Yabar

A modern and lightweight status bar for X window managers.

Screenshots

Description

Yabar is a modern and lightweight status bar that is intended to be used along with minimal X window managers like bspwm and i3. Yabar has the following features:

• Simple configuration using a single config file based on libconfig syntax.
• Pango font rendering with support of pango markup language (Xft may be supported in the future).
• Support for transparency.
• Multi-monitor support using RandR (experimental).
• Multiple bars within the same session.

Warning: Yabar is still in its infancy and far from being mature. Feel free to contribute or report bugs!

Terminology

A Yabar session should contain one or more bars within the same session. Each bar should contain one or more blocks. Each block should display some useful info to the user (free memory, CPU temperature, etc...).

Installation

Yabar requires libconfig>= 1.5, cairo, and pango. These dependencies can be installed through your distribution's package manager, such as dnf install libconfig-devel cairo-devel pango-devel on Fedora or sudo apt-get install libcairo2-dev libpango1.0-dev libconfig-dev libxcb-randr0-dev on Ubuntu.

You can install yabar as follows:

	git clone https://github.com/geommer/yabar
	cd yabar
	make
	sudo make install

Configuration

Yabar currently by default accepts configuration from the config file ~/.config/yabar/yabar.conf or using yabar -c [CONFIG_FILE]. The config file should like something like this:

bar-list: ["bar1", "bar2", ...];

bar1: {
    \\bar specific options\\
    block-list: ["block1", "block2", ...];
    block1: {
        \\block specific options\\
    }
    block2: {
        \\block specific options\\
    }
}

A bar or a block can be named to whatever name (preferably a short and meaningful name). Only names that are included in the "bar-list" and "block-list" entries will be drawn on the screen.

Bar-specific options

Each bar can have its font, position (currently only top and bottom), background color, height, horizontal and vertical gaps, and other options.

• Font: Yabar currently accepts a string that contains a font or a list of fonts (similar to i3). Example:

    font: "Droid Sans, FontAwesome Bold 9";
  

• Position: Yabar currently accepts top and bottom. Example:

    position: "top";
  

• Gaps: You can define the size of horizontal and vertical gaps in pixels. Default is zero. Examples:

    gap-horizontal: 20;
    gap-vertical: 5;
  

• Height: Default is 20 pixels. Example:

    height: 25;
  

• Width: The default bar width is screen size - 2 * horizontal gap. However, if this option is used, the bar starts at horizontal gap and ends at horizontal gap + width. Example:

    width: 800;
  

• Monitor: This option is used to specify the monitor using randr extension for the bar to be drawn on. You can find the name of your monitors using xrandr -q command. The default value is the first active monitor. Example:

    monitor: "LVDS1";
    monitor: "VGA1";
  

• Underline and overline sizes: This option defines the thickness of underlines and overlines. Default is 0. Example:

    underline-size: 2;
    overline-size: 2;
  

• Slack: You can define the size of the slack (i.e. the unused space between blocks). Default is 0. Example:

    slack-size: 2;
  

• Borders: You can optionally define a size and a color for a border surrounding the bar. Default is no borders. Example:

    border-size: 2;
    border-color-rgb: 0xffffff;
  

• Inheritance: (thanks to a proposed idea by @Lindenk) As the config file gets larger because you want to add several bars, you may find yourself adding many identical option values for every added bar. This optional entry is added in order to inherit the options from a precedent bar into your next bar. You can also override the inherited options with new values.

    inherit: "bar1";
  

  You can also inherit a bar with not only its bar-specific options, but also with its blocks and their block-specific options as well using the inherit-all bar-specific option. Example:

    inherit-all: "bar1";
  

• Button commands: Yabar already supports mouse button commands for each block (See block-specific options). Moreover, yabar seeks to make the entire bar clickable even if the pressed area does not belong to any block or the corresponding button command for that block is not defined. Example:

    command-button4: "xbacklight -inc 1";
    command-button5: "xbacklight -dec 1";
  

Block-specific options

Each block can have its command/script, background, foreground (i.e. font), underline and overline colors, alignment and other options.

• Execution: The path to the command/script to be executed. Yabar consumes the output of the command/script's stdout and shows it on the bar. Example:

    exec: "date";
  

• Alignment: Yabar accepts left, center or right alignments. consecutive blocks will be placed to the right of each other. Example:

    align: "right";
  

• Justify: By default yabars centers the text inside the block size. However, you can optionally justify the text to the left or the right.

    justify: "left";
  

• Type: The block type can be periodic where the command/script is executed within a fixed interval of time, persistent where the command/script runs in a persistent way like xtitle or once where the command/script is executed only once where the intended info should not change like in whoami. Examples:

    type: "periodic";
    type: "persist";
    type: "once";
  

• Interval: In seconds. This is only useful when the block type is periodic. Example:

    interval: 3;
  

• Fixed size: You should define the fixed width size of the block. Yabar currently only supports fixed widths (this will be improved soon). You can deduce the appropriate width using trial and error. The current default value is 80 but you are encouraged to override it to a more appropriate value. Example:

    fixed-size: 90;
  

• Pango markup: Yabar accepts either true or false without quotes. Default is false. Example:

    pango-markup: true;
  

• Colors: A block has 4 kinds of colors. Background, foreground which is the font color when pango markup is not used, underline and overline. Colors are accepted in hex RRGGBB and AARRGGBB representations. Examples:

    foreground-color-rgb    : 0xeeeeee;
    background-color-argb   : 0x1dc93582;
    underline-color-rgb     : 0x1d1d1d;
    overline-color-argb     : 0xf0642356;
  

  Note that the values are integers and not double-quoted strings.

• Button commands: This option is used to invoke a command/script upon a mouse button press. You have 5 buttons that usually represent left click, right click, middle click, scroll up and scroll down respectively but this may not be the case for everyone. Examples:

    command-button1: "pavucontrol";
    command-button4: "pactl set-sink-volume 0 +10%";
    command-button5: "pactl set-sink-volume 0 -10%";
  

• Inheritance: As the config gets larger because you want to add many blocks, you may find yourself adding many identical option values for every added block. This optional entry is added in order to inherit the options from a precedent block into your new block. You can also override the inherited options with new values.

    inherit: "bar1.block1";
  

Environment variables

Yabar sets a handful of environment variables before executing your commands/scripts that are defined in the command-button{1-5} entry. Such env variables can be useful when drawing your window on the corresponding button press. Current env variables are:

	YABAR_BLOCK_X
	YABAR_BLOCK_Y
	YABAR_BLOCK_WIDTH

TODO

There is a lot to do, but among the most important things:

• Automatic size of blocks.
• Internal blocks.