WMPINBOARD(1)

📦
version 1.0.1 · 3 versions
, in debian trixie, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

🎀 WMPINBOARD(1) 🎀

okay so this is the manual for wmpinboard, section 1 of the manual pages 💅 welcome bestie, grab a snack, we're doing this.

🌸 NAME 🌸

wmpinboard — a Window Maker dock app that's literally a miniature pinboard 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

wmpinboard [options]

🫶 What wmpinboard is

wmpinboard is a Window Maker dock applet that's giving miniature pinboard energy 🎀 The whole point? It's meant to somewhat relieve your heavily littered desktop by letting you put reminders on a graphical on-screen pinboard instead of producing a whole mess of real notes all around your keyboard — which means it's environmentally A Good Thing, too ;-) 💚

It supports arbitrary 6x10 X fonts, and it has XLocale support, which means you can enter locale-dependent special characters if you set it up appropriately ✨ Besides text, you can add small monochrome sketches to your notes, or simply encircle or underline words as a means of emphasis, and alarms can be set to explicitly remind you of things 🔥

Above all, wmpinboard is animated in redundant ways just to make it look even more attractive, and themeability provides for a way of adapting its appearance to that of the rest of your desktop. periodt. 👑

💀 What wmpinboard ISN'T

Clearly, wmpinboard doesn't let you keep an unlimited number of notes holding arbitrary amounts of information, and that's not what it's meant to do, bestie. Just as real notes offer limited space, so do those simulated by wmpinboard 🫠

Besides, as a dock applet, it aims at being small and neat and yet useful in a way, and that's what it is, too — or considered to be by some people, anyway. If you need room for more comprehensive reminders, use another program, either additionally or exclusively. There's a variety of such out there, but their niche is different from that which wmpinboard claims. no cap. 🙈

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

wmpinboard's command-line options can be roughly divided into four groups: configuration directives, run-time options, command-line actions, and general options 🌈

Generally, wmpinboard supports GNU-style long options (which may be abbreviated unambiguously) as well as short ones for parameters used more commonly ✨

💖 Configuration directives

This type of command-line option changes some aspect of wmpinboard's configuration that is saved along with the data and thus set in a more permanent way. Only one such parameter may be specified per call, and there mustn't be another instance running. ⚠️

  • --font=FONT — Makes wmpinboard use the specified font; FONT can be one of the shortcuts listed when running the program with --help as a parameter, or a complete X descriptor of a fixed size 6x10 font. The pinboard must be empty in order for this option to be applicable. For more details, see the section on "FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS". 🖋️
  • --theme=FILE — Configures wmpinboard to load the specified theme when started interactively the next time. FILE is the location of a wmpinboard theme file (typically with a file name extension of .wmpbtheme). If it can't be loaded when run interactively, the program will revert to its default theme. If FILE is an empty string or default, the use of a custom theme will be deactivated. 🌈

Themes affect wmpinboard's appearance, in particular, its pinboard, edit mode and alarm panel pixmaps, the latter's digits, and possibly the location of the pinboard mode label area (via which notes are created). For downloading themes, or if you're inclined to create one yourself and need instructions, check out the program's home page (see the section on "AUTHOR" or wmpinboard's --help output for the URL). The themes kit containing instructions and samples on how to create theme files for wmpinboard that can be downloaded there is also included with the source package of the program. 🎨

  • --alarm-cmd=CMD — Configures CMD as the command to be executed on alarms. E.g., you could use xkbbell to cause the program to beep on such occassions, or make it run some sound-playing program. To reset the alarm command to none, make CMD a zero-length string. 🔔

🦋 Run-time options

  • -d DISPLAY or --display=DISPLAY — Uses the specified X display rather than the default one. 🖥️
  • -c or --click-to-focus — This turns on some emulation of a click-based keyboard focus mode. See the section on "FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS". 👆
  • -t TIME or --timeout=TIME — Sets the edit mode timeout (i.e., the number of seconds of idleness after which edit mode is terminated automatically) to TIME seconds. The compile-time default is 60s, but this may have been changed for your particular build; run with -v if in doubt to check that. Specifying a value of 0 (zero) will disable the timeout. ⏰
  • -n or --normal-state — Forces wmpinboard to run in so-called NormalState, which is preferred by AfterStep's Wharf. 🌟
  • -w or --withdrawn-state — Forces the program to run in so-called WithdrawnState, as desired by the Window Maker dock. This option and the previous one are mutually exclusive 🙅♀️ Note also that wmpinboard tries to auto-detect whether Window Maker is running and sets itself up accordingly. Using -n or -w should only be necessary in case those heuristics fail on your system for some reason or other. 🧐
  • --light — Use this switch to suppress animations. 🪶

✨ Command-line actions

Even though wmpinboard is by design an interactive application, there may be occasions when it comes in handy to be able to access/manipulate notes from the command line. That's why the program offers a set of command-line options allowing for basic operations of that kind. Still, it should be kept in mind that wmpinboard is primarily meant to be used interactively. 🫶

All of the options below will, if an interactive instance of wmpinboard is running in the background, cause that to save its data (and quit edit mode, if necessary), and if any changes are made by the respective option, the interactive instance will then be signalled to re-read the data file. Even though the implemented methods of inter-process communication should generally be sufficiently safe with respect to avoiding data file corruption, it's in theory possible to undermine the concept and cause damage that way — yet this won't happen unless you deliberately take pains to achieve the goal. Generally, everything should work fine as long as you don't try running multiple non-interactive instances of wmpinboard simultaneously. 💀

Only one of the below actions can be specified per call to wmpinboard.
  • --dump — This dumps the contents of all notes, replacing line breaks by spaces (unless preceded by a hyphen) and shortening sequences of blanks. The list of dumped strings will be sorted by color groups. If you use special characters in your notes, make sure your terminal's running with the same character set as wmpinboard, or what you'll see might have a garbage-like quality. 🗑️

Each line of output represents one note and is prefixed by the internal number currently identifying the respective note and, if an alarm is configured for the respective note, time and date (or daily). 📅

  • --dump-raw — Unlike the "cooked" dump described above, this just dumps the raw contents of all notes without applying any kind of formatting. May come in handy if your notes happen to contain E-mail addresses or other things for which lines 10 characters wide are too narrow. 📧
  • --del=NUMBER — This option will remove the note identified by NUMBER from the pinboard. NUMBER is a number determined by the output of either dump option, which should be consulted right before using this one, since note numbers may change when notes are moved around on the board or others are removed. 🔢
  • --add=STRING — When run with this option, wmpinboard will add a new note (provided the maximal number of notes has not yet been reached) at a random position on the board, with contents STRING, word-wrapping the text at the end of the note's lines where necessary (after white space and hyphens). If due to this wrapping, the entire string cannot be stored on the note, the remainder will be discarded silently. 🤫

In order to create a note with a certain color, the string can be prefixed by a color code specifying the group of colors which a random color is to be selected from (code letters are recognized case-insensitively):

%G - green
%Y - yellow/white
%R - reddish
%B - blue

Alternatively or additionally, you may specify a position code as "%1" through "%9", defining an approximate position on the board where the note is to be placed. Each of the nine figures corresponds to a ninth of the board with its index assigned in accordance with the layout of your keypad (i.e., "%1" meaning lower left, "%9" upper right corner, and so forth). 🎯

Thus,

wmpinboard --add '%g%5test'

will place a green note saying "test" at the center of the board. 💚

(Note: The "%" character can be escaped by a second one if you want to add an un-prefixed string starting with a percent character.) 🫠

  • --add-raw=STRING — Via this option, a new note can be added from the command line (provided that this won't exceed the maximum number of notes). STRING specifies the raw contents of the note, as printed by --dump-raw. The same set of color group and position codes as for the previous option applies. 📝

🌈 General options

  • -h or --help — This prints a help screen listing command line options together with brief descriptions. 🙋♀️
  • -i or --info — Prints information about the current user configuration (font, theme, alarm command) and some useless statistics. 📊
  • -v or --version — This prints some more detailed version information, in particular, which compile-time settings this binary was built with. 🏷️

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

wmpinboard operates in basically two different modes, namely, the pinboard view and edit mode ✌️ Furthermore, a panel of buttons granting access to extended options can be popped up in edit mode, which in turn allows you to display the alarm panel to configure alarm settings for the current note. 🎛️

🌸 Pinboard view

This is wmpinboard's normal mode of operation. A potentially chaotic arrangement of tiny squares on a beige-colored oblong (default theme) is meant to resemble notes pinned to a cork board 📌 Possible actions include:

  • Add a note — left-click on the board's "TO DO" label and boom 💥 a brand-new blank note pops up at a random spot, in a random color, and wmpinboard slides straight into edit mode (more on that below). If you'd rather place the note exactly where you want it before you're prompted for contents, just keep moving the mouse cursor after you've clicked the label — this realizes the note and lets you drag it wherever. wmpinboard switches to edit mode the second you let go of the mouse button. 🫶
  • Edit/view a note — left-click a note and you're in edit mode (described below). ✨
  • Move a note — drag it with the right mouse button. This also raises that note on top of all the others. Depending on where it sits horizontally, the note gets tilted automatically. Sneaky side-effect: a single quick right-click raises a note above any overlapping ones without moving it at all. 👑

Drag a note with the left mouse button and you can move it without changing its level relative to the other notes, i.e. without raising it on top of everything. 🦋

🌸 Edit mode 🌸

This mode is a double threat: on one hand it gives you a "full-size" view of a note's contents, and on the other, you can take the opportunity to actually edit it. Because of its limited size, a note can hold up to 10 characters on 6 lines (minus one on the last, i.e., 59 characters altogether), plus a monochrome sketch of some kind. Possible actions:

  • Enter text — wmpinboard supports user-selectable fonts and dead keys, so you should be able to enter any characters normally reachable from your keyboard and have them show up correctly. ✨ The cursor can be moved around with the arrow keys (or EMACS-style via [Ctrl]-[N]/[P]/[F]/[B], if you're so inclined). You can also place it explicitly by left-clicking wherever you want it. Other special keys that are supported include:
    • [PgUp]/[PgDn] — places the cursor on character 1/59, respectively.
    • [Home]/[End] — places the cursor at the textual start or end of the current line.
    • [Del] — deletes the character currently under the text cursor and shifts the remaining text on the current line to the left; if the current line is blank, removes it and shifts all lines below up by one line.
    • [Backspace] — see [Del], but affects the character on the left of the cursor.
    • [Ins] — toggles inserting/overwriting of existing text; the current mode is indicated by a cursor change (block cursor means insert mode).
    • [Enter] — in insert mode, wraps the current line at the cursor's position; in overwrite mode (underscore cursor), merely moves the cursor to the start of the next line.
    • [Ctrl]-[Y], -[Z] — removes an entire (intermediate) line, shifting those below up by one, and places the cursor at the start of the current line.
    • [Esc] — quits edit mode and returns to the pinboard view.
    • [Shift]-[Left]/[Right] — cycles through all notes currently on the pinboard.
    • [Shift]-[Up]/[Down] — cycles through all notes that are roughly the same color as the current one. For this purpose, colors have internally been divided into four groups: green, white/yellow, reddish, blue.
    • ([Shift]-)[Tab] — cycles (backwards) through available note colors.
  • Cut'n'paste text — despite the limitations implied, wmpinboard has support for cutting & pasting to and from the X clipboard:
    • To copy text to the clipboard, select the desired segment with either the left or the right mouse button: the left one copies the text post-formatted as done by the command line switch --dump (see the section on "OPTIONS"); the right button copies the raw selection. Similarly, a left double click selects the word (i.e., all adjoining non-blank characters) at the respective position, and a right one does the same but neglects line breaks as delimiters. Bonus: you can copy a note's entire raw contents by pressing [Ctrl]-[R]; [Ctrl]-[C] does the same but with the post-formatting applied. 💅
    • To paste the clipboard's contents, press the middle button wherever the insertion is supposed to happen. This inserts the clipboard's current contents, trying to word-wrap the text (at white space and after hyphens). If you're in insert mode, following text gets shifted toward the end of the note, also trying to word-wrap that. 🫶

If you want to paste something without word-wrapping (e.g., an URL containing a hyphen), paste it via [Ctrl]-[I] (think [i]nsert). This pastes the clipboard's raw contents at the current cursor location, shifting subsequent text if in insert mode (and not trying to word-wrap that either).

Obvious limitations you should be aware of include:

  • As is usually the case (about wmpinboard, anyway), size matters. As you know, a note can hold only up to 59 characters, so trying to paste longer strings will result in those being truncated. 😭
  • If the text to be pasted is formatted in some way or other, it won't be after it's been pasted: wmpinboard replaces new line characters with blanks and, when pasting with the mouse, tries to word-wrap text.
  • The information stored in the cut buffer needn't necessarily be compatible with wmpinboard, in that it may be encoded with another character set.
  • Leave edit mode — left-click the triangle in the lower right-hand side corner. If the note is completely empty, it gets removed from the board. Either way, you return to the pinboard view. 🌈
  • Pop up a panel with some further options — right-click that same triangle. To learn what the panel is there for, see the corresponding section below.
  • Draw a sketch — this mode is activated via the panel, and deactivated by either right-clicking somewhere on the note or opening the panel again. While in drawing mode the mouse pointer is pencil-shaped, and drawing happens by holding the left mouse button down and dragging, just as you'd expect. Sketch and text may overlap each other, but keyboard input is ignored while in drawing mode. ✏️
  • Erase a sketch — just like DRAWing mode, this mode is entered via the panel and quit the same way. In erase mode the text is hidden, so you don't have to guess whether a pixel belongs to an entered character or a drawn sketch. Note that the erase cursor's point is slightly larger than the one used when drawing. 🧽
Note: wmpinboard remembers where you left the text cursor after you last edited a note and restores this position when you edit it the next time. 💖

🎀 Edit mode panel 🎀

This panel is meant to give you easy access to some options affecting edit mode or the current note in general. It looks like this (letters denote the buttons for reference below):

    +---+---+---+---+
    ⎪ a ⎪ c ⎪ e ⎪ g ⎪
    +---+---+---+---+
    ⎪ b ⎪ d ⎪ f ⎪ h ⎪
    +---+---+---+---+

The buttons bear tiny icons meant to suggest what they do — which isn't all that easy on a 12x12 pixels area. :^)' 😭

Here's what each button does:

  • (a) Left-clicking this button opens and closes the alarm panel (see below), which lets you configure alarm settings for the note being edited. When the alarm panel is visible, the alarm is activated. To turn it off, press the button again and make the panel disappear. ⏰
  • (b) This button cycles through all colors available for notes (20 of them). Clicking it won't close the panel, so you can do this repeatedly. Left mouse button goes ascending, right button goes descending. Note: colors can also be changed via a keyboard shortcut in edit mode (see that section). 🌈
  • (c) Closes the panel and returns to edit mode, with the sketch-drawing feature enabled (see above). ✏️
  • (d) Closes the panel and returns to edit mode, with the sketch-erasing feature enabled (see above). Don't panic if entered text vanishes all of a sudden when you do this — that's because wmpinboard intentionally hides it, so you don't have to make wild guesses about what's entered text and which pixels belong to a sketch. 🧽
  • (e) Removes all entered text on the current note and places the text cursor on the very first character. It also closes the panel, returning you to edit mode. 💀
  • (f) Completely removes a drawn sketch on the current note and returns to edit mode.
  • (g) Removes the entire note from the board and returns to pinboard view. 😭
  • (h) Merely closes the panel (and thus puts you back in edit mode). The same can be done by simply right-clicking in this view.

👑 Alarm panel 👑

This panel can be accessed from the edit mode panel described above. If the panel is visible while the edit mode panel is on, the alarm is set; otherwise, it's disabled.

The alarm panel consists of six distinct clickable areas. The digits to the left and right of the colon are the hour and minute for which an alarm is to be set. Below them, a date can be specified in month, day order. On the right there are two toggle buttons (which can be either green (on) or red (off), and are mutually exclusive). The top one represents a daily alarm, whereas the bottom one indicates/sets a date-specific one.

The hour, minute, month, and day of month fields can each be incremented or decremented by left- or right-clicking on them, respectively. Clicking one of the toggle buttons configures the alarm as the respective type. 🎀

As the above description implies, there are two distinct kinds of alarms: daily and date-specific ones.

Alarms are generally executed only when in pinboard view and not moving any notes about. If you're keeping the program busy at the time an alarm would have to occur, it gets delayed until you're finished (i.e., until the program returns to idle pinboard view). The same holds if an alarm occurs while another one is running. ⏳

If all prerequisites are given and an alarm becomes due, the corresponding note is displayed in edit view, and the display starts to flash on and off, along with the alarm command being executed (see the section on "OPTIONS"). To stop the blinking, click on the note. From then on, the note will be in edit mode. 🔥

For daily alarms, the date you typed in just gets yeeted into the void — like the name says, they fire every single day at the time you set. ⏰ To switch one of these off, you have to open the edit mode panel and click button (a) so the alarm panel disappears, and boom, alarm's off. 💅

Date-specific alarms though? Those are one-time only, running at the exact day and time you picked. And since you can't specify a year (explicitly, anyway), the alarm fires on that date's next occurrence within a year of when you set it. After it goes off, it disables itself automatically. 🫶 And if a date-specific alarm comes due while wmpinboard isn't even running, it'll show up the moment you start the program next time — which, heads up, does not apply to daily alarms. 🙈

The default mode for alarms is date-specific, and the time and date start off initialized to the next full hour the first time you open the alarm panel for a given note. ✨

Under the hood, alarm times get stored in universal format — meaning if you change your time zone after setting an alarm, the time stays universally the same but will differ relative to the new time zone from whatever absolute time you originally set. This behavior is intended. 💖

And finally, bestie, we gotta mention there are a few limitations when it comes to command line actions (like --add, --del, -i, etc.). Go read the RESTRICTIONS section for that tea. ☕

💖 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 💖

  • Q: Is a "pinboard" this small really of any use?

A: Okay so obviously the limited size imposes certain restrictions, but think about it — a real life pinboard reminds you of stuff just by the mere existence of notes being pinned to it. To actually read them you gotta step close and, possibly, detach the note. 📌

Quite similarly, wmpinboard reminds you of things by facing you with colored representations of notes on your screen. To find out what you meant them to remind you of, all you have to do is click a note and it gets displayed full size. And on top of that, the alarm feature from a later version allows for even more explicit reminders, which honestly makes wmpinboard more powerful in a way than any real-life cork board. :-) 🎀

By choosing from a variety of possible colors, you can assign particular colors to certain kinds of reminders, which may further enhance wmpinboard's usability. Plus you can place certain notes on certain areas of the board to emphasize their category, urgency, etc. It's up to you what you make of it. 💅

And finally, by adding drawing capabilities, the author has definitely overcome the contents quantity barrier imposed by the maximum number of 59 characters — for as everyone knows, a picture is worth more than a thousand words. grin 🖼️

  • Q: I don't live in an English-speaking country, so what about extended characters (umlauts, accents, cyrillic alphabet)?

A: wmpinboard lets you use an arbitrary 8bit X font, as long as its characters are a fixed size of 6x10 (or, deprecated but possible, anything <= 7x10) pixels. The default font is "6x10" — more precisely, it's called -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-c-*-ISO8859-1, an ISO8859-1 (Latin1) font which should be part of every XFree installation. 🦋

To make wmpinboard use another font, run it like this:

$ wmpinboard --font=FONT

where FONT is either a shortcut for a compiled-in font name (peep the OPTIONS section for a list of those) or a valid, complete X font descriptor. This is a configuration directive, which means no other instance of wmpinboard may be running at the time. Also note this only works if there are no more notes on the board. It's intentionally been made impossible to change the font while there are notes saved in wmpinboard's data file, since that might result in garbage being displayed. And of course, even a font specified via a shortcut has to exist on your system to be usable. 😭

If a configured custom font can't be loaded or has invalid dimensions, wmpinboard will try to revert. But note that this won't affect the font name saved along with the data. 🙈

  • Q: How can I disable those vexing, superfluous animations?

A:

$ wmpinboard --light
  • Q: Why aren't those animations smooth all of the time? Sometimes it looks like they're being skipped entirely.

A: This presumably is a multitasking issue: depending on the current system load and wmpinboard's/the X server's recent CPU usage history, it may take a moment until the scheduling has been adapted to the suddenly increased CPU load implied by displaying the animation. And short as it is, it may already be finished by the time that happens — i.e., it's the X server lagging behind in updating the program's display if wmpinboard's been idle for some time prior to that. Sounds paradoxical, but the effect is more likely to show the lower the system's load is. There's no way to avoid this effect — either this, or you turn off animations altogether. 💀

  • Q: When I leave wmpinboard idle in edit mode for some time, edit mode is terminated automatically. Is that intended?

A: Yes. After 60 idle seconds (that's the default; see the OPTIONS section) in edit mode — no mouse click and no keyboard input — edit mode is terminated automatically. And if the note being edited happens to be blank, it'll be discarded (or removed, if an existing note is being edited). 🫶

This timeout can, however, be adjusted to your preferences or turned off using the -t parameter. See the OPTIONS section for that.

  • Q: When does wmpinboard save its data?

A: Notes data is saved on each of these occasions:

  • whenever edit mode is terminated
  • when you switch notes in edit mode (via [Shift]-[arrow key])
  • when a note has been moved on the board
  • when an interactive instance is running and you run wmpinboard from the command line, making it dump, add, or delete notes
  • when killed via SIGINT or SIGTERM and edit mode is active

Notes are saved to a file called .wmpinboarddata in your home directory (see the FILES section). 💾

  • Q: I've tried my best and littered the entire pinboard with quite a lot of notes. Now I can't seem to be able to add another one.

A: There's a compile-time limit of 20 notes. More notes on this tiny a board really don't make any sense. 🍓

  • Q: I've explicitly configured my window manager for click-based rather than mouse-following focus, but wmpinboard's focus follows the mouse regardless. Can I change this?

A: By default, wmpinboard actively claims the keyboard input focus (if it's in note edit mode) whenever the pointer is moved over the application's area. Since wmpinboard is a dock applet — i.e., a withdrawn rather than a "real" X window — it can't be assigned a focus in the same way as the latter ones. 👑

However, running wmpinboard with the parameter -c will make it emulate some sort of click-based focusing. This means it actively claims the keyboard focus only on these occasions:

  • when a new note is created (not when you click on an existing note — you'll have to explicitly click on the editing area to make it claim focus; this way, you can just view a note without any change to keyboard focus)
  • when you click somewhere on the text area in edit mode

Once keyboard-focused, wmpinboard will keep it until another window is explicitly focused (usually by clicking on its title bar or border). To focus wmpinboard again when it's lost focus, you'll have to click on its text area in edit mode. This click will only focus the application and not have the usual cursor-positioning effect. 💅

This feature is to be considered experimental since the author isn't sure of how much use it really is. A mouse-following focus is the recommended mode of operation.
  • Q: I've noticed that after a while, some sort of darker stains appear on my notes. Is that a bug in some drawing routine?

A: No, this is not a bug. These "stains" are meant to resemble creases, caused by frequent handling of a particular note (wear & tear, you see?). In fact, they're added with a certain probability whenever you view a note by clicking on it (note that leafing through notes via [Shift]-[arrow keys] is not affected), when you clear its textual or drawn contents via the edit mode panel (very outwearing, that ;-)), and when a note is moved. This feature can be disabled at compile time by running configure with --disable-creases as a parameter. 🎀

And to prevent the question — no, worn-out notes cannot be ironed to get rid of the creases. Sorry. :-p 😭

  • Q: Is wmpinboard compatible with AfterStep's Wharf?

A: wmpinboard tries to autodetect whether Window Maker is running and sets itself up accordingly. If this doesn't work for you for some reason, you can explicitly make it run in either Withdrawn- or NormalState using the -w or -n flag, respectively. See the OPTIONS section. ✨

Swallowing evidently works with AfterStep 1.6.10; earlier versions are unknown. A Wharf config line you might try is this:

*Wharf wmpinboard nil MaxSwallow "wmpinboard" wmpinboard &

Besides, wmpinboard has been reported to work with Blackbox. 🖤

  • Q: I have X running at a color depth of 8 bits, i.e., in palette mode, and wmpinboard obviously requires too many colors and thus looks real messy (or doesn't run at all, complaining about "not enough free color cells"). What can I do about this?

A: As of version 0.99.1, the recommended solution is to upgrade whatever component of your system restricts you to a palette mode. 💅

  • Q: Can I run multiple instances of wmpinboard as the same user, simultaneously?

A: No, this is certainly not a good idea. The run-time behavior may be unpredictable, and your data file can get corrupted. 😭 Therefore, any wmpinboard process that's to be run interactively first checks whether another interactive instance is running, and if so, refuses to run.

  • Q: I've just upgraded from a pre-0.7 version of wmpinboard and noticed that its data file format has changed completely since. Is there a way to upgrade and yet keep my existing notes?

A: There's a Perl script doing the conversion included with the distribution (the source one, anyway). If your package didn't include that, feel free to mail the author (see the AUTHOR section at the end of this documentation). 🫶

  • Q: I find a mere 59 characters per note to be a real limitation. How about making wmpinboard pop up an external window with more room for that? Or how about assigning that job to an external editor?

A: Okay so there's a variety of comprehensive programs for keeping notes out there, offering this functionality but being rather heavy-weight since they are linked against one GUI library or another (CoolNotes or KNotes come to mind). On the other hand, I couldn't find a WM-conforming reminder I could omnipresently stick to my desktop anywhere, so I wrote wmpinboard. I wanted it to be small, neat, easy to use, and yet useful in a way.

I hope that's about what the program is currently like. And I'd prefer to keep it like that rather than inflate it by linking against a GUI library--eventually, the note editing code would outweigh the rest of the application by a factor, and people would probably still create notes mostly shorter than 60 characters. If you restrict your memos to keywords and abbreviations, that's quite a lot.

I want wmpinboard to remain an applet in that it doesn't open up external windows and use (if just temporarily) additional desktop space. I explicitly wrote it to have something omnipresent at a fixed position on my desktop. I find it preferable to have the notes pop up in place rather than somewhere else on the screen.

Personally, I use other programs for larger notes too; wmpinboard has been designed for things smaller in size and greater in urgency, it's in no way meant to be a comprehensive knowledge base application of any kind.

Summing up, I think a dock applet should be small both regarding its on-screen representation and the resources it uses. That's why I don't intend to add any pop-up dialogs or similar things to wmpinboard.

  • Q: I've tried the program, yet I can't help finding it utterly useless. What shall I do?

A: The solution is simple. Just don't use it.

  • Q: Will your answer to this question be "no"?

A: Nope.

✨ HINTS ✨

  • A good way of making the best of the organizational features offered by wmpinboard is to use certain colors and locations on the pinboard to indicate urgency and contents of a note. For example, you might use each of the color groups for a certain kind of reminder, because that enables you to leaf through all notes with related contents via [Shift]-[arrow keys] in edit mode. Besides, you might assign each corner of the board a specific urgency, altogether allowing you to derive a note's type from its color and its urgency from its location on the board. Thanks again to the ability to leaf through all notes belonging to the same group of colors, notes with similar contents will still be clustered in a way.

🌸 UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES 🌸

This piece of documentation doesn't cover any undocumented features.

💾 FILES 💾

  • ~/.wmpinboarddata — the user's wmpinboard data file
  • ~/.wmpinboarddata.new — temporary file created momentarily when saving data

🌈 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES 🌈

  • $HOME — the user's home directory

🚧 RESTRICTIONS 🚧

  • wmpinboard relies on a dock app tile size of at least 64x64 pixels. In fact, using smaller tiles renders the applet rather useless, as, e.g., opening the edit mode panel becomes impossible.
  • Unpredictable effects may be the results if a command line action is taken while an alarm is running and others are due simultaneously. If just a single alarm is active and no others are due, that alarm will be cancelled when the two instances of wmpinboard synchronize. If more instances are due during the process, a race conditions arises that can't be solved satisfactorily due to the program's internal structure and organization. Still, in theory, nothing critical will happen, and the most you'll lose will be an alarm or two.
  • wmpinboard data files are not designed to be portable across architectures. Due to differences in data type representations that are likely otherwise, a datafile can only be reliably used by program binaries running on machines of the same architecture.
  • Certainly of no interest to anyone, but mentioned for the sake of completeness: wmpinboard's alarm features will start to fail past 04:14:07 on Jan 19, 2037, which is due to the legacy Un*x time format.

💀 BUGS 💀

If you stumble on any bugs, feel free to mail the author. The same goes if you encounter any problems running/using the program. Be sure to include any information you consider relevant, i.e., at a minimum, the version of wmpinboard you're using as well as your OS and X versions.

Also, further suggestions are always welcome. Please check the TODO file that's part of the distribution to see if what you're about to suggest isn't already on my "to do" list, or has been suggested earlier and was rejected for one reason or other.

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

👑 AUTHOR 👑

wmpinboard is copyrighted (c) 1998-2000 by Marco Goetze, <gomar@mindless.com>. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, revision 2 or any later revision thereof. Use at your own risk.

New releases of and themes for wmpinboard can be found at <http://www.tu-ilmenau.de/~gomar/stuff/wmpinboard/>, or that was true at least by the time this document was last updated.

This page is from the 3rd Berkeley Distribution, version 0.99.3, and it's WMPINBOARD(1) — that's the footer, bestie. No date on the line, so don't come for me. 💅✨

📦 where this page comes from