Command Line
These instructions cover Mowedline 0.2pre1.
Mowedline consists of two programs, called mowedline and
mowedline-client. The mowedline program is the server; it creates and
manages the mowedline window. The mowedline-client program is used to
send commands to the server to update widgets.
The command line is parsed purely by position. Command line options may
have any number of required arguments, but never optional arguments. For
this reason, the leading hyphens on the option names are purely
stylistic. Mowedline drops any leading hyphens on options, so you can
give as many as you want or zero. In other words, mowedline --help does
the exact same thing as mowedline -help or mowedline help.
Special Options
These options are available in both server and client.
-
-help
Display command-line help.
-
-version
Display the version of mowedline.
Client Options
These options are available in mowedline-client and comprise the main
interface to controlling a running mowedline server.
-
-quit
Terminate the mowedline server.
-
-read <widget>
Read lines from stdin, and update the given widget with each line.
-
-update <widget> <value>
Update the given widget with the given value.
Server Options
These options are available in the mowedline server program.
The command line can be used to do limited experimentation with mowedline, via the Server Options. However, after a little experimentation, you will probably want to go on to writing a .mowedline file with your permanent configuration. Server options are evaluated at server startup, just before loading the .mowedline.
-
-q
Bypass startup file (.mowedline).
-
-config <file>
Use the specified configuration file instead of the default one. When this option isn't specified either
~/.mowedlineor~/.config/mowedline/init.scmis used.
Setting Defaults
These options set defaults. They apply to all following widgets (or windows) created on the command line, and in your .mowedline.
-
-bg <color>
Set the background color for succeeding widgets.
-
-fg <color>
Set the foreground color for succeeding widgets.
-
-flex <value>
Set the flex value for succeeding widgets. A value of
0will make it non-flexible. -
-position <value>
Set the window position for succeeding windows. Allowed values are
topandbottom.
Widgets and Windows
These options create widgets and windows. If widget options are given, but no window is explicitly created, one will be created automatically. If no windows have been created by the time the .mowedline is finished loading, a default window with one text-widget, named "default", will be automatically created.
-
-text-widget <name>
Make a text-widget with the given name.
-
-clock
Make a clock widget.
-
-window
Create a window containing the foregoing widgets.
This may seem counterintuitive at first. The -window option comes after any widget options on the command line. This is because the window height is based on widget height, as well as other details of widget initialization. It's like programming in Forth!
Also note, if you're just making one window, you don't need to supply this option, as the default window will be created with either the widgets you specified or a single default widget.
