idesk(1)

NAME
idesk - Adds desktop icons to the root X window

SYNOPSIS
Idesk allows desktop icons to be added to the root window of an X session, placed freely wherever desired. The icons "glow" on mouse-over, and the icons themselves can be any size. Other attributes, such as font, font size, transparency, and shadows are configurable.

INSTALLING
Idesk is known to run on FreeBSD, Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD. If a package is not available for your platform, you can compile it from source.

Steps:

    1. Unpack the source tar.gz to a desired location.
    2. From that location, run make.
    3. As root from that location, run make install.

CONFIGURING
STEPS

1. Following the syntax described in ideskrc(5), create a file in your home directory named .ideskrc.

2. Create a directory called .idesktop/ in your home directory.

3. Inside the new directory, create an icon file with the extension 'lnk' (e.g., home.lnk). Inside the file put something like this:

    table Icon
      Caption: Mozilla
      Command: /usr/bin/mozilla
      Icon: /usr/share/icons/mozilla.png
    end

4. Start idesk as described in RUNNING below, or kill and restart idesk if it's already running.

5. Move your new icon to where you would like it to be, and verify it works correctly.

6. Repeat steps 3-5 for any additional icons you would like to have.

7. After you have your icons finished and where you want them, change Locked from 'false' to 'true' in .ideskrc.

8. (optional) Add 'idesk' to your .xinitrc or other startup scripts to run it automatically.

RUNNING
Idesk runs as a background process. One suggested way to start idesk is:

    nohup idesk > /dev/null &

After Idesk is running, click on an icon to start whatever command you assigned it. Currently 'kill -HUP' will terminate the program. It is required to restart idesk when you add new icons (.lnk files), unless you are running some other utility that runs on top of idesk, such as Fluxspace. You can reload existing .lnk files in ~/.idesktop/ by middle-clicking on any icon.

SEE ALSO
ideskrc(5)

PROGRAM AUTHORS

    Chris Roberts (nikon) <nikon@sc.rr.com>
    Bryn (curious) <curious@ihug.com.au>
    Christopher Morris <cmorri9@lsu.edu>
    Tim Finley <timmfin@timmfin.net>

MANPAGE AUTHOR

    Dylan Carlson <absinthe@gentoo.org>