[Remind-Fans] use case: wyrd+remind + screen + ion3

[Phil Snowberger]

I use the ion window manager, and almost exclusively curses / console
applications.  One of the reasons I enjoy ion so much is its support for
the URGENT window manager hint (you're looking at another window or
workspace, something urgent happens in another window or workspace, and
ion will notify you of this).

I've recently come to adopt remind and wyrd.  *To my limited knowledge*,
wyrd doesn't do anything when timed reminders are triggered.  So it
would be nice if we could get that behavior.  Now, if I'm just being
obtuse and Wyrd has this behavior, then please ignore me.  Also, if this
whole setup has been documented before, then please ignore me.  If
you're interested, however, read on:

Here's an approximation of my process tree:

ion3
\- rxvt-unicode [1]
   \- screen -S wyrd
      \- bash
         \- wyrd
      \- bash
         \- remind -f -z ~/.reminders | sed 's/^/^G/' [2]

In my .screenrc I have:

vbell on
bell_msg "^GBell in window %n"

Then I keep the screen on window 0 (with wyrd), and whenever there's a
timed event trigger, remind (in window 1) prints out a line, which sed
prepends a bell character to, which screen notices and (since vbell is
on) prints out the bell_msg, which itself contains another bell
character, so rxvt-unicode sets the URGENT hint, and I get notified via
ion.

... Wow, I only now notice how Rube-Goldberg-ian that whole setup is,
but I've got similar setups (minues the sed trickery) for mutt,
irssi+bitlbee, irssi, etc, so it wasn't much extra.

Hope this helps somebody!

--Phil


[1] I use urxvt{c,d} to cut down on memory usage, and with a patch that
causes any terminal bells to set its window's URGENT hint.  Any terminal
emulator that supports the hint will probably work.

[2] Every '^G' in this email is really a bell character, entered in bash
or vim with ^V^G (^V meaning "take the next character I type
literally").

-- 
Phil Snowberger -- psnowber at cse.nd.edu
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Notre Dame
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.roaringpenguin.com/pipermail/remind-fans/attachments/20060901/9f7108f3/attachment.pgp>