"says" (Stuff About Your System) is a small X application to show some
information about your system's memory usage, CPU load, network activity,
and battery level. It should at least be compatible with most x86 and 
x86_64 Linux systems with a 2.6.0 or newer kernel.



*** Building ***

To build the program, just type "make"

By default the build will use the FreeType and libXft libraries
for font rendering, but if you would rather use the plain old- 
fashioned X11 fonts, type "make XFT=0"

If the compiler or linker complains about not being able to find
something, you might need to edit the CFLAGS and LDFLAGS variables
in the Makefile, or append EXTRA_CFLAGS and/or EXTRA_LDFLAGS
to the make command line, for example:

  % make EXTRA_CFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include/freetype2

There is no "make install" so just copy the binary to somewhere 
in your PATH, or run it from the current directory.



*** Running ***

There are three types of command line arguments, all of which
are optional and can be given in any order:

1) The name of the network interface to watch, for example
   "eth0" or "ppp0". Note that the interface doesn't necessarily
   need to exist when the program is started, which may be the case
   for e.g. a ppp connection. If you don't specify an interface, the
   program will try to guess which one of your existing interfaces
   is the most interesting.

2) A number specifying the font size. Some values will work, and 
   some will not. One of 8,10,12,14,18,24 is probably a good choice.
   This only works if you have the default font installed. (See the
   note below about specifying a custom font.)

3) A series of one or more letters, prefixed with a dash (-).
   Acceptable letters are t,k,b,i,e,a,r,s,c,p,l,h.
   Their meanings are:

      t: place bar at top of screen
      k: exclude clocK
      b: exclude Bandwidth
      i: exclude local IP address
      e: exclude remote Endpoint address
      a: exclude bAttery charge level
      r: exclude Ram usage
      s: exclude Swap usage
      c: exclude Cpu usage
      p: exclude top Process info
      l: list available interfaces and exit
      h: show the help screen and exit.


There are also three mouse actions:
  Left-click to collapse/expand the bar.
  Middle click to toggle top/bottom placement.
  Right-click to terminate the program.


A custom font can be specified using the environment variable "SAYS_FONTSPEC".

If the program was compiled with FreeType support, you can specify the font
using the standard fontconfig names (see "man fc-list"). If you didn't compile
with FreeType, the font should be specified in X11 format, as shown by the
"xlsfonts" or "xfontsel" applications, for example.

Because the program uses a very primitive method for text layout, proportional 
fonts might cause problems, using a monospaced font should give better results.

The foreground and background colors can also be set with the "SAYS_FGCOLOR"
and "SAYS_BGCOLOR" environment variables, using standard color names like "red"
or "darkgrey"; or using "#RRGGBB" hexadecimal notation.



*** Reading ***

The information shown consists of:

The current wall clock time.

The current download and upload speed, in bytes per second.
When the bytes per second falls below 100, the elapsed idle
time is shown instead. If the bytes per second is over 1000,
the display changes color. Green means that the activity is
mostly downloading, red means it is mostly uploading.

The next two fields show the local IP address of the
current connection and its remote endpoint. If either of
these can't be determined, both fields will be blank.

After that, the percent of battery charge is displayed, followed by
the amount of used/total RAM and SWAP space (in megabytes) along
with the current CPU usage, as a percent.

The ram, swap and cpu usage fields are also colorized,
according to the following table:

 0% .. 10% :  dark-blue
11% .. 20% :  blue
21% .. 30% :  blue-green
31% .. 40% :  green
41% .. 50% :  yellow-green
51% .. 60% :  yellow
61% .. 70% :  yellow-orange
71% .. 80% :  orange
81% .. 90% :  red-orange
91% ..100% :  red

Coloring for the bat field is similar, but the values are inverted,
that is, red means "low" and dark-blue means "full", etc.
A plus sign after the bat value indicates the battery is charging, 
a minus sign means it is discharging.

If the CPU usage exceeds 25% for more than a couple of
seconds, the program using the most CPU time is also
displayed, showing its PID, program name, and the percent
of CPU it is using.



*** Window manager issues ***

The program tries to set itself up to run in a "panel" or "strut" style window,
most standards-compliant window managers should recognize and respect the 
"hints" given by the program. Openbox and Pekwm both handle things nicely, 
but xfce/xfwm4 doesn't behave correctly, particularly with regard to maximizing
windows. Fluxbox and IceWM will work, but you might get better results if "says"
is positioned at the top of the screen. The tiny window manager "twm" doesn't 
seem to understand the notion of a "panel" at all.

Joe's window manager "jwm" works well if you tell it to "swallow" the program 
into a tray by putting something like this in your ~/.jwmrc file:

  <Tray x="0" y="-1" height="18" border="1" >
    <Swallow name="says">says -t</Swallow>
  </Tray>

When using this trick, note that you need to start "says" with the -t option
even if you position the JWM tray on the bottom of the screen.