
------------------------------------------------------------------
                              README
------------------------------------------------------------------

                          wmblob v1.0.0

general information
-------------------

    I'll be honest with you.  the truth is: wmblob is a totally
    useless program.  but unlike other totally useless programs (I
    won't name them here, because they're made by an enormous
    company), it looks good and shows funny moving `blobs'.  I'm
    sure you'll like it.  it's a nice dockapp for WindowMaker (see
    `www.windowmaker.org'), but it's probably going to run just as
    well with any other window manager.

supported platforms:
--------------------

    I have no idea.  go and find it out.  I wrote it on `bender',
    my i686-pc-linux-gnu system.  this means it compiles and runs
    well on *my* machine and I hope it will do so on your machine,
    too, but I'm unable to test it on other platforms.  all
    comments related to the portability of this program are
    welcome, especially for non-linux platforms.

    if wmblob fails to compile or to run on your machine and you
    are a smart person (meaning: not working for an enormous
    company), try to find out what the problem is by looking at
    the source and/or config files.  if you're unable to do this,
    you can still try to drop me an e-mail with *useful*
    informations, but I can't promise, that I'll be able to help
    you.  also, if you fix some compatibility problems, tell me
    about it.

    wmblob is mainly written for WindowMaker.  other window
    manager may work just as well, because I don't use any
    extension unique to WindowMaker, but I can't tell for sure.  I
    have tried to run it with old verions of twm, mwm, wm2 and
    icewm.  all four managers work only by giving `--windowed' or
    `--broken-wm' to wmblob at startup.

installation:
-------------

    installing wmblob should be trivial by simply following the
    usual installation steps, beginning with ./configure.

    if this does not ring a bell, do the following:
      + unpack the archive and enter the source tree
      + type `./configure' with your favourite options (type
        `./configure --help' to get a list)
      + type `make' to compile
      + type `make install' to install.  for this you'll have to
	be root, unless you install it locally by giving a local
	path to configure (with `--prefix=path').

    note: you'll need to have GTK+ v2 installed.

how to use it:
--------------

    simply start it and watch it.  nice, eh?

    what?  don't see anything?  try giving the `--broken-wm' or
    `--windowed' options to wmblob.
    
    clicking in the window will open a dialog with lots of
    options.  (you can't change the colors anymore by clicking
    with different buttons, like in older versions.) all these
    settings change the way wmblob behaves.  sorry, I won't
    describe all of them here; you can find it out yourself by
    fiddling around.  you can look at some examples by loading the
    presets.  select a preset from the dropdown menu, click `load'
    and then `apply'.

    the command line options for setting the colors have been
    removed.

    wmblob saves it's settings and presets in the file .wmblobrc
    in your home directory.  you should not edit this file unless
    you really know what you're doing.  wmblob may crash if the
    file is not set up properly.  if you've messed things up,
    simply delete this file, wmblob will recreate it with the
    default settings.

how does it work?
-----------------

    some people asked me, how wmblob works.  that's why I have
    included the file `doc/how_it_works'.

cpu usage
---------

    being nothing more than a toy (a nice toy), wmblob cannot be
    tolerated to use too much of your cpu.  while the amount of
    cpu time required by wmblob is small (less than 1/2%) with the
    default settings on modern machines, it can use considerable
    cpu time (maybe 10%) on older and slow machines with heavy
    settings (lots of blobs).  it's your choice to run wmblob or
    not.  also consider to nice it.

copyright
---------

    wmblob is copyright by jean-luc herren.  the GPL version 2 (or
    newer, if desired) applies to all portions of the code I
    wrote.  if you don't know the GPL, please see the file COPYING
    in the root of the source tree or go to `www.gnu.org'.

    the file wmlessgeneral.c has been taken from wmgeneral.c by
    Martijn Pieterse (pieterse-at-xs4all-dot-nl).  wmblob.c was
    originally derived from wmdots.c from `wmdots' by Mark I
    Manning IV (?), but there's nothing left from his original
    code.

author
------

    wmblob was written by jean-luc herren.  (jlh-at-gmx-dot-ch)

bug reports
-----------

    bugs?  where?  well, if you find one or have some comments,
    questions or problems or feel like saying hello, feel free to
    send me an e-mail (jlh-at-gmx-dot-ch).  warning: if you spam
    me, I'll remote activate wmblob to delete all your precious
    data and to break you one leg for every kilobyte of spam.

known bugs
----------

    none.  unless you tell me about one.  I run it permanently on
    my machine and never encountered any problems.

thanks
------

    thanks to many other people who wrote dockapps, I read some of
    their sources.  especially: wmdots, wmMand and wmgeneral.

    thanks to Thomas Otto for his patch for command line args.

    thanks to Grkan Sengn, for making a Debian package and
    writing the initial manpage.

    ...and thanks to all the people, who dropped me an email!
    it's nice to hear that you like it!  :)


# vi:set ai tw=66:
