An Appicon is an icon that appears in the bottom, left-hand corner (default) of the screen while the application is running. Essentially it is the icon defined for the program. When an application is minimized in Window Maker, it appears similar to an appicon or icon, but has a title bar above the icon. This is how you can tell the difference. Appicons are able to be docked on the dock or clip, minimized applications cannot be docked.
Some applications can run as appicons. These special applications are called dockapps. They are useful utilities that can supply information like system usage, control ppp connections, monitor network traffice, display the date and time, control an audio cd player, and many other useful actions.
The Dock is a handy menu bar to which Appicons or dockapps can be "docked" to. The Dock will appear on all virtual desktops. By default, the Dock appears vertical on the right-hand side of the screen. You can move the dock to the left-hand side of the screen or change it to a horizontal dock and move it to the top or bottom of the screen.
Like the Dock, the Clip can have Appicons or dockapps "docked" to it. The Clip allows the user to switch between different virtual desktops by pressing the up or down arrows in the cornors of the icon. The Clip can be moved anywhere around the screen and can have Appicons or icons docked to all four sides of the clip.
Appicons and dockapps can be docked to the Dock or Clip. But note, there is a difference between the way apps docked to the Dock and apps docked to the Clip are displayed. Items docked to the Dock will appear across all virtual desktops. Items docked to the clip will, by default, only appear on the virtual desktop that they were docked on. That is, if the gimp Appicon is docked on to the Clip on virtual desktop 1, and the user switches to desktop 2, the gimp appicon will no longer be visible on the Clip. The gimp Appicon will appear again on the clip when the user switches back to desktop 1.
To dock and Appicon or dockapp to the Clip or Dock, drag it by the upper, right-hand corner of the Appicon to the desired side of the Clip, or bottom of the Dock (or last docked Appicon on the Dock). A window will appear allowing you to set any extra parameters.
To remove an item from the Dock or Clip, you must first be sure the "Lock" parameter is not set (right click on the docked Appicon to bring up the properties menu). Then, simply drag the Appicon off the dock, to the middle of the screen, and release the button. Depending on your defaults, the icon will either disappear or blow up in a fancy little firework display.
The GNUstep/Defaults/WMState file holds the settings for the Dock and the Clip. Users are discouraged from editing this file by hand, unless absolutely necessary. The file is updated as Window Maker runs and when Window Maker exits. Therefore, any manual changes made to the file while Window Maker is running will be over-written.
The WMState file is broken into two sections. The first section is for the Dock applications, and the second section is for the Clip Applications. The file starts with a "{" and closes with a "}".
The Dock applications section is split with the first section being mirrored by the second section. Here is a sample start of the WMState file with two Dock applications defined:
{
Dock = {
Applications = (
{
Command = "-";
Name = Logo.WMDock;
AutoLaunch = No;
Lock = No;
Forced = No;
BuggyApplication = No;
Position = "0,0";
},
{
Command = xterm;
Name = xterm.XTerm;
AutoLaunch = No;
Lock = No;
Forced = No;
BuggyApplication = No;
Position = "0,5";
},
The first application defined is the Dock itself. The second application is an xterm
session. Each defined application is enclosed in curly brackets and each line within
the curly brackets ends with a ";". Each application section is seperated by a ",". Here is a
breakdown of the options for each applications:
The application section of the Dock is repeated again.
- Command = the command to run (must supply full path if not in user path)
- Name = Name of application
- AutoLaunch = whether to automatically launch when Window Maker starts.
- Lock = (Yes or No) whether the Appicon can be removed from the dock by the user.
- Forced = (Yes or No)
- BuggyApplication = (Yes or No)
- Position = Position on the Dock
- DropCommand =
After the Dock section comes the Clip. The Clip is broken up into sections for each workspace defined. Initially, there is only one workspace, but as the user creates more workspaces, these are defined in this section.
The Clip itself is defined like the Dock above, and appears across all workspaces. Each workspace has name and applications docked defined under its name. Here is a sample Clip section:
Clip = {
Command = "-";
Name = Logo.WMClip;
AutoLaunch = No;
Lock = No;
Forced = No;
BuggyApplication = No;
Position = "0,0";
DropCommand = "wmsetbg -u -t %d";
};
Workspaces = (
{
Name = Main;
Clip = {
Applications = (
{
Command = "wterm -tr -sh -sb -st -wm";
Name = wterm.XTerm;
AutoLaunch = No;
Lock = No;
Forced = No;
BuggyApplication = No;
Position = "1,0";
Omnipresent = No;
DropCommand = "wterm %d";
}
);
Lowered = Yes;
Collapsed = No;
AutoCollapse = No;
AutoRaiseLower = No;
AutoAttractIcons = No;
};
},
{
Name = "Workspace 2";
Clip = {
Applications = ();
Lowered = Yes;
Collapsed = No;
AutoCollapse = No;
AutoRaiseLower = No;
AutoAttractIcons = No;
};
},
There are some different parameters here than in the Dock section:
- Name = Workspace name
- Clip Beginning of Clip definetion
- Omnipresent = (Yes or No) Whether icon appears across all Workspaces
- Lowered = (Yes or No)
- Collapsed = (Yes or No)
- AutoCollapse = (Yes or No)
- AutoRaiseLower = (Yes or No)
- AutoAttractIcons = (Yes or No)
Again, it is not recommended that the users manually edit this file since all these setting can be configured through the Window Maker configuration menus.