conky status piped to i3bar using JSON causes text to flicker

naq
15 ●4 ●4 ●9

Once a couple of seconds (unrelated to update_interval from conky) the status is flickering in a very annoying way. Without using JSON and directly piping plain conky into i3bar, the text doesn't seem to flicker anymore. How can I solve this?

/later edit: It seems this is also causing text pop-ups to flicker, when I hover the mouse pointer over a podcast episode in gpodder for example. Another thing I just realized, when I select a piece of text (or entire with ctrl+a) in a textchat, the flickering is causing my text to be deselected. This doesn't seem to happen continuously, only for a number of times. For example, I select the text, it deselects, then select it again, it deselects again. I select it again and after that it stays selected. Same with pop-ups. Only first time(s), after first hovered the pointer and the info was showed. This problem description might sound weird.

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answered Jan 28 '13

dkeg
40 ●3 ●3 ●8

updated Jan 29 '13

Update: Get rid of double_buffer yes. That will do it.

when I had update_interval set at 1, I also got flickering. However, when I changed to 2 the flickering was gone. What value are you using? Can you confirm with a value of 2, possibly even higher, like 3, you are still having flickering problems.

The other issue you describe, I am not sure. A bit difficult to follow. Doesn't sound related though.

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I tried setting differrent update intervals all in vain. I normally use 1 sec but lately I had 0.5. I tried from 1 to 5 and even higher, it makes no difference. I also found a thread on arch forums with the name "conky text flashing" (because I can't post links), and the OP had the same problem.

naq (Jan 29 '13)edit

Only that he says he solved it by using conky-cli from AUR. I tried that as well and still the flickering is happening.

naq (Jan 29 '13)edit

The other issue it may indeed not be related. At first I thought it is. I can kill i3bar and still have that problem with info text pop-ups flashing and selecting text problem. That doesn't happen in browser though.

naq (Jan 29 '13)edit

One thing I forgot to add, yesterday I was compiling rust from AUR so the CPU was working hard. I was looking at i3bar at the usage per core, and surprisingly all that time, the i3bar text didn't flash. It was updating itselff normally and that at 0.5 update interval. I don't know why that is.

naq (Jan 29 '13)edit

Curious to see your .conkyrc file. Can you post up on pastebin or something similar

dkeg (Jan 29 '13)edit

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answered Jul 1 '13

Quelltextfabrik
21 ●1 ●4

updated Jul 1 '13

Hey there,

for me, this thread on bbs.archlinux.org viewtopic.php?pid=1279931#p1279931 (can't post links, sorry) held the answer.

Essentially, because of the way i3status parses JSON you need to make your JSON array one "physical" line.

So your 99+ lines of this:

{ "full_text" : "foo" },
{ "full_text" : "bar" },
{ "full_text" : "one more for good measure" }

simply becomes this:

{ "full_text" : "foo" },\
{ "full_text" : "bar" },\
{ "full_text" : "one more for good measure" }\

Hope that helps someone!

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conky status piped to i3bar using JSON causes text to flicker

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