[Resolved] How to configure Wbar?

[paulfxh]

From what I understand wbar comes with three icons already installed (based on what I see in /usr/share/wbar/dot.wbar).
However, it seems that some (but not all) apps loaded from the app_browser also place icons in the wbar dock.
I loaded Beaver, Opera and Dillo2 and all showed up with their respective icons in the dock. Great   
Next I loaded Rox-Filer and the dock icons got seriously messed up. So, the Dillo2 icon disappeared and the Opera icon is now named Dillo2. Surprisingly, when this icon is clicked neither Opera nor Dillo2 opens but rather Beaver.  . This is inspite of Beaver already having its own, correctly-assigned, icon in the dock.
The other icon (of the three non-original icons) is a cogwheel on a blue folder which is named Opera and, indeed, opens Opera.
However, I would like to correctly configure this dock so that recognizable icons are available as well as to have more than the total of six that are currently there.
I had also loaded the image-viewer app gqview but no icon for this appeared in the dock.
I would also like to have the dock to be configured as "always-on-top".
Can somebody please help me understand wbar configuration?

[tobiaus]

wbar is picky about the .wbar configuration file. if you have problems with it, there's usually a line out of place that you haven't noticed.

remove the most recent lines from it, until you can read down the left side and see "itc itc itc itc." (icon title command.) you can keep the newer lines in the clipboard (don't close your editor) or save them in another file.

replace the new lines more carefully, or copy and paste three existing lines "i, t, c" from another icon and edit it accordingly.

the whitespace may seem to be more of an issue at first than it is, but keeping the file totally uniform will help you avoid this in the future. you can also post the contents of .wbar here if you need to.

[paulfxh]

Thanks for your comprehensive reply.
I did indeed have two lines in the space of one in ~/.wbar
But everything's fixed now 

Edit: Oh, I almost forgot, any idea how to make the dock "always-on-top"?

[roberts]

See http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=281.0

[paulfxh]

See http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=281.0

Thanks for this. I tried it and it works (interestingly, it only started to work after the second reboot).
However, not sure this is totally suitable for the small EeePC 901 screen as a sizable amount of valuable screen space is taken from the main window.
I was really hoping for something like AWN where the transparent dock is always in front of the bottom of the main window. This is more like the OS X dock. However, in the OS X dock, if you drag the main window down to the bottom, the dock remain "in front". For, wbar, dragging the main window down covers the dock.
But, I'll try this out. 

[roberts]

For small screen size you might like "borderless" windows. http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=347.0

[curaga]

I've implemented the always-on-top mode for wbar, cleanly as an option. If there's no opposition, as soon as I have time to compile it on TC it can get to a RC.

[^thehatsrule^]

Another user had a similar problem.  Took a look and it seems that the dillo2's icon entry is noeol (missing an ending newline) which might be causing these problems.

[Lee]

...not sure this is totally suitable for the small EeePC 901 screen as a sizable amount of valuable screen space is taken from the main window.

I have been fooling around a bit with wbar for a few reasons - 1)to make it stop that annoying zooming action, 2) to make it a bit smaller and 3) just for the fun of it.

By starting wbar with a handcrafted command line I got  the icons a little smaller (this can be overdone), ditched the zoom-on-mouseover and highlighted each icon in gold on mouseover.  If you have lots of unique icon images you might even do away with the text label.

I'm not at my home PC right now, so I can't post the command line right now.  You can just type wbar -h in a shell window for the command line options and play with it a bit.

At first I thought it was inconvenient to have to specify all the operating params on the command line instead of in .wbar, but keeping .wbar just for the icon/item data turns out to be a big plus in the long run.

Kudos to Robert for the look and feel of the TC desktop.  I -hate- the way jwm looks on DSL and expected to hate it on TC as well - but it is excellent.

Lee