HOWTO: VinDSL Conky Script

**foutes** · July 11th, 2019

Originally Posted by VinDSL

It sent me scrambling, too, when Intellicast | Weather Underground turned off their formerly free forecasting API.

After trying this n' that, I finally ended up salvaging ConkyWX 5.0.0-1 by scraping the weather forecasts from MSN:

Code:

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Main weather data source - building redundancy
## For current conditions use ::
#  Wunderground [w], METAR [m]
## For forecast and/or current conditions use ::
#   Intellicast [1] or Weather [2] or MSN [3]
## Use of XML data remains unchanged. See Note below at xml_ID
# -----------------------------------------------------------------------
default_wx=3

u
Wunderground is still working fine for everything else, except the forecasts.

Sometimes less is more, you know?

Good to see you are still around Vin. I have been away for about 6 years and itching to get back into Conky! Unfortunately I have forgotten what little I knew so I will be starting from scratch.

**Cavsfan** · July 20th, 2019

Latest on Fedora 30:

It was not easy with the developmental version of xfdesktop:

Code:

[cavsfan@fedora ~]$ dnf info xfdesktop
Last metadata expiration check: 3:03:27 ago on Fri 19 Jul 2019 05:44:27 PM EDT.
Installed Packages
Name         : xfdesktop
Version      : 4.13.4
Release      : 1.fc30
Architecture : x86_64
Size         : 3.9 M
Source       : xfdesktop-4.13.4-1.fc30.src.rpm
Repository   : @System
From repo    : updates
Summary      : Desktop manager for the Xfce Desktop Environment
URL          : http://www.xfce.org/
License      : GPLv2+
Description  : This package includes a desktop manager for the Xfce Desktop Environment.

It is supposed to be version 4.12... as 4.13... is development, 4.14 will be production. With 4.13... you cannot use override or much of what we are used to.

The one on the right side looks a lot like the original VinDSL conky.

PS: People when this version is released we are going to tell you how to get this started and everything you will need to know to make these beautiful conkys. There are a couple of tricks that we left out of the process but, you will know everything we know soon...

**freebird54** · July 20th, 2019

Looking good - again! What I worry about (a bit) is what Wayland will do to conky - or whether it will be addressed by the conky devs. However, in the meantime we just keep tweaking what works now!

A couple of posts ago I tossed in a script/conky combo for Audacious display of album art and information. There is a problem with it, however, in some circumstances. bash has an annoying ability to make life difficult with unexpected modifications/expansions to variables when you attempt to use them. I have been trying to find some combination of quoting and mods to make it work, but until the POSIX standard tightens up on allowable filenames I suspect the answer would be to have KISS written instead of bash! - The KeepItSimpleShell would allow simple things to be done simply, although doubtless losing some useful functionality. Something roughly like the CLI in AmigaDOS would suit nicely

Anyway - I have found a way around some of the problems - but I couldn't do it in a shell script. So I vacuumed 20 years of dust off my 'C skills', and created a program that does what the script tried to. Keeping much tighter control of path expansions and string handling in general allows some "bad" paths (with characters inherited from Windows no doubt) to work correctly. I haven't found any so far (still testing) that Audacious handles that I can't work with. I also found some things I didn't know, such as the \n newlines embedded in all the audtool responses!

If anyone has any interest in using it, I could clean it up for distribution a bit, and post it here - w/ source and resources of course! It is very simple-minded - and doubtless ugly (old school at best) - but so far it works, and can be compiled with a single call with no make files for the dubious

who wouldn't use the executable otherwise! Oh, and the system() calls don't do so with any interactive targets, and they are specified as /bin/echo etc - if that's trouble then you have it before you run my program!

No point posting visuals, they haven't changed from the script version I posted before.

Keep smiling

freebird

**Cavsfan** · August 31st, 2019

If you are using Xfce as your Desktop Environment you will probably run up against this issue with Xfce packages going from version 4.12 to 4.14 (4.13 possibly but, that was a developmental version):

Conkys going black with zero transparency, etc. First off before you reboot after updating xfcedesktop etc. to 4.14, you want to disable Compiz or the Fusion-Icon from starting up.

If you do not do this, you will likely encounter a situation you cannot get out of without pressing the reset button. This too is remedied by pressing Cntl+Alt+F2, F3, etc and login to the console and deleting the fusion-icon or compiz, if you do not have the fusion-icon.

Either way, you've got to have compiz disabled and while disabled change your conkyrc files like this:

Code:

    -----own_window = true,
-------------------------------------------------------------
-- change this if you are not getting any conky display
-- options are: normal, desktop, dock, panel or override (default: normal)
-------------------------------------------------------------
    -----own_window_type = 'desktop',
    -----own_window_hints = 'below,sticky,undecorated,skip_taskbar,skip_pager',
    -----own_window_transparent = true,
    -----own_window_class = 'Conky',
    -----own_window_argb_visual = true,
    -----own_window_argb_value = 155,


    own_window = true,
    own_window_type = 'normal',
    own_window_transparent = false,
    own_window_hints = 'undecorated,sticky,below,skip_taskbar,skip_pager',
    -- ARGB can be used for real transparency,
    -- note that a composite manager is required for real transparency
    own_window_argb_visual = true,
    -- Set the transparency alpha value from 0 to 255
    own_window_argb_value = 0,

Until something is changed in Conky you will no longer be able to use override, etc.

I've played with changing that zero on the last line and the higher it gets, the darker the area around the conky becomes. So, I just leave it at zero.
There is a little more transparency than I like but, zero works the best IMO.

**Cavsfan** · September 6th, 2019

Originally Posted by Cavsfan

If you are using Xfce as your Desktop Environment you will probably run up against this issue with Xfce packages going from version 4.12 to 4.14 (4.13 possibly but, that was a developmental version):

Conkys going black with zero transparency, etc. First off before you reboot after updating xfcedesktop etc. to 4.14, you want to disable Compiz or the Fusion-Icon from starting up.

If you do not do this, you will likely encounter a situation you cannot get out of without pressing the reset button. This too is remedied by pressing Cntl+Alt+F2, F3, etc and login to the console and deleting the fusion-icon or compiz, if you do not have the fusion-icon.

Either way, you've got to have compiz disabled and while disabled change your conkyrc files like this:

Code:

    -----own_window = true,
-------------------------------------------------------------
-- change this if you are not getting any conky display
-- options are: normal, desktop, dock, panel or override (default: normal)
-------------------------------------------------------------
    -----own_window_type = 'desktop',
    -----own_window_hints = 'below,sticky,undecorated,skip_taskbar,skip_pager',
    -----own_window_transparent = true,
    -----own_window_class = 'Conky',
    -----own_window_argb_visual = true,
    -----own_window_argb_value = 155,


    own_window = true,
    own_window_type = 'normal',
    own_window_transparent = false,
    own_window_hints = 'undecorated,sticky,below,skip_taskbar,skip_pager',
    -- ARGB can be used for real transparency,
    -- note that a composite manager is required for real transparency
    own_window_argb_visual = true,
    -- Set the transparency alpha value from 0 to 255
    own_window_argb_value = 0,

Until something is changed in Conky you will no longer be able to use override, etc.

I've played with changing that zero on the last line and the higher it gets, the darker the area around the conky becomes. So, I just leave it at zero.
There is a little more transparency than I like but, zero works the best IMO.

This is probably better for xfce 4.14:

Code:

    own_window_type = 'normal',
-------------------------------------------------------------
-- uncomment below hints line if not using override
-------------------------------------------------------------
    own_window_hints = 'below,sticky,undecorated,skip_taskbar,skip_pager',


    own_window_class = 'Conky',
    own_window = true,
    own_window_transparent = true,
    own_window_argb_visual = true,
    -- if own_window_transparent is set to true then this value is irrelevant else can be set to anything 0 to 255
    -- own_window_argb_value = 255,

**Cavsfan** · January 11th, 2020

Some distros fight the Conkywx but, it always wins in the end.

The current testing version on Fedora 31 after a bit of a struggle:

**VinDSL** · January 11th, 2020

Great job there, Cavsfan

**Cavsfan** · January 11th, 2020

Originally Posted by VinDSL

Great job there, Cavsfan

Thanks! I had the exact same screen as Param for many years but, then got my son's 1440k monitor.
Went through 2 days or more of resizing the conkys.

Then he comes home and wants it back.

So I get a 2160K monitor and spend another 2 or so days resizing it again.

Good thing I can copy across partitions because right now I've got all of these with Conkywx running on each:
Arch Linux, Debian Buster & Testing, Fedora 30, Fedora 31, openSUSE TW, MX Linux 18.3, MX Linux 19 and Xubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver LTS installed along with Windows 10.

Copying everything from one partition to another and setting it up once is easy.
Well, working through a rough patch here and there sometimes happens but, most of the time it is fairly easy.

Then you have a working desktop good for production.

**freebird54** · January 11th, 2020

Originally Posted by Cavsfan

Thanks! I had the exact same screen as Param for many years but, then got my son's 1440k monitor.
Went through 2 days or more of resizing the conkys.

Then he comes home and wants it back.

So I get a 2160K monitor and spend another 2 or so days resizing it again.

I know what you mean - moved to 4k monitor and EVERYTHING had to be resized, and most of them rethought (more room = more goodies on show!) OF course - you can never have too much room...

Actually , moving conky from distro to distro only SOMETIMES works - in my case Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is the odd one out. Very strange apparent loss of ${voffset} values (lots of negative valus to recover) - and needs a previous line ending in ${goto 6} for some inexplicable reason too! The rest of them (Arch, MX Linux 19, Xubuntu 19.10, ArcoLinux 20.1.4) all look much like this when I want them to.

Can't argue about conkywx ability to overcome, though...

Hey VinDSL, long time no see! Amazing where the work you and 42dorian did has gone over the years...

Hang in there..

freebird54