XNotify displays a notification on the screen. XNotify receives a notification specification in stdin and shows a notification for the user on the screen.
XNotify comes with the following features:
- XNotify receives notifications from stdin.
You can use a fifo to echo notifications on the fly like
echo Hello World > /path/to/xnotify.fifo - XNotify queues notifications and displays them one above the other.
- Image support, just prefix the notification string with
IMG:/path/to/the/file.pngand a tab. - Multiple monitor support. You can set the monitor with the
-moption. - Support for fallback fonts (you can set more than one fonts, that will be tried in order).
- X resources support (you don't need to recompile Xnotify for configuring it).
XNotify understands the following command-line options:
-b button: Specify the action button.-g gravity: Specify the screen corner/border to place notifications at.-h height: Specify the maximum height of a notification popup.-m monitor: Specify the monitor to place notifications at.-o: Only one notification at a time.-r: Also read notifications from root window name (in addition to read from standard input).-s seconds: Specify the time in seconds notifications are visible.-w: Let the window manager control notification popups.
XNotify can be customized by setting the following X resources.
alignment: Text alignment (left, center, or right).background: Background color.borderColor: Border color.borderWidth: Border width in pixels.faceName: Font.foreground: Text color.gap: Gap between notifications, in pixels.gravity: Screen corner/border to place notifications at.leading: Space between lines.maxHeight: Maximum notification height.opacity: Notification opacity from 0.0 to 1.0.shrink: Whether to shrink notifications to its content size.padding: Margin around the content.wrap: Whether to wrap long lines.
Run make all to build, and make install to install the binary and the
manual into ${PREFIX} (/usr/local).
XNotify receives as input one line per notification. Each line is made out of a notification title and a notification body separated by any number of tabs. Lines without a title are ignored.
The following is an example of how to run XNotify
$ xnotify -m 10 -G NE -g -10+10 -s 15
This line means: read notifications from stdin, display
the notifications on the north east (-G NE) of the monitor 0 (-m 0),
that is, on the upper right corner of the first monitor. The
notifications should be placed 10 pixels to the left and 10 pixels
down (thus creating a 10 pixel gap with the upper right corner).
Each notification stay alive for 15 seconds.
To create a named pipe for XNotify, you can place the following in the beginning of your ~/.xinitrc.
This will create a named pipe unique to your current X display in your home directory at ~/.cache.
Then, it will open xnotify in the background, reading from this named pipe.
XNOTIFY_FIFO="$HOME/.cache/xnotify$DISPLAY.fifo"
export XNOTIFY_FIFO
rm -f $XNOTIFY_FIFO
mkfifo $XNOTIFY_FIFO
xnotify 0<>$XNOTIFY_FIFO
Note that the first two lines (the line setting the environment variable and the line exporting it)
should be at the beginning of your ~/.xinitrc, so other programs you invoke are aware of this variable.
To create a notification with a image, input to XNotify a line beginning
with IMG:/path/to/file.png followed by a tab. For example:
$ printf 'IMG:/path/to/file.png\tThis is a notification\n' > $XNOTIFY_FIFO
To read dbus notifications from stdin, you'll need tiramisu.
Then add the following line to your .xinitrc, after the line calling xnotify.
$ tiramisu -o "$(printf '#summary\t#body\n')" > $XNOTIFY_FIFO &
To use a different size other than the default for the notifications,
run xnotify with the -g option set to the notification size in
WIDTHxHEIGHT. For example:
$ xnotify -g 300x80
The argument for the -g option has the form [WIDTHxHEIGHT][{+-}XPOS{+-}YPOS].
Parts between square brackets are optional.
{+-} means to chose either + or -.
The code and manual are under the MIT/X license. See ./LICENSE for more information.
Read the manual.