i3 FAQ - Individual question feed

i3 FAQ - Individual question feedhttps://faq.i3wm.org/questions/Frequently asked questions and answers about the i3 window managerenCopyright i3, 2012Tue, 15 Jan 2013 19:29:07 +0000i3status add external text fileshttps://faq.i3wm.org/question/982/i3status-add-external-text-files/Hi, First of all let me say that i3 WM is great and very useful for me. Thanks to develper(s)! :) My question is about integration user information into i3bar. Man page for i3status contains this: *In i3status, we don’t want to implement process management again. Therefore, there is no module to run arbitrary scripts or commands. Instead, you should use your shell* Maybe you're right and adding 'run scripts' functionality is unnecessary here, but suggested solution seems to be not handy too. I can't effectively parse JSON array with shell to modify i3status output before sending to i3bar. And all that python wrappers are incredibly slow and overheaded. I want to have some lightweight unix-way solution here and i3status (written in C?) seems to be almost about such solution. But i need to have additional information in the bar without unnecessary overheaded script wrappers. So, is it possible to add text files support to i3status? Let it check if we have text in text file, then we're adding it to the output. That's all. For example, i have my own python script which shows me the weather. I want to run it from cron once in 10 (or 20, or 30) minutes (i don't need more) and let it write its output to the file.Fri, 04 Jan 2013 18:34:25 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/982/i3status-add-external-text-files/Answer by joepd for Hi, First of all let me say that i3 WM is great and very useful for me. Thanks to develper(s)! :) My question is about integration user information into i3bar. Man page for i3status contains this: In i3status, we don’t want to implement process management again. Therefore, there is no module to run arbitrary scripts or commands. Instead, you should use your shell Maybe you're right and adding 'run scripts' functionality is unnecessary here, but suggested solution seems to be not handy too. I can't effectively parse JSON array with shell to modify i3status output before sending to i3bar. And all that python wrappers are incredibly slow and overheaded. I want to have some lightweight unix-way solution here and i3status (written in C?) seems to be almost about such solution. But i need to have additional information in the bar without unnecessary overheaded script wrappers. So, is it possible to add text files support to i3status? Let it check if we have text in text file, then we're adding it to the output. That's all. For example, i have my own python script which shows me the weather. I want to run it from cron once in 10 (or 20, or 30) minutes (i don't need more) and let it write its output to the file. https://faq.i3wm.org/question/982/i3status-add-external-text-files/?answer=1057#post-id-1057Your use case does not match the intentions of the developers. If you're up for flexibility (and increase of system load), have a look at this [featured article](http://i3wm.org/docs/user-contributed/conky-i3bar.html) in the User's Documentation. Tue, 15 Jan 2013 19:24:45 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/982/i3status-add-external-text-files/?answer=1057#post-id-1057Comment by joepd for Your use case does not match the intentions of the developers. If you're up for flexibility (and increase of system load), have a look at this <a href="http://i3wm.org/docs/user-contributed/conky-i3bar.html">featured article</a> in the User's Documentation. https://faq.i3wm.org/question/982/i3status-add-external-text-files/?comment=1058#comment-1058BTW: For checking the weather, I consider myself to be the tiling window manager. This screen in the upper-left corner of my eye sight is dedicated to display some weather characteristics ;) Tue, 15 Jan 2013 19:29:07 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/982/i3status-add-external-text-files/?comment=1058#comment-1058