Another week, another tiny utility.
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Another week, another tiny utility.
I was in a Zoom call last week with very poor video quality, which we figured out was because I was also running a long compile which wasn't leaving Zoom enough CPU to work with. So I paused the compile with ^Z and things improved.
Three hours after the call, I found the compile job, still suspended, in a window hidden behind something else. Oops. If only I'd been able to arrange to _automatically_ resume the job when the Zoom call terminated, instead of relying on my own memory!
I already have a tool 'after' which waits for a specified Unix process to terminate. But Zoom stays running even when not on a call, and there's no reason to suppose it puts the call in an easy-to-identify subprocess.
But it does put it in a separate _window_. So I wrote a tool 'xafter', which waits for a specified X window to close. Completely trivial – X11 makes it easy to ask for StructureNotify events on a window whether it's your own or not. Now if I suspend a job that's interfering with my meeting, I can immediately type 'xafter;fg' and select the meeting window, and then it'll restart automatically.
I have no idea if it would be easy to write analogues of this for Wayland, or Windows, or Mac.
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Another week, another tiny utility.
I was in a Zoom call last week with very poor video quality, which we figured out was because I was also running a long compile which wasn't leaving Zoom enough CPU to work with. So I paused the compile with ^Z and things improved.
Three hours after the call, I found the compile job, still suspended, in a window hidden behind something else. Oops. If only I'd been able to arrange to _automatically_ resume the job when the Zoom call terminated, instead of relying on my own memory!
I already have a tool 'after' which waits for a specified Unix process to terminate. But Zoom stays running even when not on a call, and there's no reason to suppose it puts the call in an easy-to-identify subprocess.
But it does put it in a separate _window_. So I wrote a tool 'xafter', which waits for a specified X window to close. Completely trivial – X11 makes it easy to ask for StructureNotify events on a window whether it's your own or not. Now if I suspend a job that's interfering with my meeting, I can immediately type 'xafter;fg' and select the meeting window, and then it'll restart automatically.
I have no idea if it would be easy to write analogues of this for Wayland, or Windows, or Mac.
@simontatham cool..
There's a similar thing under wayland used to suppress screen locking when apps are active that don't require the normal mouse and kbd interaction, like media players and conference calls.
Having jobs that only run when one of these inhibitors isn't held seems useful!
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@simontatham cool..
There's a similar thing under wayland used to suppress screen locking when apps are active that don't require the normal mouse and kbd interaction, like media players and conference calls.
Having jobs that only run when one of these inhibitors isn't held seems useful!
@uep and on the flip side, when an application fails to suppress the screen lock, I've been known to work around the problem by making a very cheap video file (small plain black rectangle at 1fps) and run a media player on it, which is easier than figuring out the proper lock-suppression API
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@uep and on the flip side, when an application fails to suppress the screen lock, I've been known to work around the problem by making a very cheap video file (small plain black rectangle at 1fps) and run a media player on it, which is easier than figuring out the proper lock-suppression API
@simontatham "the"? singular? LOL
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Another week, another tiny utility.
I was in a Zoom call last week with very poor video quality, which we figured out was because I was also running a long compile which wasn't leaving Zoom enough CPU to work with. So I paused the compile with ^Z and things improved.
Three hours after the call, I found the compile job, still suspended, in a window hidden behind something else. Oops. If only I'd been able to arrange to _automatically_ resume the job when the Zoom call terminated, instead of relying on my own memory!
I already have a tool 'after' which waits for a specified Unix process to terminate. But Zoom stays running even when not on a call, and there's no reason to suppose it puts the call in an easy-to-identify subprocess.
But it does put it in a separate _window_. So I wrote a tool 'xafter', which waits for a specified X window to close. Completely trivial – X11 makes it easy to ask for StructureNotify events on a window whether it's your own or not. Now if I suspend a job that's interfering with my meeting, I can immediately type 'xafter;fg' and select the meeting window, and then it'll restart automatically.
I have no idea if it would be easy to write analogues of this for Wayland, or Windows, or Mac.
@simontatham nice, I need this
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@simontatham "the"? singular? LOL
@uep indeed, I've long suspected that part of the _reason_ applications sometimes fail to suppress my screen lock is that there's more than one API and they used the other one!
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D drajt@fosstodon.org shared this topic
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Another week, another tiny utility.
I was in a Zoom call last week with very poor video quality, which we figured out was because I was also running a long compile which wasn't leaving Zoom enough CPU to work with. So I paused the compile with ^Z and things improved.
Three hours after the call, I found the compile job, still suspended, in a window hidden behind something else. Oops. If only I'd been able to arrange to _automatically_ resume the job when the Zoom call terminated, instead of relying on my own memory!
I already have a tool 'after' which waits for a specified Unix process to terminate. But Zoom stays running even when not on a call, and there's no reason to suppose it puts the call in an easy-to-identify subprocess.
But it does put it in a separate _window_. So I wrote a tool 'xafter', which waits for a specified X window to close. Completely trivial – X11 makes it easy to ask for StructureNotify events on a window whether it's your own or not. Now if I suspend a job that's interfering with my meeting, I can immediately type 'xafter;fg' and select the meeting window, and then it'll restart automatically.
I have no idea if it would be easy to write analogues of this for Wayland, or Windows, or Mac.
… I forgot to provide a link, didn't I? See, that's why I prefer to avoid relying on my own memory.
'xafter' is available from my miscellaneous utilities page (also including 'after' and lots of other unrelated things):
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/utils/ -
@simontatham nice, I need this
@webhat well reminded, I've now put a link in a followup post!
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R relay@relay.publicsquare.global shared this topic
