gDesklets - GNOME Desktop Applets
=================================

1. Introduction
---------------
  'gDesklets' provides an advanced architecture for desktop applets - tiny
  displays sitting on your desktop in a symbiotic relationship of eye candy and
  usefulness.
  Populate your desktop with status meters, icon bars, weather sensors,
  news tickers... whatever you can imagine! Virtually anything is possible and
  maybe even available some day.



2. Requirements
---------------
  * Python 2.x or higher (2.3 recommended)

  * gnome-python 1.99.14 or higher (1.99.17 recommended)

  * some sensors may have extra requirements



3. Installation
---------------
  Just the usual procedure:

   $ ./configure
   $ make
   $ su -c "make install"
   
  However, it is not necessary to install 'gDesklets' to run it. You may run
  the program just out of the box.


  Every user may install new sensors by copying them into the directory
  '~/.gdesklets/Sensors'. Usually, sensors come in the form of handy installers
  where you only have to run the installer in order to install the sensor.
  
  If you want to make sensors available system-wide, the sensor packages have
  to go to PREFIX/Sensors where PREFIX is the installation path of 'gDesklets',
  e.g. /usr/share/gDesklets



4. Usage
--------
  You can find an entry in the GNOME menu after a successful installation.
  When you start 'gDesklets' for the first time, your desktop will remain
  empty. 'gDesklets' is just a daemon running in the background.
  Open your file manager and click on a .display file in order to put that
  display onto the desktop. When you log out or quit 'gDesklets', the
  settings will be remembered for the next session.

  In case your file manager does not support starting displays you can
  alternatively call 'gdesklets' with some .display files as arguments. You can
  do this while the 'gDesklets' daemon is running.

  Displays (as we call the applets) will usually appear in the top left corner
  of your screen when you first run them. You can move displays around by
  pressing and holding down the middle mouse button. 'gDesklets' will remember
  the new position of the display for the future.

  If you press the right mouse button over a display, a popup menu will open.
  It depends on the display what you will see there, but the following items
  are always available:

   Configure display                Opens the configuration dialog for this
                                    display. It depends on the display what you
                                    can configure.

   Remove display                   Removes this display from your desktop.

   About                            Opens the "about" dialog to tell you more
                                    about 'gDesklets'.

   Quit                             This will quit 'gDesklets'. You don't
                                    really need this item, do you? It was only
                                    added for debugging purposes. :)



5. Bugs
-------
  If you encounter bugs which are not listed here, please send a bug-report to
  'martin@pycage.de'.

  * the alt+tab menu of 'metacity' shows every single display

  * some buggy versions of 'nautilus' can cause 'gDesklets' to crash when the
    desktop background is being changed



6. Thanks
---------
  I'd like to thank all people who supported (and are still supporting) me so
  well with 'gDesklets'. Please complain if I forgot you... ;)

  * Christian Meyer -- ideas and sensor programming

  * Jesse Andrews -- sensor programming

  * Johannes "Waldgeist" Rebhan -- artwork

  * Christian Neumair -- installation

  * James Henstridge -- excellent GTK bindings for Python



7. License and Disclaimer
-------------------------
  This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
  ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTIBILITY or FITNESS
  FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the file 'COPYING' for more details.

  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  along with this software; if not, write to the 

    Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 390, Boston,
    MA  02111-1307  USA

  This software is provided "as is" and the author is not and cannot be made
  responsible for any damage resulting from the use of this software.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'gDesklets' is copyright (c) 2003 by Martin Grimme <martin@pycage.de>,
                                     Christian Meyer <chrisime@gnome-de.org>,
                                     Jesse Andrews <jdandr2@cs.uky.edu>

The latest version of 'gDesklets' can be found at http://www.pycage.de
The project page is at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/gdesklets
