FvwmAnimate(1)

✨ NAME ✨

Okay bestie, this is the FvwmAnimate(1) page from the Fvwm Modules section 🎀. FvwmAnimate is the fvwm animate module, and it's giving smooth window transitions 🦋

💅 SYNOPSIS 💅

Module FvwmAnimate [ModuleAlias]

Quick vibe check: FvwmAnimate can only be invoked by fvwm 🙅‍♀️ Running it from the command line will not work, so don't even try, bestie 💀

From inside your .fvwm2rc file, you spawn FvwmAnimate like this:

Module FvwmAnimate

Or, if you want it in a fvwm pop-up menu, you do this:

DestroyMenu Module-Popup
AddToMenu   Module-Popup "Modules" Title
+ "Fvwm Animate Icons" Module FvwmAnimate ModuleAlias

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

FvwmAnimate is literally the animation queen 👑 It animates your iconification and de-iconification, or you can trigger it on command. There are currently 6 different animation effects, so you get main character energy every time ✨

🧚 INVOCATION 🧚

Okay so, FvwmAnimate has to be invoked by the fvwm window manager 💖 If you pass it the OptionalName argument, the ModuleAlias gets used to find configuration commands and configuration files. It also names the menus and forms it makes, instead of the default "FvwmAnimate" 🎀

During startup, FvwmAnimate makes its own menus and forms so you can configure and control it. The default menu name is MenuFvwmAnimate and the form name is FormFvwmAnimate. If you use the optional name, the menu becomes Menu<ModuleAlias> and the form becomes Form<ModuleAlias> 🫶

Assuming you already have a builtin menu called "Module-Popup" (iconic behavior 😤), you can set up FvwmAnimate like this:

AddToFunc "StartFunction" "I" Module FvwmAnimate
AddToMenu "Module-Popup" "Control Animation" Popup MenuFvwmAnimate

🎀 CONFIGURATION OPTIONS 🎀

Ngl, the pop-up menu MenuFvwmAnimate gives you complete control of FvwmAnimate, so you literally don't have to memorize any of the configuration commands 😭 We're going to go over them anyway, because I'm obsessed with this module and I want you to be too 🤓

FvwmAnimate reads its configuration info from fvwm's module configuration database (see fvwm(1), section MODULE COMMANDS). On top of that, it reads the file $HOME/.FvwmAnimate and accepts commands from fvwm and its modules while it's running 🌈

If you start FvwmAnimate with ModuleAlias, the optional name shows up in all of its commands, messages, menus, forms, and the configuration file name. Unlike other fvwm modules, there's honestly little reason to use the optional name 🙈

Here are the options, bestie:

• *FvwmAnimate: Color color — This tells FvwmAnimate what color to draw with. The color gets "XOR'ed" (exclusive ORed) onto the background, so the effect depends on your display type. Especially on 8-bit displays, you'll want a solid color for the background. You'll have to experiment to see how it works, no cap 🧪
  • The default color isn't really a color. You can enter it as Black^White, or more simply None. This is the same as the default XOR mask fvwm uses for move and resize frames 💅
  • You can also use other colors in standard X color notation, like color names such as LightBlue or RGB values such as #FFFFFF 🩵
• *FvwmAnimate: Pixmap pixmap — This tells FvwmAnimate to draw with a pixmap instead. It's super useful if *FvwmAnimate: Color gives you poor results 🥺
• *FvwmAnimate: Delay msecs — This sets how many milliseconds FvwmAnimate sleeps between frames of the animation ⏳
• *FvwmAnimate: Iterations iterations — This sets how many steps the animation gets broken into 🪜
• *FvwmAnimate: Twist twist — This sets how many revolutions the iconification frame does while twisting 🌀
• *FvwmAnimate: Width width — This sets how wide a line is when drawing. The default width of 0 (zero) is a fast line of Width 1 ⚡
• *FvwmAnimate: Effect mode — This picks which animation effect to use. The current effects are: Frame, Lines, Flip, Turn, Zoom3D, Twist Random, and None 🦋. None is normally set in the configuration file, just in case FvwmAnimate starts automatically but a particular user doesn't want it running 🙅‍♀️
• *FvwmAnimate: Stop — This tells FvwmAnimate to stop 🛑
• *FvwmAnimate: Save — This tells FvwmAnimate to save your current configuration into a file named .FvwmAnimate in your home directory. FvwmAnimate reads this same file automatically during startup, so your settings stick around 💾

💜 COMMANDS 💜

FvwmAnimate can be asked to produce an animation through the SendToModule command. The format is:

SendToModule FvwmAnimate animate sx sy sw sh dx dy dw dh

The second word has to match the name FvwmAnimate was started with, bestie. The 8 fields after animate must be numbers. The first 4 are for the source (or starting) location of the animation, and the last 4 are for the destination. Each group of 4 numbers represents a rectangle. The first 2 numbers are the x and y location of the upper right corner, and the next 2 numbers are the width and height. One or more spaces can separate the fields in the command 🍓

Modules can use SendToModule to animate NoIcon windows, or you can come up with your own ways to have all kinds of fun with this command 🧚

There are also some additional commands: pause, play, push, pop, and reset. These can be space separated 🫧

• pause causes a module to temporarily stop producing animations ⏸️
• play causes a module to start producing animations again ▶️
• push stores the current playing state for later, and pop restores it 📦
• reset removes all stored states and sets playing back on 🧹

Suppose we don't want to wait for all 40 xterms to animate. Then you do this:

SendToModule FvwmAnimate pause
All (XTerm) Iconify on

And if you don't want to mess with the current playing state, then do this instead:

SendToModule FvwmAnimate push pause
All (XTerm) Iconify on
SendToModule FvwmAnimate pop

🌷 ORIGIN 🌷

FvwmAnimate is based on the Animate module from Afterstep 1.5pre6. The porting to fvwm and lots of other changes were done by Dan Espen <despen@telcordia.com>. The original author and acknowledgments are listed below 🫶

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Alfredo Kengi Kojima <kojima@inf.ufrgs.br> 💖

🩷 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 🩷

These people have contributed to FvwmAnimate:

• Kaj Groner <kajg@mindspring.com> — Twisty iconification, configuration file parsing, and the man page 🌀
• Frank Scheelen <scheelen@worldonline.nl> 🌈

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Okay bestie, that's the whole thing 💅✨ This page is from the 3rd Berkeley Distribution, version 2.7.0, dated 19 October 2022. Stay iconic and keep animating 🦋💖