Fbdesk

From Fluxbox-wiki

Contents 1 How to get Icons on the desktop using fbdesk 2 Dependencies 3 Configuration 4 Creating icons and associated actions

How to get Icons on the desktop using fbdesk

For Debian and deb based distros

 apt-get install fbdesk

On Fedora

 yum install fbdesk

On Gentoo

 emerge fbdesk

Compile it from source:

 ./configure (--help   to check all options)
 make
 make check (optional)
 su - root
 make install

Dependencies

it only requires libpng.

Configuration

Well, fbdesk displays the default icon at 64 64, the first time is run, we can right click on the icon, to set its properties

 Icon menu
 Set command
 Set label
 _________
 New icon
 Delete icon
 _________
 Text alpha:  0
 Icon alpha:  255
 Reload config
 _________
 Exit FbDesk

Usually, fbdesk auto-detects the style being used, but we can make it faster adding the following command to ~/.fluxbox/startup:

 fbdesk -rc ~/.fluxbox/init &

And we can add the following settings to ~/.fluxbox/init:

 fbdesk.iconFile:  <filename to icon file> (default: ~/.fluxbox/fbdesk.icons)
 fbdesk.font: <icon font name> (default: fixed)
 fbdesk.textColor:  <color for icon text>  (default: black)
 fbdesk.snapX: <x snap size> (default: 5)
 fbdesk.snapY: <y snap size> (default: 5)
 fbdesk.doubleClickInterval: <time interval between clicks for a double click> (default: 200)
 fbdesk.textPlacement: <placement for text around icon image>  (default: Bottom)
 fbdesk.iconAlpha: <number between 0 and 255 (opaque)> (default: 255)
 fbdesk.textAlpha: <number between 0 and 255 (opaque)> (default: 0)
 # Possible values for text placement: Left, Right, Top and Bottom
 session.styleFile: <style file for menu> (default: none)

According to the default value, the settings for ~/.fluxbox/fbdesk.icons are:

 [Deskop Entry]
 Icon=the image filename
 Name=the icon label
 Exec=what it executes
 Pos= horiz vert  # position of the icon
 [end]

Well, now we need icons, the most complete set of them I've found are the Gentoo bubble icons:

 http://www.gentoo.org/images/icons/icons.tar.bz2
 http://www.ionbox.org/files/gentoo-bubble-icons.tgz

depending on our favourite applications we can also check the "Icon Themes" section at

 http://gnome-look.org/
 http://kde-look.org/

We can uncompress them either in ~/.fluxbox/icons or /usr/share/pixmaps or /usr/share/icons

Creating icons and associated actions

Here's an example (vertical aligned icons from the left):

 [Desktop Entry]
 Name=DVD
 Exec=/bin/mount /media/cdrom && /usr/bin/xfe /media/cdrom && /usr/bin/eject /media/cdrom
 Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/gentoo/l33t_DEV_dvd_umount.png
 Pos= 20 20
 [end]
 
 [Desktop Entry]
 Name=xterm
 Exec=/usr/bin/xterm
 Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/gentoo/l33t_TER_Eterm.png
 Pos= 20 110
 [end]

and we can add more entries, Pos= 20 horizontal until we don't have more space available, and increasing the second value (vertical) 90 pixels. If we need to create another column of icons, we start adding entries from Pos= 110 20; 110 110 and so on.

If we place the horiz values in the vert ones and vert ones in horiz, we'll get lines of icons instead of columns.

It's a good idea to make a backup of ~/.fluxbox/fbdesk.icons, as if we accidentally move an icon, fbdesk will remember its position, saving it on the file.