NAME bricons - quick start up utility for applications using text, icons and pop-up menus an X display SYNOPSIS bricons [options] [-file] [-col] [-help] [-sensitive] DESCRIPTION Bricons program allows the user to quickly start up applica- tions by selecting the appropriate button from the display and pressing the left mouse button. A maximum of up to six- teen main menu buttons can be displayed. Each main menu but- ton can launch an application or pop-up a sub menu contain- ing more buttons. The buttons can be represented as a bitmap or as text. Information on how the program is to present each button (either as a bitmap or text) and the application that is to be executed if that button is selected is contained in script file called .briconsrc. This file should be stored in the user's home directory. The .briconsrc file contains a number of key words which are used to indicate if the button label is some text or a bit- map and if the button is to pop-up a sub menu or launch a program. These key words are explained below: The .briconsrc file should start with the keyword %icon or %text The key word %icon indicates that the button label is a bitmap. This should be followed by the file name contain- ing the bitmap. For example: %icon clock.icon The key word %text indicates that the button label is some text. The text can be split over three lines by using the new line character \n. For example: %text Line1\nLine2\nLine3 would be presented as: Line1 Line2 Line3 Once a button has been selected it is prevented from accidentally being re-selected by "graying out" the button (default action). Sometimes however it maybe desirable to allow the button to be selected more than once. This can be done be using the keyword %icon+ or %text+ The next line in the .briconsrc file should either contain the key word %sub_menu or the application to be started. If the name of an application is given then a check is made to see if such an program can be executed. If the program does not exist or is not in the users path then an error message is printed and the button associated with the application is ignored. If the key word %sub_menu is used then a pop-up sub menu is created. Any further buttons defined in the briconsrc file will appear in the sub menu for that button until the key word %end_sub_menu is found. A maximum of ten buttons are allowed in a single pop-up sub menu. Any line in the .briconsrc file starting with a # character is treated as a comment and will be ignored. This program has four default buttons labelled source, edit, help and quit. The edit button allows the user to edit there icon file (default being an empty source button causes the program to distory all the current buttons being displayed and re-read the icon file and display the new but- tons. OPTIONS bricons accepts all of the standard X Toolkit command line options along with the additional options listed below: -file Tells the program to read this file instead of the default file. -col Indicates the number of buttons in a column before starting a new row. The default number of columns is 15. -isize Specifies the size (width and height) of each icon box. The default size is 55. -last Specifies the name of a bitmap file for the last but- ton. The default name is "default", which means a text string "Edit Icon" instead of a bitmap icon would be displayed in the position of the last icon box. -help Tells the program the path for the help file. -sensitive Toggle used for default "graying out" of selected but- tons. If set to TRUE then buttons will "gray out" unless specifically requested not to. X DEFAULTS The bricons program reads the .Xdefaults file and Xbricons resource file during startup and uses the appropriate resource specification to customise the appearance or characteristics of its display. This program understands all of the core resource names and classes as well as: no_of_cols Specifies the number of buttons in a column. icon_file Specifies path name for icon file to be read. last_icon Specifies the name for icon file to be used in last icon box. icon_size Specifies the size of icon box. help_file Specifies path name for help file. SETTING BITMAP DIRECTORIES This program will search the default bitmap directory for any bitmaps that are to be used to represent buttons. If the user wishes the program to search other directories for bit- map files then this should be specified in the users .X11defaults file. *BitmapFilePath: should be added fol- lowed by colon separated path names where the bitmap files can be found. For example: *BitmapFilePath: /usr/local/include/X11/bitmaps:/usr/mydir/bitmaps Please do not specify the BitmapFilePath in the Xbricons resource file as it will be ignored by the program. This program will read a .briconsrc file from the current directory. If the file to be read is in another directory then place the following line in the &.X11defaults or Xbri- cons resource file: *icon_file: /usr/mydir/.briconsrc FILES The Xbricons file specifies the required resources. To make sure the program uses the resources file set the following line in your .login: setenv XUSERFILESEARCHPATH ~/app_defaults/%N and place all all resources in the app_defaults directory. WIDGETS The bricons program is a toolkit-based application which consists of a combination of widgets. In order to specify resources, it is useful to know the hierarchy of the widgets which compose bricons. In the list below, indentation indi- cates hierarchical structure. The widget class name is given first, followed by the widget instance name. Xbricons toplevel Form box Command action[18] OverrideShell popup_shell Form popup_layout Command sub_action[10] EXAMPLE Below is an example of a simple .briconsrc file: # <-- a line starting with a '#' is a comment line # # Bri's icon file # # first line must have keyword %icon or %text # to indicate if button is an icon %icon calculator xcalc %text Games\n sub\n menu %sub_menu %text xeyes xeyes %text othello othello %end_sub_menu BUGS After selecting the source button the buttons may not be re-displayed correctly. Selecting the source button a second time may help. AUTHOR Bruce R Ingram, University of Kent at Canterbury. NOTE Some local enhancements were added by Ming-Jen Chan (mjcan@cs.cmu.edu).