Xdefults or other
resource control files.
XbmBrowser.shape_syms: True
Controls if the non-icon file symbols are to be displayed in
a shaped window or as a boxed symbol. Note that by default
this is initially set equal to the value of the
XbmBrowser.solid_bgnd: (see -solid commandline option above)
unless overridden by your own resource setting (IE: True on
color displays False on monocrome).
XbmBrowser.label_syms: False
Label only the file symbols. The XbmBrowser.label_all:
resource (see -(no)label commandline option above) can
override this value if it is True.
XbmBrowser.sym_foreground: black
XbmBrowser.sym_background: wheat
The colors to display file symbols and their labels on the
display.
XbmBrowser.icon_foreground: black
XbmBrowser.icon_background: white
The colors to display bitmap icons and their labels with.
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XbmBrowser.icon_transparent: linen
This is the color used for the transparent (or `None')
pixmap color when not using a solid background color (and
shaped windows). It is also the color of the pixmaps label.
XbmBrowser.solid_background: grey
The the solid background color to use.
XbmBrowser.stipple_background: pale green
This is a very light color to use with the foreground color
(usally black) when creating the background stipple pattern.
This color is usally not used as the stipple pattern is
normall used on monocrome display only.
ASIDE: The forground color of the stipple pattern currently
is set to whatever the border color of the iconbox widget is
set to. If you don't want it to be black you can change it
with the resource XbmBrowserconbox.borderColor. In a future
release you may be able to set this color and maybe the
stripple pattern used, just like the other resources above.
Suggestion. Try setting the icon_background, icon_transparent, and
solid_background all to the same color such as grey. This will make
the background color of the bitmaps and pixmap labels the same as the
solid background color, thus removing the square boxes around these
items. This is more like a typical WWW client display.
Unfortunately if you do this, you will loose the visual information on
the true bitmap sizes being used. You can temporarally regain this
information however by switching to stripple (non-solid_background)
mode which turns off shaped windows.
XbmBrowser*IconLabel.labelTop: True
This resource will cause xbmbrowser to place any and all
Labels above the images displayed instead of below as is
normal. This is not strictly a xbmbrowser resource but one
for the unusal Widget it uses to handle the display of the
Bitmaps and Pixmaps.
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USER CONFIGURABLE MENUS
This version of xbmbrowser has a user definable menu of commands that
can be executed for displayed bitmaps pixmaps and other files. There
is a default library configuration file, usally located in
"/usr/lib/X11/xbmbrowser/xbmbrowser.menu" (check with your system
programmers) or you can have your own config file called
".xbmbrowserrc" in your home directory. I suggest that you copy the
library file "/usr/lib/X11/xbmbrowser/xbmbrowser.menu.tut", which is a
heavily commented version of the default library file, to your home
directory as ".xbmbrowserrc" and then edit it to suit your needs.
Each line of this file consists of either :-
# comment line
A comment line which is completely ignored. Comments can
appear at the end of any (non-continued) line.
menu "main"
menu "main" "Main Menu"
Add any new menu elements (see below) to this menu. Only
specific menus are allowed and will be titled using the
optional second argument. The menus, if defined, will be
poped up when the appropriate mouse button is pressed on a
displayed icon ot file symbol. If the menu is not defined
the program will `beep' the user. The following are the
menus which the user may define:-
"main" The menu which pops up when the "Main Menu"
button when pressed. Generally this is used a
menu of directories the user likes to visit.
Warning no file is selected by the user when
using this menu so some substitutions may be
empty strings. (See Substitions below)
Note: this menu must be defined. If it isn't a
warning message is printed and a default menu
containing only a QUIT button is created.
"global" A menu of global actions which will popup when
either the first two mouse buttons are are
pressed on a displayed icon or file symbol or
any mouse button on the background of the icon
area. If the pointer was not over a displayed
icon or symbol, no filename, basename, or
suffix will be defined. (See function
`selected()' below)
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NOTE: If button 1 (leftmost or select mouse
button) is pressed on a directory symbol, the
browser will automaticaly decend into that
directory, instead of poping up the global
menu.
"bitmap" Display this menu on any displayed X bitmap
with the right most (menu) mouse button.
"pixmap" As "bitmap", but for any X pixmap (or pixmap
which failed to load).
"directory" Same again, but for directory symbols.
"other" Again, for any other file symbol (text,
binary..).
line
Just insert a line into the menu at this point.
item "Delete" confirm("Really delete %f?") \
exec("rm '%f'") rescan()
Insert a item into the current menu which will execute the
sequence builtin functions (see below). As it is posible for
a very long sequences to be required for some menu items,
the menu lines can be continued onto the next line by
`backslashing' (\) the return character at the end of the
line.
Each function may or may-not require some quoted string
arguments, with the quote being either single or double,
allowing the other quote to be used freely with the
argument.
Each argument can contain any number of macro substitutions
which consist of a % character followed by a single letter.
A percent character can be substituted with %%.
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The following builtin functions can be called (in sequence) from a
menu item :-
quit()
Exit xbmbrowser. Need I say more?
scan()
Completely scan the current directory (Again). (See rescan()
below)
rescan()
Do a fast rescan of the current directory. Note that X
pixmaps which failed to load will NOT be loaded by this
command, to avoid slowing the rescan() in a directory of
unloadable X pixmaps. This occurance is actually common on a
directory of pixmaps which do not follow a standard color
table.
To attempt to load these Pixmaps use either a full scan(),
touch the failed pixmap when more colors are available, or
convert that pixmap to a common color table. Alturnatively,
display the pixmap in a secondary image viewer (converting
it if nessary).
chdir("dir")
Change directory to the given directory. If the directory
change succeeds xbmbrowser will automatically do a full
scan() of the new directory. If this fails, no scan() will
be performed.
exec("command")
Execute the given bourne shell command. Any output by the
command executed will be to the standard output (or error)
of xbmbrowser, usally the users terminal.
confirm("prompt")
Ask the user to confirm action before continuing the next
function. If the user presses ``cancal'' the current
function sequence will be aborted.
input("prompt","initial")
Ask the user for some input, giving the user the "initial"
string to start with. The result entered by the user will be
returned in the substitution marco %i (see below). The
``cancal'' button will abort the current function sequence.
selected()
If the user pointer was NOT over an icon or symbol then
abort the current sequence with a popup error. This
function is not usful in anything but the "global" menu, as
in the other menus an icon is either always or never
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selected.
The following are substition macros can be used within function
arguments :-
%d The current directory of the browser. Note that a the
directory seperator '/' have been pre-added to this
substition macro.
%f The filename of the icon (or file) selected by the user.
%b The basename (suffix removed) of the current filename.
%s The suffix of the current filename EG: ".xbm"
%i The users input of the last input() function (see above).
%h The Users Home directory (do NOT use ~ in an argument for
this). Note that a the directory seperator '/' have been
pre-added to this substition macro.
%D The Initial Startup Directory. This is either the directory
XbmBrowser was started in or was given to it as an command
line argument.
%% Substitutes a percent character, just in case you really do
need it.
NOTE: The full path of a selected file is %d%f. Also %b%s exactly the
same as the %f substition.
WARNING: the substitution macros %f, %b and %s will be an empty string
if the users pointer was not over a display icon or file symbol. See
the function selected() above.
FILES
~/.xbmbrowserrc
User's own menu configuration file.
/usr/lib/X11/xbmbrowser/xbmbrowser.menu
Default library menu configuration file.
/usr/lib/X11/xbmbrowser/xbmbrowser.menu.tut
Verbose menu configuration file (with extra examples). Note:
Some of these files may be installed in different directories on
your system, for example /usr/X11R6/lib/X11. If you are not
sure, please contact your local system programmers.
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26 May 1995
SEE ALSO
``Anthony's Icon Library''
This is a HUGE library of bitmaps and pixmaps of `icon' size. The
library is sorted into sections based of size and intended usage
of the icons. All the pixmaps in the library follow a standard
color table of 30 colors so you can use and view as many pixmaps
as you require. It is for the coordination of this library that
xbmbrowser was originally developed.
The coordinator is Anthony Thyssen, and the last release is
downloadable from ftp://ftp.cit.gu.edu.au/pub/AIcons/ or directly
accessable (between releases) via the World Wide Web on
http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/icons.
Also in this library (under support) is a collection of scripts
and a xbmbrowser config (rc) file to provided a much expanded set
of menus for icon handling and conversion.
``PIcons'' bitmap collection
A collection of bitmaps and pixmaps all 48 by 48 pixels in size.
This collection is designed for use by mail and news readers, and
as such is sorted into: news groups, logos, and people sorted by
email address. The icons is stored in a large directory
structure making the recursive scan feature a must for viewing
this collection.
The coordinator is Steve Kinzler kinzler@cs.indiana.edu and the
collection is downloadable from
ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu/pub/faces/picons/ or on the WWW from
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/picons/ftp/index.html .
AUTHORS
Original Programmer
Ashley Roll -- ash@cit.gu.edu.au ( upto version 3.4 )
Current Programmer & Original Idea for Program
Anthony Thyssen -- anthony@cit.gu.edu.au ( version 4.0 and later
)
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