[PLUG] (Solved) Formatting Zenity output

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Wed Apr 24 14:04:51 UTC 2013


On Tue, 23 Apr 2013 23:48:16 -0700
Keith Lofstrom <keithl at gate.kl-ic.com> dijo:

>On Sun, Apr 21, 2013 at 11:22:15PM -0700, John Jason Jordan wrote:
>> What else can be used to make a window pop up containing six columns
>> of text x 35 rows and nothing else?

>Is this the same text each time?  Like the tables of unicode
>to linguistic symbols that grace the sides of your laptop?

Indeed, you guessed correctly. Those tables are exactly what I wanted
to reproduce in a pop-up window. All, of course, in anticipation of a
new computer which would probably have insufficient bezel space to hold
my paper tables to the right and left of the keyboard.

>You can use many different tools to draw a fixed png image -
> ... A tastefully-done screen-sized background image of linguistic
>symbols would be welcomed by linguists everywhere, and get
>you invited to All The Best Parties.

I can't stand stuff on my screen. I use a plain white background, no
wallpaper. Anything else is too distracting. Don't bring shiny objects
into my field of vision either.

I finally found a solution. I opened the tables that had been done in
OOo Writer and used Convert to Text, where OOo replaces the table
columns with tabs, then pasted into Gedit, did a bit of tweaking, and
saved as IPA.txt. Then, using Gxmessage I wrote a little bash
script to run:

	gxmessage -name IPA -font "Junicode 12" -file ~/IPA.txt

And then I added a menu item for the script to my quick launcher.
Gxmessage honors the tabs in the file, and allows me to specify a font,
so my pop-up now looks exactly the same as the paper tables alongside my
computer keyboard. I might have had the same luck with Zenity, Yad, or
Dialog, but once I discovered that it worked with Gxmessage I didn't try
further.

And it's actually better than my paper strips alongside the keyboard
because it is now trivial to change the symbols. 



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