Don Marti - Linux World
Editor
Speaking Topic: Going Beyond User-Friendly to "User-Intimate" With Desktop Tweaking Power

Don Marti is editor of LinuxWorld.com and has also edited and written for other Linux sites. With Jim Gleason, he founded Linux consulting firm Electric Lichen. He has served as president and vice president of the Silicon Valley Linux Users Group and on the program committees for Uselinux, Codecon, and LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, and was an organizer for Windows Refund Day, Burn All GIFs Day, and FreedomHEC.

I know, I know. Your favorite desktop environment got all corporate and stuff, and no longer supports your favorite tweaky window manager stunt. Well, while the Consistent User Interface Police weren't looking, the desktop hackers sneaked around back and created a bunch of tools that will have you customizing, scripting, and configuring even better than you could with the old school window managers.

This talk will cover the tools that are doing for the desktop what Greasemonkey has done for the web, such as:

devilspie: Get back control over window placement and decoration with a program that works alongside your window manager to automate laying out your workspace the way you like it.

xsel: Spare your mouse hand and feed the text you want into your X selection straight from a script.

xautomation: send arbitrary X events from scripts

tpb and other button support: Use the buttons on your computer for something. We'll try a one-line implementation of Jef Raskin's idea for a "Calculate" button that works in any application.

We'll even learn a really good reason to control your favorite audio playing application from Vim, and use the Hard Drive Active Protection System and the "Poor Man's Theremin" to get two extra input devices that aren't in any human interface guidelines.

Listen Now! [.mp3]