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From: Kragen Javier Sitaker <kragen@canonical.org>
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: a battery monitor
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:52:56 -0300
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Anton Antimo <anton@safunu.org> writes:
> So, yes, the program is more like a progress bar to be used by some kind
> of shell program.  Here's how I've been using it.  My system has this
> program called acpi, which gives me battery information:
>
> %acpi -b
> Battery 0: Charging, 91%, 00:18:43 until charged
>
> I run CWM, the calm window manager.  So from my ~/xinitrc, I run:
>
> while true; \
>   do acpi -b | awk '{printf("%d\n",$4)}' | tr -d '%,' && sleep 60; \
>   done | xbattery 220x40-0-0 &

This is a good idea!

X-Windows makes it a lot more trouble to write than it really ought to
be.  In theory, it ought to be doable in much less code, but X really
makes your life hard there.  (I haven’t tested the code, but I assume
you’re posting a working version, and the code looks fine at a glance,
so I'm sure it’s fine.)

Kragen