Widgets in Conky? It can be done!
If you haven't already jumped on the Conky 1.7.2 bandwagon, now may be the time to try it out...I've written a new script in Lua, that will allow you to draw widgets to your Conky window, a la this screenie:
The Conky above is a combination of four separate widgets (one clock and 4 semi-rings) in the Conky Widgets script, and all the text is written with Conky. You can download the Lua script and .conkyrc that made it here: conky_widgets.tar.gz.
This Conky Widgets script is essentially a "shell" to hold blocks of widget code, with the idea that you or anyone else can write blocks of code and call them simply in a single script, without having to make drastic changes to your script or to your Conky. To use it with your Conky, download the empty script here: conky_widgets.lua.tar.gz. Then download one or more code blocks: Air Clock (air_clock_wb.txt.tar.gz) or Ring Meter (ring_wb.txt.tar.gz). Simply copy the code block into the empty widget script, following the instructions in the script's header.
Finally, call your widgets with the following code before TEXT in your .conkyrc:
lua_load ~/scripts/conky_widgets.lua lua_draw_hook_pre widgets
Have a go and see what you can do! And if you write a widget code block yourself, please do post it here so we can all see what you've done.
(Don't have Conky 1.7.2 installed yet? Start here!)
October 21st, 2009 - 14:16
Nice
Conky setup with widgets in the screenshot is also cool !
October 22nd, 2009 - 21:51
Looks cool but those download links don’t seem to work.
October 23rd, 2009 - 01:07
@Rob: I’ve tested the links and they look okay to me. They will take you to another page with a download link on it, and that download link downloads the actual .tar.gz (sorry, it’s a quirk of Wordpress that makes it work like that).
Alternatively, you can download all of these scripts here: http://conky.linux-hardcore.com/?page_id=3331
November 8th, 2009 - 08:16
I’m used to editing conkyrc files. Wait, that’s almost like saying, Hey trial-and-error saves the day! The most I’ve done was flip conky sideways to save on screen space (from this _ to this | ). Will there be a danger of me turning into a 133t lua code warrior?
November 8th, 2009 - 21:42
I’m trying to get this work, and I’m not sure what part is failing.
I downloaded Air clock and Rings, as well as the conky widgets holder script.
I’m using the sample .conkyrc, which correctly displays the date, and system values (cpu… etc). But none of the cairo/lua visual elements show up.
This is on a fresh Karmic install of conky 1.7.2. I had to install lua, but cairo was already installed. Any suggestion on what a minimal test would be? It doesn’t appear to be a conky problem. That is, I’ve got other conky’s running just fine, and this rc works too, except for the widgets.
Any suggetions appreciated.
December 26th, 2009 - 16:00
The link at Conky Hardcore doesn’t provide a .conkyrc script.
And the downloads here don’t work.
vision@phoenix:~/Downloads$ tar xvf conky_widgets.lua.tar.gz
tar: This does not look like a tar archive
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
I’m a Conky noob, so while I’ve got Lua/Cairo installed and have the widgets script being called, it simply displays the widgets behind the (ugly) black & grey clock.
Time to figure out how to get this going, I suppose.
December 26th, 2009 - 16:03
Of course, it’s some kind of issue with Firefox.
Download works perfect using wget i.e.:
wget http://blog.conky.be/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/conky_widgets.tar.gz
Cheers.
January 1st, 2010 - 10:50
@doug:
You are using the wrong command for unpacking!
should be one of those:
tar xaf //auto detection, only newer versions of tar
tar xzf //because its a tar.GZ you need the z
@londonali:
great work, I am using your lua widget script and its just perfect!