Blackbox
What is Blackbox?
Blackbox is a modern window manager for X window system. It is small,
good looking and can be easily configured to suite your tastes. And
, it is very very fast. I like it a lot because it does not try to
be an eye-candy. Blackbox is not eye-catchy as Enlightenment
, but it is a whole lot faster and elegant in its simplicity. It is very elegant though. Scroll down to the links'
section for sites which have more information on Blackbox.
Stuff I would like to see in Blackbox
- GNOME
support - atleast for GNOME pager.
Well, most others in Blackbox mailing list seems to be against GNOME!
- A script to create a gtkrc from Blackbox themes. One would probably need a gradient engine for Gtk - I'm just speculating here, because I'm not a X programmer.
- One configuration tool. There exists a theme-maker called Greybox, which is simple and good. May be that could be extended ?
My scripts for Blackbox
I use Blackbox with KDE or as standalone. Here are some shell scripts which I use to make my life with Blackbox easier. Please note that all these are shell)(read slow) scripts which I put together to ease my life and not to make statements! Use these to your heart's content, but don't point fingers at me...
- kbbmenu.sh - Parse a directory which is assumed to be a KDE menu directory and then print a Blackbox menu structure. I redirect the output to a file which I INCLUDE in the Blackbox menu. The kbbmc program is supposed to do the same , but I couldn't make it work. Just change references to $KDEDIR to where your GNOME menu structure is, and this should work for GNOME as well. Or get gnomenu.sh!
- bbchthm.sh - It reads all the theme definitions placed in a directory, filters these and copy to another directory. My filters include modification of themes for 8bpp (removes gradients which look awful in lesser colour depths), LeftJustify all text and adds my own rootCommand (I don't like flashy backgrounds when only 8bpp is supported:-). Additionally, it creates a stylemenu file which can be INCLUDE ed in your main menu file. The stylemenu file has submenus, and you can specify how many themes per submenu.
My Themes for Blackbox
- fastgrid - A very fast and simple theme, ideal for 8bpp displays and 14" monitors. Quite easy on eyes as well.
- velvet - You need atleast 16bpp for this.
- divinity - Again 16bpp, reminds me of my beautiful Kerala. Get the wallpaper here.
Blackbox links
- Official Blackbox site
- your first stop
- BB-Tools
- A great set of tools for Blackbox
- KBB
- Helping to integrate Blackbox with KDE
- Unofficial Blackbox site
- Not very much updated
- Ultravoid
- A good site, some themes and source mirror are available
- @X11.org
- Good, not very current
- Official themes site
- Lot of themes for Blackbox
- By Logan
- Some great themes
- By G.Barlow
- Some themes, source mirror - This page has moved.