Future block ideas

[ammgws]

Took a quick look at some other status line generators and listed up their blocks to see what ones might be good to implement ourselves. Of interest to me are blocks that use DBus/i3 IPC/etc since we can write those natively to get asynchronously updating blocks and no calls to external programs.

Note that there are a lot of simple blocks here that could be handled by the custom block, especially those that just call external programs, so I don't see the advantage of adding those into the Rust codebase since there's no performance gains etc to be made. However we could look into the idea of having contributed configs for the custom block either in the repo or wiki or somewhere. Another idea could be allowing for modules/blocks from other status line generators to be able to be imported/used directly in i3status-rust.

From bumblebee-status:

block	description	comment
~~apt~~	Displays APT package update information	~~we have pacman already, so I guess we could have this too~~ Done in #943
arandr	Enables handy interaction with arandr for display management
caffeine	Enable/disable automatic screen locking
currency	Displays currency exchange rates
~~dnf~~	Displays DNF package update information	implemented in https://github.com/greshake/i3status-rust/pull/1311/
~~dunst~~	Toggle dunst notifications	implemented by #851
getcrypto	Displays the price of a cryptocurrency
git	Print branch and git status for currently focused window
hddtemp	Fetch hard drive temeperature data from a hddtemp daemon
~~hostname~~	Displays the system hostname	easily covered by a Custom block
~~http_status~~	Display HTTP status code	easily covered by a Custom block
indicator	Displays the indicator status, for numlock, scrolllock and capslock	interested if can get async implementation. some discussion in #267
~~kernel~~	Shows Linux kernel version information	easily covered by a Custom block
libvirtvms	Displays count of running libvirt VMs
~~mocp~~	Displays information about the current song in mocp	covered by music block (assuming mocp has MPRIS interface)
octoprint	Displays the Octorpint status and the printer’s bed/tools temperature in the status bar
pihole	Displays the pi-hole status (up/down) together with the number of ads that were blocked today
~~ping~~	Periodically checks the RTT of a configurable host using ICMP echos	easily covered by a Custom block (example added in examples/README.md)
prime	Displays and changes the current selected prime video card
progress	Show progress for cp, mv, dd, …	this seems useful to me
publicip	Displays public IP address	could be added to net block
~~redshift~~	Displays the current color temperature of redshift	implemented by #802
rotation	Shows a widget for each connected screen and allows the user to loop through different orientations
rss	RSS news ticker
smartstatus	Displays HDD smart status of different drives or all drives
spaceapi	Displays the state of a Space API endpoint Space API is an API for hackspaces based on JSON
sun	Displays sunrise and sunset times	possibly add via more qualifiers to the weather block
~~system~~	Adds the possibility to shutdown or reboot the system	easily covered by a Custom block
twmn	Toggle twmn notifications
vault	Copy passwords from a password store into the clipboard (currently supports only ‘pass’)
vpn	Displays the VPN profile that is currently in use
~~xkcd~~	Opens a random xkcd comic in the browser	easily covered by a Custom block (example added in examples/README.md)
yubikey	Shows yubikey information
zpool	Displays info about zpools present on the system

From py3status:

block	description	comment
air_quality	Display air quality polluting in a given location	could be added to weather block
aws_bill	Display bill for Amazon Web Services
bitcoin_price	Display bitcoin using bitcoincharts.com
check_tcp	Display status of a TCP port on a given host
coin_balance	Display balances of diverse crypto-currencies
coin_market	Display cryptocurrency coins
conky	Display Conky objects/variables on the bar
~~do_not_disturb~~	Turn on and off desktop notifications	implemented by #851
dpms	Turn on and off DPMS and screen saver blanking
dropboxd_status	Display status of Dropbox daemon
emerge_status	Display information about the currently running emerge process
fedora_updates	Display number of pending updates for Fedora Linux
file_status	Display if files or directories exists
frame	Group modules and treat them as a single one
~~getjson~~	Display JSON data fetched from a URL	easily covered by a Custom block
gitlab	Display number of issues, requests and more from a GitLab project
glpi	Display number of open tickets from GLPI
google_calendar	Display upcoming Google Calendar events
graphite	Display Graphite metrics
group	Group modules and switch between them
hamster	Display time tracking activities from Hamster
~~hueshift~~	Shift color temperature on the screen	implemented by #802
i3block	Support i3blocks blocklets in py3status	possibly a good idea
i3pystatus	Support i3pystatus modules in py3status	possibly a good idea
icinga2	Display service status for Icinga2
imap	Display number of unread messages from IMAP account
insync	Display Insync status
~~kdeconnector~~	Display information about your smartphone with KDEConnector	already implemented
khal_calendar	Displays upcoming khal events
mega_sync	mega_sync
ns_checker	Display DNS resolution success on a configured domain
process_status	Display status of a process on your system
rainbow	Add color cycling fun to your i3bar
rate_counter	Display time spent and calculate the price of your service
rt	Display number of ongoing tickets from RT queues
scratchpad	Display number of scratchpad windows and urgency hints
~~screenshot~~	Take screenshots and upload them to a given server	easily covered by a Custom block (example added in examples/README.md)
selinux	Display SELinux state
sql	Display data stored in MariaDB, MySQL, sqlite3, and hopefully more
systemd	Display status of a service on your system	possibly even more useful if it could track all services and display failed ones
systemd_suspend_inhibitor	Turn on and off systemd suspend inhibitor
thunderbird_todos	Display number of todos and more for Thunderbird
timer	Simple countdown timer
tor_rate	Display transfer rates of a tor instance
transmission	Display number of torrents and more
twitch	Display if a Twitch channel is currently streaming or not
~~uname~~	Display system information	easily covered by a Custom block (example added in examples/README.md)
usbguard	Allow or Reject newly plugged USB devices using USBGuard
velib_metropole	Display information about Velib Métropole stations
vnstat	Display vnstat statistics
wanda_the_fish	Display a fortune-telling, swimming fish
~~whoami~~	Display logged-in username	easily covered by a Custom block
xsel	Display X selection
yandexdisk_status	Display Yandex.Disk status
yubikey	Show an indicator when YubiKey is waiting for a touch

From i3blocks:

block	description
afs	Show usage information for an AFS directory
calendar	Current date/time and click for calendar
disk-io	Monitor disk reads and writes
~~dunst~~	Toggle Dunst notifications using a simple Do-Not-Disturb button
email	Show the number of unread IMAP messages
~~gpu-load~~	Shows load of Nvidia GPUs
~~go~~	Show the currently installed Go version
keyindicator	Show the status of capslock or numlock
key_light	Control the keyboard backlight
kubernetes	Show the kubernetes current context and namespace
monitor_manager	Manage monitor on/off, resolution, extend, clone
nm-vpn	Show vpn status using network manager
openvpn	Show openvpn status
rofi-calendar	Current date/time and click for calendar using rofi
~~shutdown_menu~~	Shutdown menu using rofi or zenity
tahoe-lafs	Show status of your tahoe-lafs grid
usb	Show connected usb storage device info
ytdl-mpv	Play youtube videos from your clipboard using youtube-dl

Others #762:

Hi I have a custom block that shows this: | DP-1(1.0) HEADLESS-1(1.0) | to show the active outputs and their current scale factor. It might be nice to have something like this built in.

[gurditsbedi]

From my point of view, apt and do-not-disturb seem promising. apt : AFAIK, apt and pacman belong to most used distros. do-not-disturb: Some times focus is needed.

[ammgws]

apt seems reasonable given it should have a large user base.

Although both do-not-disturb and apt could be implemented using the Custom block. As mentioned in the first post, I wonder if we should have a collection of custom block configs that we ship as part of i3status-rs for those trivial blocks. Saves the user time from thinking of the block and the commands, and saves us from having to implement them in Rust. @atheriel What do you think (whenever you see this)?

[flying7eleven]

I would vote for a "all-in-one" solution. Personally, I hate the hassle that I have to maintain several external scripts which are "just" called by i3status-rs. Also setting up a new computer would require more effort than just copying a single configuration file (sure, I could also copy all files). Additionally, I agree to the point of @ammgws that someone who starts setting up the bar would have to think about how to realize all the blocks instead of just adding them to the config. This could cause confusion.

From the list in the initial issue, I would be very interested in some of the blocks and could imagine to contribute (for) some of them.

[ammgws]

Do you have any scripts that aren't covered by anything from the list in the first post and are general enough to be useful for others? If so please list those up as well.

[atheriel]

I think a collection of simple/common uses of the Custom block (shell one-liners, basically) would be a great addition to the documentation. We could potentially re-jig blocks.md so that the Custom block gets its own section at the end with a large number of examples.

[AkechiShiro]

Hey @ammgws, could you update your first comment to add that the redshift block was added (partially) in #802, just so beginners coming here don't think nothing has been done for this, since the hueshift block is kinda of lesser complete redshift block (Though I do agree that the redshift block is more complete).

[norpol]

I hope it's ok to add a suggestions in this thread.

Firefox and Chrome have a "Sharing Indicator", this results with no additional configuration with a sharing indicator becoming a tiling-window.

I believe it would be nice to have configuration that omits the sharing-indicator window itself in sway + an additional status item in i3dstatus that will be visible once the sharing indicator id shows up in the swaytree.

An alternative to using the sharing-indicator of Firefox we could add a "audio recording" indicator to sound.rs.

Adding some similar functionality for the webcam is not trivial until we have pipewire though, unless fuser /dev/video* is used.

OK, webcam sharing indicator works fairly simple, here an example (and I hope not to resource consuming):

(example requires bash, fuser, and pactl installed)

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -ueo pipefail

if fuser /dev/video* >/dev/null; then
	icon="music_play"
	state="Critical"
	text="Rec"
else
	icon=""
	state="Idle"
	text=""
fi

cat - <<EOF
	{
	   "icon": "${icon}",
           "state": "${state}",
           "text": "${text}"
}
EOF

[[block]]
block = "custom"
command = '~/bin/webcam_status'
json = true
interval = 1

and the same for audio

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -ueo pipefail

if  [ -n "$(pactl list source-outputs short)" ]; then
	icon="microphone_full"
	state="Critical"
	text="Rec"
else
	icon=""
	state="Idle"
	text=""
fi

cat - <<EOF
	{
	   "icon": "${icon}",
           "state": "${state}",
           "text": "${text}"
}
EOF

[[block]]
block = "custom"
command = '~/bin/audio_status'
json = true
interval = 1

In addition I'm using

for_window [title=".*Sharing Indicator" app_id="firefox"]  {
        floating enable
        border none
        title none
        move position -1000 -1000
}

to hide the Firefox Sharing Indicator since there is no proper way of minimizing/hiding windows in swaywm. Though an better alternative to this is adding this to your userChrome.css (via)

#webrtcIndicator {
  display: none;
}

[MaxVerevkin]

xkcd, getjson, screenshot, shutdown_menu and system should also be easily covered by custom.

frame - sounds interesting.

rainbow - sounds fun, I can imagine it being implemented with a more advanced alternating mechanism. Perhaps use HSV color space and for every block increase the hue value?

[ammgws]

I have been thinking about creating a udiskie block since all the info can be grabbed via D-Bus, and it would be pretty handy since tray icons aren't currently working on sway. May get around to it one day if no one else does, just need to suss out the bus properties/behaviour.

[ObiWahn]

Hi, I would like to have a trayicon holder block or at least something that lets me use nextcloud.

[GladOSkar]

@ObiWahn tray icons are not managed by i3status-rust, but by your DE's bar. We have no control over them.

You can of course use a custom block to run the nextcloud binary when clicked, which, if nextcloud is already running in the background, will open up its GUI:

[[block]]
block = "custom"
command = "echo \uf0c2 Nextcloud"
on_click = "nextcloud"

(The unicode codepoint is an Icon from NF, you might have to change/remove it)

[MaxVerevkin]

Block idea: a menu - user provides a list of strings and commands associated with those strings. Scrolling on the block will cycle through those strings. Clicking on the block will run the command.

[[block]]
block = "menu"
text = "\uf011 "
[[block.items]]
display = "-> Power Off <-"
cmd = "poweroff"
[[block.items]]
display = "->   Sleep   <-"
cmd = "systemctl suspend"

A prototype:

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/34583604/142244898-015858e3-5f06-4026-9b98-6a40279eee17.mp4

[ammgws]

Looks good!

[mildred]

I'd love to see a block with IO usage, of course I can run an external command but spawning external commands takes up resources.

[jkauerl]

Hello, im new to Open Source Development and Rust and wanted to know a good first PR to tackle. Any recommendation?

[GreyXor]

A tuned switcher (via dbus)