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Openbox Pipe Menu for xcompmgr

I have been playing around with and writing a Bash script pipe menu for xcompmgr under Openbox. The script has dual functionality; firstly, it acts as on/off toggle for xcompmgr; secondly, it produces a conditional menu depending on whether or not xcompmgr is running — if xcompmgr is not running, an "Enable Compositing" menu item will appear; if xcompmgr is running, a "Disable Compositing" menu item will be offered along with a list of "Set Target Window Transparency to XX%" items.

It is a simple Bash script, but quite effective. Please feel free to modify/improve as you see fit.

#!/bin/bash
# Openbox Pipe Menu for xcompmgr
################################

# Set xcompmgr command options
EXEC='xcompmgr -c -t-5 -l-5 -r4.2 -o.55' #basic compositing
#EXEC='xcompmgr -cCfF -t-5 -l-5 -r4.2 -o.55 -D6' #more effects

# Toggle compositing. Call with "myxcompmgr --startstop"
if [ "$1" = "--startstop" ]; then 
    if [ ! "$(pidof xcompmgr)" ]; then
      $EXEC
    else
      killall xcompmgr
    fi
    exit 0
fi
# Output Openbox menu
if [ ! "$(pidof xcompmgr)" ]; then
    cat << _EOF_
    <openbox_pipe_menu>
        <item label="Enable Compositing">
            <action name="Execute">
                <execute>myxcompmgr --startstop</execute>
            </action>
        </item>
    </openbox_pipe_menu>
_EOF_
else
    cat << _EOF_
    <openbox_pipe_menu>
        <item label="Remove Transparency from Target Window">
            <action name="Execute">
                <execute>transset 1</execute>
            </action>
        </item>
        <item label="Set Target Window Transparency to 10%">
            <action name="Execute">
                <execute>transset .90</execute>
            </action>
        </item>
        <item label="Set Target Window Transparency to 20%">
            <action name="Execute">
                <execute>transset .80</execute>
            </action>
        </item>
        <item label="Set Target Window Transparency to 30%">
            <action name="Execute">
                <execute>transset .70</execute>
            </action>
        </item>
        <item label="Set Target Window Transparency to 40%">
            <action name="Execute">
                <execute>transset .60</execute>
            </action>
        </item>
        <item label="Set Target Window Transparency to 50%">
            <action name="Execute">
                <execute>transset .50</execute>
            </action>
        </item>
        <item label="Set Target Window Transparency to 60%">
            <action name="Execute">
                <execute>transset .40</execute>
            </action>
        </item>
        <item label="Set Target Window Transparency to 70%">
            <action name="Execute">
                <execute>transset .30</execute>
            </action>
        </item>
        <item label="Set Target Window Transparency to 80%">
            <action name="Execute">
                <execute>transset .20</execute>
            </action>
        </item>
        <item label="Set Target Window Transparency to 90%">
            <action name="Execute">
                <execute>transset .10</execute>
            </action>
        </item>
        <separator/>
        <item label="Disable Compositing">
            <action name="Execute">
                <execute>myxcompmgr --startstop</execute>
            </action>
        </item>
    </openbox_pipe_menu>
_EOF_
fi
exit 0

How to use the script

Follow the instructions below to install the script and set-up the Openbox pipe menu:

1. Open a terminal and download the script with the following command:

wget http://crunchbang.org/misc/myxcompmgr

2. Move the script to your "bin" directory and make executable:

mv myxcompmgr ~/bin/myxcompmgr && chmod +x ~/bin/myxcompmgr

3. Open your Openbox menu.xml file for editing:

gedit ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml

4. Insert the following code where you would like the menu to appear, save and exit:

<menu execute="myxcompmgr" id="CompositingPipeMenu" label="Compositing"/>

5. Issue the following command to update/reconfigure Openbox:

openbox --reconfigure

Optional: You could also place the following entry in ~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh to start xcompmgr on boot:

# Enable Eyecandy, see ~/bin/myxcompmgr for more info
myxcompmgr --startstop &