NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
INITIALIZATION
INVOCATION
CONFIGURATION OPTIONS
- Invocation options
- Run-time options from Fvwm
SAMPLE CONFIGURATION
CAVEATS
COPYRIGHT
AUTHOR

NAME

TkPerlConsole - a console and debugging window implemented in Perl/Tk

SYNOPSIS

TkPerlConsole can only be spawned by fvwm. No command-line invocation is possible.

DESCRIPTION

TkPerlConsole is a sample application distributed with the X11::Fvwm extension to Perl 5. It combines the functionality of the FvwmConsole and FvwmDebug modules (from the extras directory of the Fvwm2 distribution) into one application.

INITIALIZATION

When run, TkPerlConsole reads the configuration lines specified in the configuration file fvwm itself used. It specifically looks for options whose names begin with the name of the application. You can link TkPerlConsole under additional names to specify different sets of options.

INVOCATION

TkPerlConsole can be invoked by fvwm during initialization by inserting the line 'Module TkPerlConsole' in the .fvwmrc (or .fvwm2rc) file.

TkPerlConsole must reside in a directory that is listed in the ModulePath option of Fvwm for it to be executed by Fvwm.

CONFIGURATION OPTIONS

Invocation options

When spawned by Fvwm, TkPerlConsole will recognize these switches:

-d: Turn on the packet debugger as well as the console window itself. Creates a second display area above the console in which packet traffic from Fvwm is summarized.
-c: Send an initial Send_ConfigInfo message to Fvwm. Causes the start-up debug box to already contain all configuration options for all modules. This has no visible effect unless -d is also specified.
-w: Send an initial Send_WindowList message to Fvwm, causing the debug box to already contain a listing of all windows currently managed by Fvwm. This has no visible effect unless -d is also specified.

Run-time options from Fvwm

TkPerlConsole recognizes the following list of options that it receives from the running Fvwm process. Note that the leading part of the name is based on the application name. Were the user to make a link to TkPerlConsole under the name TransientWL (for calling as a transient application), then you would replace TkPerlConsole with TransientWL in all the names below:

TkPerlConsoleFont Default font to use for text in the widgets. This font is not applied to Label widgets, however. See below for specifying defaults on a per-widget basis.
TkPerlConsoleForeground
TkPerlConsoleBackground Default foreground and background colors for widgets.
TkPerlConsoleActiveForeground
TkPerlConsoleActiveBackground Foreground and background colors used by buttons to indicate the pointer (or keyboard focus) is over that button.

The following detail specifying defaults to be used for classes of widgets. Three characteristics are recognized: Font, Foreground and Background. These are represented below by the symbol (CLASS). These are applied to the following set of widgets: Button, Label, Listbox, Entry and Scrollbar. These are represented below by the symbol WIDGET. Thus, there are 15 possible expansions for the item below:

TkPerlConsole(WIDGET)(CLASS) Set the default value for CLASS as it should be applied to all widgets of type WIDGET. The value *TkPerlConsoleButtonFont will then set the font to be used on all buttons.

Note: The default font for all widgets except labels is fixed. Labels default to a larger, italic Helvetica. Using the above specification is the only way to change the font for Label widgets. They are not affected by the general-default font specification. Also note that scrollbars have one extra element of note from the other widgets, the color of the trough in which the scrollbar thumb sits:

TkPerlConsoleScrollbarTroughColor Set the color of the rectangular trough area that makes up the part of a scrollbar not covered by the thumb.

SAMPLE CONFIGURATION

Here is a sample configuration, used by the author and annotated here for clarity:

    # General application to all widgets
    *TkPerlConsoleFont                  9x15
    *TkPerlConsoleForeground            AntiqueWhite
    *TkPerlConsoleBackground            gray30
    # Change the color of the label text
    *TkPerlConsoleLabelForeground       gold1
    # The listboxes are the areas in which data from fvwm is displayed
    *TkPerlConsoleListboxBackground     NavyBlue
    *TkPerlConsoleListboxForeground     gold1
    # Set the color of the back area of the scroll bars
    *TkPerlConsoleScrollbarTroughColor  AntiqueWhite

CAVEATS

TkPerlConsole is meant primary as an example of coding with the X11::Fvwm (see X11) module and the Tk module. While it can be useful, it is not supported to the degree that the Fvwm module itself is.

It is also coded for clarity at the expense of efficiency.

Specifying widget characteristics by class is nice, but to truly emulate X resources, it will have to allow specifications by given widget name as well as class, and it doesn't (yet).

COPYRIGHT

TkPerlConsole is copyright (c) 1997 by the author, all rights reserved. It may be copied and distributed under the same terms as the X11::Fvwm module itself. See the README file that was packaged with the distribution.

AUTHOR

Randy J. Ray <randy@byz.org>, based on the code from the fvwmperl module by Dan Astoorian