Blackbox, KDE >

• Obsolete – PCLinuxOS figures out the menu, and fbpanel shows all the KDE tray apps.

• .. but PCLinuxOS 2007-test3 doesn’t have Blackbox anymore! =(

• https://web.archive.org/web/20070818141815/http://www.kde.gr.jp:80/help/doc/kdebase/doc/khelpcenter/faq/HTML/replacewinmanager.html

• kbbmc

  • KBB – getting Blackbox to work with KDE — DEAD
  • https://web.archive.org/web/20050215092825/http://draknor.net:80/modules/kbb/howto/3-advanced.html
  • Does not compile – Probably because it requires QT2.
  • This is old enough (2000) that it wouldn’t follow the new blackbox menu standard, so it’s only a partial solution.

kbbmenu script ∞

• http://vsbabu.org/gnu/blackbox.html

  • kbbmenu.sh
    — Parse a directory which is assumed to be a KDE menu directory and then print a Blackbox menu structure. I redirect the output to a file which I INCLUDE in the Blackbox menu. The kbbmc program is supposed to do the same, but I couldn’t make it work. Just change references to $KDEDIR to where your GNOME menu structure is, and this should work for GNOME as well. Or get gnomenu.sh!

kbbmenu.sh /usr/ does not work for me. I edited it with this change:

sed 's/"//g'|sed "s/-caption//g"|sed "s/%/g"`
# =>
sed 's/"//g'|sed 's/-caption//g'|sed 's/%//g'`

.. but that didn’t do the trick either. I don’t know if this script is out of date or what..

blackbox docs ∞

(source)

It is possible to use Blackbox 0.70 together with KDE 3. Blackbox can be run instead of the KDE 3 window manager by setting the KDEWM environment variable to blackbox before executing startkde. For example, in your .xinitrc and/or Xsession:

#!/bin/sh
KDEWM=blackbox
export KDEWM
exec startkde

If blackbox is not in your $PATH, you may need to set KDEWM to the full path where blackbox is installed.

Notes:

• The above example works when using startx from the console, or with XDM.

  • FIXME – Include instructions for making this work from KDM and, possibly, other login managers.
• Blackbox does not support session management. Saving and restoring sessions will not work.
• Even though Blackbox is running in KDE, Blackbox will use your chosen style. It will not use the KDE color scheme.

• KDE uses an application called kdesktop to display the background and desktop icons. This application completely covers the root window, which means:

  1. You cannot access the root and workspace menus unless you explicitly kill kdesktop.
  2. The rootCommand in your preferred style will not seem to have any effect, since kdesktop completely covers the root window.