Vicious
-------
vicious is a modular widget library for "awesome" window manager,
derived from the "Wicked" widget library. It has some of the old
Wicked widget types, a few of them rewritten, and a good number of
new widgets:
http://git.sysphere.org/vicious/
Usage
-----
To use vicious copy it to the ~/.config/awesome directory, edit
init.lua and comment out all the widgets you don't need from the
"Configure widgets" list. Then add:
require("vicious")
...to the top of your rc.lua.
Once you create a widget (as a: textbox, graph or a progressbar) call
vicious.register() to register it with vicious:
vicious.register(widget, type, format, interval, warg)
widget
- widget created with widget() or awful.widget() (in case of a
graph or a progressbar)
type
- one of the available widget types, see below for a list
format
- string argument or a function
- $1, $2, $3... will be replaced by their respective value
returned by the widget type, some widget types return tables
with custom keys, in that case use: ${key}
- function
- function(widget, args) can be used to manipulate data
returned by the widget type, more about this below
interval
- number of seconds between updates of the widget, 2s by
default, also read the "Power" section below
warg
- some widget types require an argument to be passed, for example
the battery ID
Other Functions
---------------
Unregister a widget:
vicious.unregister(widget, keep)
keep
- if true widget will be suspended, waiting to be activated
Suspend all widgets:
vicious.suspend()
- example automation script for the "laptop-mode-tools" start-stop
module: http://sysphere.org/~anrxc/local/sources/lmt-vicious.sh
Restart suspended widgets:
vicious.activate(widget)
widget
- if provided, only that widget will be activated
Enable caching for a widget:
vicious.enable_caching(widget_type)
- enable caching of values returned by a widget type
Power
-----
When a lot of widgets are in use they, and awesome, can generate a lot
of wake-ups and also be very expensive for system resources. This is
especially important when running on battery power. Suspending widgets
is one way to prevent widgets from draining your battery.
Vicious can also cache values returned by widget types. Caching
enables you to have multiple widgets using the same widget type and
its worker function will be executed only once. However be careful
with those widgets that require a widget argument to be passed. If you
are requesting information for different devices then caching is
useless and can lead to confusion.
Update intervals also play a big role, and you can save a lot of power
with a smart approach to intervals. You should avoid intervals like:
5, 10, 30, 60... to avoid harmonics. If you take the 60-second mark as
an example, all of your widgets would be executed at that
point. Instead think about using only prime numbers, in that case you
will have only a few widgets executed at any given time interval. When
choosing intervals also consider what a widget actually does. Some
widgets read files that reside in memory, others call external
utilities and some, like the mbox widget, read very big files.
Widget types
------------
Widget types consist of worker functions that take the "format"
argument given to vicious.register as the first argument, "warg" as
the second, and return a table of values to insert in the format
string.
vicious.widgets.cpu
- provides CPU usage for all available CPUs/cores
vicious.widgets.cpuinf
- provides speed and cache information for all available CPUs/cores
vicious.widgets.cpufreq
- provides freq, voltage and governor info for a requested CPU
- takes the CPU ID as an argument, i.e. "cpu0"
vicious.widgets.thermal
- provides temperature levels of ACPI thermal zones
- takes the thermal zone as an argument, i.e. "TZS0"
vicious.widgets.load
- provides system load averages for the past 1, 5, and 15 minutes
vicious.widgets.uptime
- provides system uptime information
vicious.widgets.bat
- provides state, charge, and remaining time for a requested battery
- takes battery ID as an argument, i.e. "BAT0"
vicious.widgets.batat
- provides state, charge, and remaining time for all batteries using
acpitool
vicious.widgets.mem
- provides RAM and Swap usage statistics
vicious.widgets.fs
- provides file system disk space usage
- takes an (optional) argument which, if true, includes remote file
systems, only local file systems are included by default
vicious.widgets.dio
- provides I/O statistics for requested storage devices
- takes the disk as an argument, i.e. "/dev/hda"
vicious.widgets.hddtemp
- provides hard drive temperatures using the hddtemp daemon
- takes the hddtemp listening port as an argument, or defaults to
port 7634
vicious.widgets.net
- provides usage statistics for all network interfaces
vicious.widgets.wifi
- provides wireless information for a requested interface
- takes the network interface as an argument, i.e. "wlan0"
vicious.widgets.mbox
- provides the subject of last e-mail in a mbox file
- takes the full path to the mbox as an argument
vicious.widgets.mboxc
- provides the count of total, old and new messages in mbox files
- takes a table with full paths to mbox files as an argument
vicious.widgets.mdir
- provides a number of new and unread messages in a Maildir
structure
- takes the full path to the Maildir structure as an argument
vicious.widgets.gmail
- provides count of new and subject of last e-mail on Gmail
vicious.widgets.entropy
- provides available system entropy
- takes the poolsize as an argument, or uses Linux 2.6 default
entropy pool of 4096-bits
vicious.widgets.org
- provides agenda statistics for Emacs org-mode
- takes a table with full paths to agenda files, that will be
parsed, as an argument
vicious.widgets.pacman
- provides number of pending updates on Arch Linux
vicious.widgets.mpd
- provides the currently playing song in MPD
vicious.widgets.volume
- provides volume levels of requested ALSA mixers
- takes the ALSA channel as an argument, i.e. "Master"
vicious.widgets.weather
- provides weather information for a requested station
- takes the ICAO station code as an argument, i.e. "LDRI"
vicious.widgets.date
- provides access to os.date, with optional custom formatting;
provided as the format string
Custom widget types
-------------------
Use any of the existing widgets as a starting point for your
own. Write a quick worker function that does the work and plug it
in. How data will be formatted, will it be red or blue, should be
defined in rc.lua (or somewhere else, outside the actual widget).
Format functions
----------------
You can use a function instead of a string as the format parameter, so
you are able to check the value returned by the widget type and change
it. You can change the color of the battery widget when it goes below
a certain point, or hide widgets when they return a certain value,
or...
- do not confuse this with just coloring the widget, in those cases
standard markup can be inserted into the format string
The format function will get the widget as its first argument, and a
table with the values otherwise inserted into the format string as its
second argument, and should return the text to be used for the widget.
Example widget
mpdwidget = widget({ type = 'textbox', name = 'mpdwidget' })
vicious.register(mpdwidget,vicious.widgets.mpd,
function (widget, args)
if args[1] == "Stopped" then return ''
else return 'MPD: '..args[1]
end
end)
- hides the mpd widget when there is no song playing, executed every
2 seconds (the default interval)
Usage examples
--------------
Remember, beside creating and registering widgets you have to add them
to a wibox in order to display them.
MPD widget
mpdwidget = widget({ type = 'textbox', name = 'mpdwidget' })
vicious.register(mpdwidget, vicious.widgets.mpd, '$1', 11)
- executed every 11 seconds, takes no arguments
Memory widget
memwidget = widget({ type = 'textbox', name = 'memwidget' })
vicious.enable_caching(vicious.widgets.mem)
vicious.register(memwidget, vicious.widgets.mem, '$1 ($2MB/$3MB)', 13)
- executed every 13 seconds, appends "MB" to 2nd and 3rd returned
values and enables caching of this widget type
HDD temperature widget
hddtempwidget = widget({ type = 'textbox', name = 'hddtempwidget' })
vicious.register(hddtempwidget, vicious.widgets.hddtemp, '${/dev/sda}°C', 19)
- executed every 19 seconds, requests the temperature level of the
${/dev/sda} key/disk and appends "°C" to the returned value, does
not provide the port argument so default port is used
Mbox widget
mboxwidget = widget({ type = 'textbox', name = 'mboxwidget' })
vicious.register(mboxwidget, vicious.widgets.mbox, '$1', 5, '/home/user/mail/Inbox')
- executed every 5 seconds, provides full path to the mbox as an
argument
Gmail widget
gmailwidget = widget({ type = 'textbox', name = 'gmailwidget' })
vicious.register(gmailwidget, vicious.widgets.gmail, 'Mail: ${count}', 601)
- executed every 10 minutes and prepends "Mail: " to the returned value
Battery widget
batwidget = awful.widget.progressbar({ layout = awful.widget.layout.horizontal.rightleft })
batwidget:set_width(8)
batwidget:set_height(10)
batwidget:set_vertical(true)
batwidget:set_background_color('#494B4F')
batwidget:set_border_color(nil)
batwidget:set_color('#AECF96')
batwidget:set_gradient_colors({
'#AECF96',
'#88A175',
'#FF5656' })
vicious.register(batwidget, vicious.widgets.bat, '$2', 61, 'BAT0')
- executed every 61 seconds, requests the current battery charge
level and displays a progressbar, provides "BAT0" battery ID as an
argument
CPU usage widget
cpuwidget = awful.widget.graph({ layout = awful.widget.layout.horizontal.rightleft })
cpuwidget:set_width(50)
cpuwidget:set_scale(false)
cpuwidget:set_max_value(100)
cpuwidget:set_background_color('#494B4F')
cpuwidget:set_border_color('#3F3F3F')
cpuwidget:set_color('#FF5656')
cpuwidget:set_gradient_colors({
'#FF5656',
'#88A175',
'#AECF96' })
vicious.register(cpuwidget, vicious.widgets.cpu, '$1', 3)
- executed every 3 seconds, feeds the graph with total usage
percentage of all CPUs/cores
All other widgets are used in the same manner, read each widget you
are interested in to see what data it returns. You can also use
authors rc.lua as a reference to see how it all fits into the big
picture:
http://git.sysphere.org/awesome-configs/
Other
-----
Also read "awesome" manual pages:
awesome(1) awesomerc(5)
Authors
-------
Vicious, written by:
Adrian C. (anrxc)
Wicked, written by:
Lucas de Vries