Oatbar - standalone desktop bar

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The motivation for creation of oatbar was to extend on the idea of Unix-way for toolbars. Inspired by i3bar which consumes a JSON stream that controls it's appearance, we take this idea much further without becoming a DIY widget toolkit.

JSON or plain text streams can be turned into text panels, progress bars or even images without any significant coding effort.

FeatureoatbarBasic barsBars with built-in pluginsDIY toolbar kits
Built-in system data✅✅✅-
Text widgets from custom data✅✅✅✅
Advanced widgets✅✅-✅
Advanced widgets with data from a custom script✅--✅
Display image files from a custom script✅--✅
Generate images dynamically in a custom script✅--✅
Control all appearance from a custom script✅--✅
Minimal coding✅✅✅-
Built-in plugins have no appearance advantage over custom scripts✅--✅
Unix-way input via pipes means customization programming language is not forced upon you✅✅✅-
Consume data from other ecosystems like community scripts for polybar, i3blocks, i3status, conky✅1--✅
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In can be partial, like the lack of support for polybar formatting, but a lot of scripts are useful.

Example

[[bar]]
height=32
blocks_left=["workspace"]
blocks_right=["clock"]

[[command]]
name="clock"
command="date '+%a %b %e %H:%M:%S'"
interval=1

[[command]]
name="desktop"
command="oatbar-desktop"

[[block]]
name = 'workspace'
type = 'enum'
active = '${desktop:workspace.active}'
variants = '${desktop:workspace.variants}'
on_mouse_left = "oatbar-desktop $BLOCK_INDEX"

[[block]]
name = 'clock'
type = 'text'
value = '${clock:value}'

Here clock command sends plain text, but desktop streams structured data in JSON. Each is connected to text and enum selector widgets respectively. oatbar-desktop ships with oatbar, but it is an external tool to a bar, as can be replaced your own script.

Feel free to run oatbar-desktop and investigate it's output. oatbar consumes multiple text formats and this data can be displayed with minimal configuration on widgets called blocks.

Ideas

I truly aspire to build something unique with oatbar, something what other status bars lack. Do you have a cool or unconventional feature you'd like to see in oatbar?

Join the disussion and brainstorm!

Next Steps