HOWTO: VinDSL Conky Script

[Shadius]

Let's be honest about this, shall we? YOU, Vin, designed something that was overwhelmingly popular to people who don't want to program or design for themselves.

These said people come in, especially from the Ubuntu world of "Linux made easy", see your work, and want to get it running. When they copy and paste your work, the fundamental understanding of their own systems is lacking to such a degree that they BELIEVE it's broken because it doesn't look identical to your screenshot.

This is not helped by your bizarre font size choices (Half point sizes? Decimal point sizes? REALLY?) which, I might add, you've never explained to any degree. Also hurting the cause, you insist on experimenting with things "Because it's there" rather than "Because it's efficient"... Not helpful. And, third strike against the situation... You stopped servicing people's questions about getting it running. That part, I understand, it's overwhelming.

But, when every other post in the Conky Community thread is "I have a version of VinDSL's Conky... It's Broken... Fix it For Me." this is ALSO frustration incarnate. It's hard to be a "Community" of Conky users, discussing and experimenting with the display and design aspects when all we do is get the same Conky running for everyone. Since there's no real Tech Support for Conky, there's a million questions to be asked, and no one is even remotely targeting the user's problems with solutions in any organised way.

The truth here, and it's the whole truth, is that I was sick of answering these questions from new users so many times without being able to point them to anywhere that can genuinely HELP them. To all of the rest of you reading this, VinDSL really is a nice guy with a really twisted sense of humour when you talk to him. He's weird as hell, and brilliant at designing things. I RESPECT the popularity of his code, and I LIKE him as a person. His code itself, it's layout, and those little quirks (Decimal Point Fonts! MY GOD WHAT GOOD ARE THEY? THEY MAKE NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM AND THE NEXT WHOLE NUMBER UP! AND USE A STANDARD WEATHER CODE SYSTEM ALREADY! PURPOSELY BEING DIFFICULT!) bugs the living SNOT out of me. I don't use his code myself, I've just been staring at it so much in the past year or two that SOMEBODY with some technical background had to save the Community from being inundated with MORE VinDSL questions.

So, there you go. I like the guy, not the code, and got frustrated at obvious questions that were being asked without any proper answers coming up. It's not some miracle, I'm not the salvation of all. It's a necessary evil to get people over the hump of copying his code, and onto the path of changing it to suit their individual tastes. It weeds out the people too lazy to design for themselves from the people who will come back to the Conky world with new designs and ideas for the rest of us. There's still not a suitable Tech Support structure in place for the rest of Conky, and no one takes it seriously enough to start it. But, I did take a part the most popular source for Conky and put it together so people can at least stop saying they know nothing and are afraid of everything. Everything beyond that is in the realm of personal opinion and speculation.

I did this to help people. It doesn't cover some important things, and the Big Conky Thread is over 2000 pages long now. Chances of being able to use it as a suitable reference for anything is long since dead. And, as the metaphor goes, "In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King." This thread is a direct application of understanding only the most popular setup in the Conky Community. If it's considered "The Best source on the Internet", then it's only because there aren't any others written to be practical applications. It doesn't cover some important things to the Conky world, so it is severely lacking in completeness. I still catch hell from other Conky experts because I wrote this. This has, by no means, been "Fun" to do.

42dorian, I must thank you for this tutorial! I began to use Conky because of this thread. I learned so much! Enough to make me comfortable to try it out on my own and do a little bit of editing myself. I personally don't use VinDSL's script (awesome script, by the way!), but your thread gave me an understanding of how Conky works and what it does, which is what I was looking for. I like to make things myself, and not just copy other people's creations so I do appreciate the attention to detail by both you and VinDSL. Your thread has enabled me to learn how to design and program my Conky for myself, which is precisely what I like to do! For that, I say THANK YOU! I am new to Ubuntu Linux and a newborn baby to Conky so I am still learning the ropes, but I give full credit to you in helping me getting started! I intend to learn a lot more about Conky and come up with a creation of my own that I will be happy with and maybe others will too. Keep up the great work! IT IS VERY MUCH APPRECIATED!

[42dorian]

42dorian, I must thank you for this tutorial! I began to use Conky because of this thread. I learned so much! Enough to make me comfortable to try it out on my own and do a little bit of editing myself. I personally don't use VinDSL's script (awesome script, by the way!), but your thread gave me an understanding of how Conky works and what it does, which is what I was looking for. I like to make things myself, and not just copy other people's creations so I do appreciate the attention to detail by both you and VinDSL. Your thread has enabled me to learn how to design and program my Conky for myself, which is precisely what I like to do! For that, I say THANK YOU! I am new to Ubuntu Linux and a newborn baby to Conky so I am still learning the ropes, but I give full credit to you in helping me getting started! I intend to learn a lot more about Conky and come up with a creation of my own that I will be happy with and maybe others will too. Keep up the great work! IT IS VERY MUCH APPRECIATED!

Relax Shadius. I'm aware the thread is "Helpful" to people. It's written to be that, and I update/change things when people find problems with the text. It's when people go a little overboard on what it does, as Vin is prone to do these days, I tend to set the record straight. "It's the greatest help in the world!!" No... If that's true, it's because no one else has tried. It doesn't mean it's not helpful, it just puts reality back into the mix. I didn't resurrect anyone from the grave, and I didn't transmute Lead into Gold with the wave of a magic wand.

I have said repeatedly throughout this thread that too much praise of the thread itself doesn't help new users. It just clutters the thread. Every so often, Vin gets it into his head that I need an ego boost and becomes my cheer leader for a while. Sure, there are times I've "Discussed" how frustrating it is dealing with the old Conky Pros with this thread hanging over my head, overshadowing everything I say around them. I've wanted to just stop several times. But there's no one else doing the tech support side of this. So I tend to come back to update things of any importance.

Now can we please try to keep our over-enthusiasm out of this thread? Vin's last update was December of 2011, and there have been several Ubuntu updates since then, as well as a few Conky upgrades. As much as an annoyance as it will probably be for Vin and I both, we're probably due for an update to the text and the code. Not that much has changed, all the examples are still valid. But, the code says 11.04 and 11.10, and Conky 1.8.0 and 1.8.1, with some minor warnings about 1.8.1-6. As much as it's kinda pointless, I think the text and the code need to sync up with the time we're working in now, and that will involve some headaches. The fewer rants the better going forward.

[Shadius]

I was just showing some appreciation. Sorry, you feel that it was a rant of over enthusiasm.

[42dorian]

I was just showing some appreciation. Sorry, you feel that it was a rant of over enthusiasm.

No, it's fine. I'm just trying to mitigate the off-topic stuff. Anyone who reads the second paragraph of the first post of the thread sees why I do this every so often. This isn't the place to express a lot of thanks for doing the thread. For the same reason you don't write "Thanks for the book!" in the back of the Encyclopaedia at your local Library. It's a reference thread, and any discussion not about "Issue X isn't addressed" or "Issue Y is up with version Z, Here's Solution A" doesn't actually belong here. Anything else is clutter, and potentially frustration for any new user who is HAVING problem X and the first post is between updates.

It's not that we don't care about you all, Vin and I do care. But sharing what you did, your experiences with Conky, "Thanks For This!" and all that off-topic stuff belongs in the Big Conky Thread. They're the community, not this thread. We never intended to take anything away from them, just filter some of the problems out to get that thread back to the Community part.

[Shadius]

No, it's fine. I'm just trying to mitigate the off-topic stuff. Anyone who reads the second paragraph of the first post of the thread sees why I do this every so often. This isn't the place to express a lot of thanks for doing the thread. For the same reason you don't write "Thanks for the book!" in the back of the Encyclopaedia at your local Library. It's a reference thread, and any discussion not about "Issue X isn't addressed" or "Issue Y is up with version Z, Here's Solution A" doesn't actually belong here. Anything else is clutter, and potentially frustration for any new user who is HAVING problem X and the first post is between updates.

It's not that we don't care about you all, Vin and I do care. But sharing what you did, your experiences with Conky, "Thanks For This!" and all that off-topic stuff belongs in the Big Conky Thread. They're the community, not this thread. We never intended to take anything away from them, just filter some of the problems out to get that thread back to the Community part.

Ah, I understand. Terribly sorry. I could remove my posts if you wish to clear up the clutter.

[Dngrsone]

Hello, 42dorian.

I have a recommendation and a question or two.

The recommendation to people who are going to use VinDSL's script and modify them is to forego the autostart script at least initially and just call up conky via a terminal window. Doing so will show you what errors may be cropping up so you can better fix your code. I don't know if conky generates an error log, but I know from past experience that an unmonitored log can create all kinds of havoc if you are running on limited hard drive space...

Also, width changes won't reflect until after you reboot Ubuntu, in my experience (12.04 with Unity).

Question: I am somewhat confused about where to go to look for answers to questions pertaining to the weather scripts. Since I am using VinDSL's script which is now based off Google Weather, and such. Where is the best location to find tips on this, such how to optimise the script to handle both two- and three-digit forecasts?

[42dorian]

Hello, 42.

Hello, I more often go by the full 42Dorian though. Something feels wrong about being called a number. (Though I'm not offended.)

I have a recommendation and a question or two.

The recommendation to people who are going to use VinDSL's script and modify them is to forego the autostart script at least initially and just call up conky via a terminal window. Doing so will show you what errors may be cropping up so you can better fix your code. I don't know if conky generates an error log, but I know from past experience that an unmonitored log can create all kinds of havoc if you are running on limited hard drive space...

Good idea to do, yes. Good idea for this thread? No. Problems that could show up in a terminal are all covered in many little side notes throughout the first post right now. Things I know about, I make notes on. Such as the Conky Version and Gnome Keyring problems, or the Weather.com XOAP service being discontinued. Anything drastically wrong after they've followed along, I point them to the Big Conky Thread. We're not trying to take anything away from them, so we deliberately leave some of this stuff unanswered so that it pushes newer users back to the Conky thread. If they actually read everything from top to bottom in the first post, they don't need terminal running while they work.

Question: I am somewhat confused about where to go to look for answers to questions pertaining to the weather scripts. Since I am using VinDSL's script which is now based off Google Weather, and such. Where is the best location to find tips on this, such how to optimise the script to handle both two- and three-digit forecasts?

Abandon it. VinDSL probably hates when I say it this way, but I intentionally left no help links for the GoogleAPI weather script. It's flawed, it's backwards, and VinDSL was only enamoured with it for a while because it was different than what others were using. It's a massively backward script. It was covered, briefly, in the old TBG Weather script thread, but it is pretty much dead now. There is a new TBG Weather Script thread over at CrunchBang, and both of those links, old and new, are in my Sig. Try one of those scripts. It will be better for you in the long run. I know they're not as simplified as the other ones, but they are the absolute best way to generate a genuinely personal weather section.

As I've said many times in the thread so far, the lazy way is actually the harder way. Just because you don't "Feel" like placing every element, doesn't mean it's not easier that way. Plus, there are shortcuts that help with how readable that section can be. Again, we just don't cover them in THIS thread. Weather is Teo's thing, Lua is mrpeachy's, and maintaining this HowTo is mine. Or, in general, that's how it's sorted.

[Dngrsone]

My apologies. I will bother you no further.

[42dorian]

UPDATE (DELAYED): 06/10/2012

I do, indeed have an answer from VinDSL about the Decimal Fonts issue. After years of having no answer, he has given one. Unfortunately, due to some unknown reason, I am unable to edit the first post anymore. I have a query into the Admins about it, and I'll let you know if anything develops.

In the mean time: Onto the reason!

VinDSL has admitted that it is one of his quirks. There is no TECHNICAL reason for the decimal fonts. The way VinDSL does his designing is for his own personal tastes. You have to admit, since so many people copy his design, he has a good eye for the aesthetics. But, sometimes he's not happy with the whole numbers, and feels the need to use decimals in order to place them, for himself, in an exact place on the screen. Where most of the rest of us will just use screenruler and put a font in a whole number, lining everything up to the closest pixel, VinDSL does not. Yes, he uses Screenruler, but if screenruler isn't precise enough for his eyes, he adjusts the font sizes for the element he's working on, starting at increments of 0.11 until he is satisfied with how it looks to his eyes.

If you just read that, and thought it was weird, here's a better insight. He designs for his eyes, not for the pixels. The rest of us, wanting a more technically suitable setup, tend to design by the numbers, and only adjust those numbers when we run out of room in the Conky Window. Where we would just make the window better, or move an element elsewhere, VinDSL forces the Fonts to comply with the aesthetics.

What does this mean? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It still means you have to design for your own needs, whether that be getting it to fit a different screen than his, or making room for what you want Conky to do, design for yourself. The Decimal Fonts are not going to make or break the entire setup for you. They are just for VinDSL's eyes.

*EDIT* As Per THIS This HowTo is currently suspending.

Since VinDSL's Conky is not a part of Ubuntu, moving it to a solely Ubuntu controlled WIKI defeats the purpose of this HowTo. Some discussions will be had in the next little while regarding this.

[Fantu]

Hi, this is very good conky script, there will be new versions?