BRICONS(l) MISC. REFERENCE MANUAL PAGES BRICONS(l) NAME bricons - quick start up utility for applications using text, icons and pop-up menus on an X display SYNOPSIS bricons [options] [-file] [-col] [-help] [-sensitive] [-bmdir] [-default] 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 same directory as the program is executed from. 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+ Sun Release 4.1 Last change: 28th March 1992 1 BRICONS(l) MISC. REFERENCE MANUAL PAGES BRICONS(l) 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. -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. -bmdir This program will search the default bitmap directory (./bitmaps) for any bitmaps that are to be used to represent buttons. If you wish to add different bitmap directories then use this command line argument fol- lowed by a colon separated list of path names. For example if the program needs to find bitmaps in two different directories then the following can be entered Sun Release 4.1 Last change: 28th March 1992 2 BRICONS(l) MISC. REFERENCE MANUAL PAGES BRICONS(l) at the command line: bricons -bmdir /usr/local/bitmaps:/usr/mydir/bitmaps -default Toggle used for including/not including the default Edit Icons button in the bricons program. This flag expects a Boolean value. If the bricons program is called with the -default flag set to False then the Edit Icons button is not included. 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. help_file Specifies path name for help file. icon_dirs Specifies path name for bitmap directories. SETTING BITMAP DIRECTORIES This section explains how to specify bitmap file paths using the .Xdefaults file. For the quickest and simplest method see the OPTIONS section under -bmdir. 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 RESOURCE 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 Sun Release 4.1 Last change: 28th March 1992 3 BRICONS(l) MISC. REFERENCE MANUAL PAGES BRICONS(l) 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. Sun Release 4.1 Last change: 28th March 1992 4