Blackbox

2005-03-31
, , , , , , , , , ,
blackbox sourceforge favicon

Software > Window managers >

(on Wikipedia)
https://github.com/bradleythughes/blackbox/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/blackboxwm/

coming eventually

  • 2019-11-16 -- While the original project was abandoned long ago, I see that it was forked.

    • I don't really care though, as Openbox is working fine.

  • Obsolete - see versus Blackbox.



  • 2009-03-17 -- Sean (shaleh) seems to have dropped out. All emails to him are bouncing, even his Debian one. He was reported to still be in the "Bay Area" Aug 2007 or earlier. I talked with someone who saw him.

    • So it looks like this project is dead?
  • ~2008-08-17 -- Switched to Openbox because of it's official support by PCLinuxOS.
  • 2008-06-01 -- My comment from 2004 is still pretty true.
  • 2007-08-30 -- The Sourceforge mailing list is NOT correct for use; it's just collecting spam. I emailed the admin but got no response.
  • 2005-09-03 -- Briefly tried Fluxbox on PCLinuxOS because of official support.

  • 2004-mm-dd -- This is my current king

    • .. Although I'd love to remove all slit, menu and toolbar functionality. Sure, I could go with Fluxbox, but I prefer not to go with a fork for some reason.
    • I did look at Fluxbox and it didn't work out.. it doesn't have the 'groove' I feel for my other apps. The install was clunky for weird reasons, and it just didn't fall together like Blackbox has for me. I suppose I'm rather arbitrary in my choices, but I really need to feel good about the software I use. For me, Blackbox is to window managers what Slackware is to Operating Systems.

  • ~1999-2000 -- This was my first window manager.

--

(1)
(1)
 blackbox sourceforge favicon

--

--

Table of Contents [hide]

2007-04-20 - 0.70.1 ∞

configuring it, I get:

checking for libiconv_open in -liconv... no
configure: error: Blackbox requires iconv(3) support.

I installed libiconv from source.

But it doesn't work. I don't want to troubleshoot.

0.7.0 is doing the same thing. Sigh. I guess I have to wait for distribution support to include this package.

I got desperate, so I grabbed a binary release from Slackware.

./blackbox: error while loading shared libraries: libexpat.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
apt-get install libexpat0
cd /usr/lib
ln -s libexpat.so.0 libexpat.so.1
./blackbox: error while loading shared libraries: libxcb-xlib.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I don't know how to solve that one. I can't find any references to this library in my package manager and I don't want to fiddle around any more than I already have.

...

Later attempts work fine. Yay!

  • I can't resize and have it snap to the edges.

  • I still find it annoying that I can't 'minimize' an application.. I have to iconify it. This is NOT the functionality I want. I want to get it the hell out of the way, but keep it on this desktop and accessible to my list of applications (alt-tab)

Things which piss me off to no end:
  • Windows are not focused properly all the time. This REALLY bugs the hell out of me.

  • Sometimes when closing a window, there is no focused window

    • Sometimes when playing a movie and exiting it, it won't return control back to the former window
    • And I cannot alt-1 etc to change desktops.

2007-02-21 - 0.70.1 ∞

2017-11-17 - My continued efforts were moved elsewhere. I'll add them around here somewhere, at some point.

PCLinuxOS + Blackbox > PCLinuxOS and Blackbox

Installing and configuring ∞

wget downloads.sourceforge.net/blackboxwm/blackbox-0.70.1.tar.bz2?modtime=1131011865&big_mirror=0
wget downloads.sourceforge.net/bbkeys/bbkeys-0.9.0.tar.gz?modtime=1110025235&big_mirror=0

props to https://sourceforge.net/p/bbkeys/discussion/104911/thread/022bfa86/

su

tar -xvvjf blackbox-0.70.1.tar.bz2
cd blackbox-0.70.1
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/blackbox && make && make install 

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/blackbox 
PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/blackbox/lib/pkgconfig  
cd ..

tar -xvvzf bbkeys-0.9.0.tar.gz
cd bbkeys-0.9.0
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/bbkeys && make && make install

It used to work.

But in PCLinuxOS 2007-final, updated 2008-08-15 gives me:

checking for XOpenDisplay in -lX11... no
configure: error: XOpenDisplay not found in -lX11

I gave up and went to Openbox.

Post-install:

  1. Copy my .blackboxrc to ~/
  2. Copy my simple Blackbox style to ~/.blackbox/style

  3. Copy .xinitrc to ~/

Helpful programs ∞

for regular users:

  • download bbkeys source, compile and install it.

  • fbpanel for basic features: minimize all, applications, KDE-compatible tray, standard menu, clock.

    • Copy the Fbpanel configuration to ~/.fbpanel/default
    • If you miss having a menu, then just right-click on any window edge.

  • I use gmrun, bound to control-alt-r with bbkeys

    • I don't like the way it matches past items though..

  • You can still run kdesktop if you wanted. Weirdo.

  • Kdocker lets you launch any application with a companion system tray icon (if you have a tray, like fbpanel provides)

for advanced users:

  • Devil's Pie for window matching & acting just like the KDE window actions, except heinously difficult to configure.

  • wmctrl allows one to control windows from the commandline. See wmctrl user documentation (examples) for my advice.

  • XOSD -- x on screen display -- is used for on screen display.

    • It could be useful for people who want visual feedback for hotkey commands.

  • onscreend uses xosd in a more useful way. Hey, wouldn't it be cool to have USB or other hardware events paint a message on screen? Yep, it would be.

Notes ∞

  • XResources

  • Setting resources

  • Strangely, I don't need a tray if I run dcopserver_shutdown and then dcopserver - tray-only applications begin launching in their own little window. It's quite handy actually. But to make good use of this, I'd have to force these windows to get the heck out of the way. wmctrl could be used for that. But then I'd have to somehow have the wm not have maximized screens step over that area.

Ideas ∞

desktop environments:
desktop image
  • change the background image
  • customize the desktop image per-desktop

  • auto-shuffle the background image over time, just like how KDE does it.

    • Launched with an hourly cron job perhaps?

Possible with bbbm https://bbbm.sourceforge.net/ which uses bsetbg.

Maybe also workable just with bsetbg but it doesn't allow files with spaces in them. I could copy the file to a temporary filename and then bsetbg it and delete the file afterwards. That works.

I'm not going to pursue this, because I don't want to waste memory by loading a big image.

other stuff

To do ∞

  • The 4/5 button-clicking on my mouse seems to have gone away. =( I have some research in mouse but boy is this rough stuff.

  • Kill kdm to use .xinitrc properly again.

    • well.. I can't. =/ apt-get remove kde-kdm-Dark2 just gives an error in kdm. =/
  • More bbkeys customization (.bbkeysrc)
  • Universal placement of the config files so that other users on the system can use them. i.e. overwrite the PCLinuxOS default locations.
  • Play with the genmon.c fbpanel plugin to display random stuff -- display the date next to the clock.
  • Kmix should start minimized. I see no switch to do it. Maybe I should force it with Devil's Pie? I can do it quite easily with wmctrl now that I understand it. Or I could just use Kdocker.
  • Pipe hotkey actions through XOSD. At the least I could easily spit out the current app name when the hotkey is pressed.
  • Create an fbpanel time/date popup which would show an xdialog with 'cal'
  • Figure out blackbox snapping when resizing.

  • Figure out blackbox snapping to fbpanel.

    • Maybe if I use wmctrl to manipulate it, it would appear like an application with a border?

2006-04-04 - 0.65.0 ∞

Frustrated at not being able to build 0.70.1, I tried 0.65.0 again.

checking for gcc... gcc
checking whether the C++ compiler (gcc  ) works... no
configure: error: installation or configuration problem: C++ compiler cannot create executables.

So I do this:

apt-get install gcc

And it has no effect. Lame.

2006-04-04 - 0.70.0 ∞

  • session.windowSnapThreshold doesn't do anything.
  • Cannot alt-rightclick and drag to snap
  • Cannot snap the bottom border of a window to the bottom of the window

  • Maximizing seems to leave a space at the bottom where the bar might be - except that I don't have it running.

May be a bbkeys issue.

Sometimes when an app closes and there is only one app remaining, focus will not be given to that remaining app and alt-tab will not call up the app switcher to switch to it. Calling the task switcher should switch focus to a remaining app.

Actually, calling the switcher should probably paint the dialogue, but without any entries in it, in cases where there are no windows.

2005-09-13 - (version not recorded) ∞

I've come to the conclusion that Fluxbox is clearly inferior to Blackbox. See versus Blackbox. Some functionality is misplaced or missing. Things just feel clumsy with Fluxbox compared to the original. The only single bit of functionality I like in Fluxbox is fluxbox-generate_menu. I'm going to look a lot harder for a replacement.

2005-04-01 - 0.7.0 ∞

0.7.0 (01 Mar '05)

Tested a while back under Linux (Slackware 7.0, 8.0, 8.1, some 9). Originally required a lot of tampering and learning to get going, but worked very well! Used it again under PCLinuxOS in mid-2005.

Light WM, requires third-party software for some functionality.

PCLinuxOS and Blackbox, old notes ∞

Previously, middle clicking doesn't give focus before pasting its content. So it fucks up wiki-editing. This seems to have been fixed somehow .. at least in pclos 0.93

Blackbox doesn't have a package for PCLinuxOS, and I don't yet know enough to build one. The single biggest flaw is there is no root menu generating tool.

Either a custom tool to build from the Mandrake Linux menus, or conversion from the fluxbox menu might be options.

  • Make custom root blackbox menus -- Can I adapt the Mandrake Linux/twm menus to blackbox? If Fluxbox were installed, would a root menu be made for it, which I could steal?

    • configuration-related stuff
    • common tools
      - shell
      - shell+links (I'm not sure if I meant Links)
      - a README file
      - an APPS file of some sort, reminding people of the common apps.
      -- LFTP, wget, etc...

Note: Get the blackbox srpm from Mandriva if available for helpful hints.

(date not recorded) - (version not recorded) ∞

See also Blackbox and KDE

  • Sometimes has multiple instances of alt-tab entries
  • Sometimes cannot use hotkeys, I have to de-iconify bbkeys and select it to regain the function
  • x? - sometimes cannot properly type, have to switch to xterm or dick around in menus etc.
  • Mid-click on the desktop, there are sometimes current tasks with huge titles that screw up my ability to scroll down the mid-click menu.
  • Be able to associate one window with another, so that if one is raised so is the other. This handy when using an app which outputs to a separate xterm window.

  • Also, have this feature bind all these apps together when someone alt-tabs around.

--

  • Restarting blackbox (via the right-click menu) has the alt-tab list duplicate entrys
  • Problems with consistantly using the keyboard macros - problems with some apps not consistantly showing up in alt-tab

  • Required features: be able to get rid of that menubar. Hiding it using it's settings DOESN'T hide it be able to pull up the "desktop" menu anywhere.. it's annoying to have to swap to another desktop to use that menu be able to pull up the desktop menu with keyboard shortcuts

Last updated 2022-10-02 at 18:33:33

Footnotes

4 comments

4 comments on “Blackbox”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Use <code> to display raw HTML codes.
  • WordPress is configured to not store your IP.
  • Comments here apply only to this post, you may want to contact me directly.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.