Baghira Help

The Style

The Deco

B-A-B

Predefining

OS Klone

The Style

General Design

Default Style: Baghira allows you to run Aqua and Brush Metal designed windows side by side.
Select which one you'd prefer as the default design
Stipple Background: Check to enable the "Scanline" Look of OS X,
uncheck if you prefer a plain design
(This has no effect on the brushed Metal Design)
Stipple Contrast: Adjust the intensity of the Stipples compared to the background
(TFTs often need a higher contrast)
Shadow Groupboxes: Check to give the Groupboxes a sunken look
Notice that recursive groupboxes (GB in a GB) are not reshadowed.
Shadow Intensity: Adjust the darkness of the Groupbox shadow
(TFTs often need a higher contrast)
Use Bevel as Highlight Color: OSX has a nice bevel if you select some items (in listviews)... this does not really work on qt, but somehow. Just give it a try and if you choose to do not like it, deactivate it.
Button Color: Use the rgb Sliders to select a color for buttons and similar widgets
(uses the "Aquarius" coloring)
Widget Coloring: You can choose between the new Aquarius coloring function and the old style coloring (from mosfet's liquid)
If you want an Aqua like look, choose the Aquarius function
Inactive Widget Color: Choosing the Background color for the unhovered widgets should be fine.
However, if your background color doesn't match the coloring function you can select something different.
Use Rectangular Buttons: Check, if you prefer the iTunes like above the Auqa buttons.
(Applies on pushbuttons, "ok", "cancel", etc.)
Center align Tabs: Usually tabs appears on the left side of a tab section (sometimes right)
Check this to force them to be center aligned (also see BAB section)

Special Widgets

Listviews

Use flatter listview header: Check, if you want listview Header look like the center part of iTunes buttons.
Draw Tree lines: Window$ draws lines to combine the entries of a treeview - OS X does not.
If you want to draw thos lines, you may choose between solid lines (CDE like) or dotlines (Window$ like)
You may also select their color, fitting your text/background color settings.
Expanders look like: Window$ uses +/- to indicate the state of treeview entries (closed/open), OS X and CDE use directed triangles.
Select whatever you like.
Use custom Expander color: Usually the Expander is drawn in text color.
Using a more subtile color is a good idea anyway.

Kicker

Stipple on Aqua mode: You can select the scanlines for kicker independendly
Remove bevel: Good idea, if you want to use translucent Kicker or "misuse" Kicker as topscreen bar.
Use round taskbuttons: Give the taskbuttons round edges - similar to the comboboxes.
Avoid this, when using a translucent Kicker - looks crap.
Use Custom Color: Usually kicker wants to use the button color as background color - you can change this here

Scrollbars

Animate hovered sliders: Check this to indicate hovered sliders with a nice animation (rising bubbles)
Shadow Slider/Squeeze pressed slider: Old functions to indicate slider state. Not really necessary since the Animation, but you may still use them if you wish.

Progressbars

Style: You want the Apple style.
The Liquid style is an animated version of the old liquid candybar and let's rather not talk about the Baghira style... ;)
Show Value: If you want to see the so called progress percentage (what is imho just for user psycho), check this.
Leave it, if you don't think, showing some percentage makes any sense...

Toolbars

Use round Buttons: Check if you prefer the Aqua like round buttons over the iTunes like (for toolbars)
See the BAB section as well.
Show unhovered Buttons: Check, if you want to see (conjuncted) Toolbuttons, that are not hovered by the mouse.
See the BAB section as well.

Menus

Translucency

Choose your preferred mode. Solid is fastest, Gradient is slowest.
Opacity settings only hold for custom and gradient setting.

Look

Choose if you like stipples on the menu as well (does not hold for gradient).
Text Shadows shadows text if Text Shadows is shad... selected.
Usually qt uses the button color for popup menus - we don't like it and therefore you can either select button, background or custom color settings here.

Effects

The QT/KDE effects do not really work with the baghira translucency engine.
DO NOT ACTIVATE THEM - NONE!
You may choose between fading in popups and several scrolling (or no effect).
The default speed (20, means 200ms) should be ok, however you can have faster or slower effects.

Shadows

The KDE shadows do not really work with the baghira translucency engine (or the kde one ;).
DO NOT ACTIVATE THEM!
You may select an individual shodow width (wider means slower).
Shadows apply to left and right side (and bottom).
You can also adjust their darkness to your screen gamma.

Custom Colors

You can select individual colors for some Widgets here.
You can also tint the brushed metal.
You do not need to check "USe Custom Colors" to tint the brush (but you need to check "Tint Brushed Metal")

The Deco

Configure Button Colors

Button Colors are excluded into an extra dialog to save space.
Click the Button you want to adjust and then change the Color using the rgb sliders.
No settings are saved, until you give your ok in the parent dialog.
Loading Button Color defaults will not load the other Windeco defaults.

Title Alignment

Should be pretty clear...

Common Settings

Minimum Title Height

Basically the Titlebar height

Follow style

Check this, to make baghira detecting if an application starts in Brushed Metal Design and align the Deco design.

Draw Comic Frame

If you don't have shadows under your windows, this can be usefull to distinct windows from each other.
If you want this, and shape the lower edges of your Windows, i strongly recommend to use the Big Bottom bar as well.

Use Big Bottom Bar

A 6px thick bar at the bottom of the windows, to guarantee that a comic frame can be drawn and shaped lower edges do not clutter the window content.
Strongly recommended if using the Comic Frame and shaping lower window edges.

Allow Easy Closing

When checked, maximized windows in the foreground can be closed by clicking the top left or right corner of your screen (according to the position of the close button).
There must not be any element on the outer side of the closebutton (including separators).
the whole thing is pretty useless if you have a top kicker bar and windows therefore do not maximize to the upper corners.

Default Mode

Baghira allows to define three individual Windeco looks and switch them on runtime by pressing the ctrl button and leftclicking the titlebar.
Here you can set which Design should be used by default.
(Overwritten by the style, if "Follow Style is checked")

Individual Settings

As mentioned above, Baghira allow to use three different Windeco looks at the same time and switch between them on runtime by pressing ctrl and leftclicking the titlebar.
Though named Jaguar, Panther and Brushed, they can look like whatever you want.
Notice that the "Brushed" design is used by the "Follow Style" option.

Draw Icon

Check to display the application Icon next to the Window title.

Button Style

Select either the onsticked "Jaguar", the sunken "Panther", the pre-OS X like "Nostalgia" or the milky "Milk" (after the famous Skin by Max Rudberg) button type.

Active Titlebar Effect

You may choose between the Panther like vertical "Gradient", the Jaguar like "Stippled" look, pre OS X "Nostalgia", "Glossy" (like cobos, buttons, tabs, etc.) and "Brushed" Metal.
Combine them with the buttons as you like.

Colors

Left colors influence the 3D effect (bright and dark border lines) that allways exist on the top and around the whole window if you're using the brushed metal design, right colors the titleshadow and the comic frame.

Gradient:
Left to right colors define the top to down gradient look.
The human brain will usually interpret light to dark gradients as concave and dark to light gradients as convex.
(Apple uses concave ones)
Stipples:
Right color defines the color of the scanlines on a left colored ground.
Nostalgia:
Leftcolor defines the base, right color the structure (partial lines)
Glossy:
Uses only the left color, right color settings are ignored (besides general stuff above)
Brushed:
The brushed color allways follows the brush tint from the style.
The color settings here have no infuence (but again on the general stuff, so it might be necessary to adjust them)

Inactive Titlebar Effect

Same as above, but holds for windows that do not have the focus.

3D Intensity

Controls how much the 3D effect creating lines differ from the left color.

Titleshadow intensity

Controls the visability of the line below the titlebar.
Set to zero to remove it (e.g. for Brushed Metal)

Round Corners

Simply check the corners you wish to be rounded.

B-A-B

BAB is a small Application that provides instant and simplyfied access to your configuration.
It's also rounds the top corners of your screen.
Start it by calling
me@box:~$ bab
from a shell (konsole, xterm, whatever...) or the kde executor (rightclick the desktop and say "Execute" or call it from the kicker menu)
Once you started bab and do not explicitly close it, it will restart with kde, so you won't have to start it again.

Systray

After starting BAB, a small paw will appear in you systray. (The kicker area, apps place icons in.)
It's color indicates the current state of baghira.
Blue means, you're in Aqua mode, black means Brushed Metal.
You can easily switch between the modes by leftclicking the paw.

Right click the paw to get a small config dialog for bab.

Default Style: You know this option from the style config dialog.
Though it appears there as well, it's a plain BAB option.
BAB will reset the settings to this Design when it's closed, i.e. if bab is closed with kde it guarantees, that KDE starts up in this mode next time.
Aqua/Brushed Tabs are: With OS X.3, codename "Panther" Apple introduced a new Widget, the "Chooser" that is basically a Tab, but looks like a button.
QT does not provide such a Widget, but we can make Tabs look like it.
You can choose separately for Aqua and Brushed Metal designed Applications, if you wish the Tabs to appear as "Tab"s, as "Chooser"s or let baghira decide what to use by selecting "Clever".
In the latter case, Tabs on Dialog will appear as Choosers and as Tabs elsewise.
Notice that the technical property of the Application is important, not it's appereance.
Therefore e.g. knetscan (looks like a dialog, but isn't) will show tabs if you select "Clever".
Toolbuttons follow Design: If you check this, Aqua designed apps will have round, Brushed Metal designed apps iTunes like toolbuttons.
The Setting from the style config is overwritten.
Pushbuttons follow Design: Same as above but holds for the Pushbuttons (Ok, cancel, etc.),
overwrites the "Use Rectangular Buttons" setting from the style config.
Show unhovered Toolbuttons for: Finetunes and overwrites the corresponding setting from the style config.
You can choose the show (conjuncted) unhovered Toolbuttons either for the Brushed Metal, the Aqua, both or no Design.

DCOP

DCOP is the KDE inter-application (inter-process, to be more precise) protocol.
It allows applications to talk to each other.
If you're developing an application and want to force it to to Brushed or Aqua look, you can use it, though this is imho not a very nice style (the decision should allways be up to the user)
The default way for end-users to acces the DCOP interface of an application is to use the dcop shell client.

Open a shell (konsole, xterm, whatever... ;), make sure BAB is running (paw in the systray?) and type
me@box:~$ dcop bab babInterface

As response you'll get something like this:


    QCStringList interfaces()

    QCStringList functions()

    void toggleState()

    int state()

    void setState(int state)

    int decoState()

    void setDecoState(int state)
    void start(QString name, int state, int decoState)
    void start(QString name, int decoState)

Forget about the first two functions, dcop internal stuff.

Let's try toggleState(). Type
me@box:~$ dcop bab babInterface toggleState
You will notice the paw chaged it color, indicating you just switched the mode.

Good, type
me@box:~$ dcop bab babInterface toggleState
again to switch back.

state() will return the currently used design as integer value, where
0 means Aqua
1 means Brushed Metal

setState() allows you to set the current state to a specific value, regardless what the current state is, e.g. type
me@box:~$ dcop bab babInterface setState 1
to move into Brushed Metal mode

decoState and setDecoState behave similar to this, but affect the settings of the deco state.
The used values are 0|1|2 referring the Jaguar|Panther|Brushed designs, you defined in the windeco config dialog.
Notice that even those settings are overwritten if you checked "Follow style" in the deco config

start() is for starting applications (surprise)
It takes two or three parameters

The first one is allways the command you want to execute.
If you want to submit commandline options, you'll need to quote them together with the command, so konqueror --profile webbrowsing becomes "konqueror --profile webbrowsing"
Unfortunately the starter does yet not parse escape characters, what makes it impossible to pass quotes or blanks as part of the command or one of its options, so kde application can not be executed.
I'll implement an escape character parser if there should really be demand on it.

The second argument (integer) addresses either the style or the deco settings, reason:
The function waits for the style to please read its settings before resetting the settings... :)
But... non KDE applications (basically anything that doesn't get styled by baghira) just do not read the style settings, so they won't be resetted.
Therefore do not use the three argment start function for non baghira style applications - use the two argument function instead.

The third argument (if) addresses the deco settings
The integer values are as described above.

After all that, basically
me@box:~$ dcop bab babInterface start "konqueror --profile webbrowsing --caption Safari" 1 2
will give you, what your looking for.
If you e.g. want The Gimp to appear with the jaguar deco
me@box:~$ dcop bab babInterface start gimp 0
will do that :P

Predefining an applications design

Since 0.6a, it's possible to define an individual look for any application. This Definition will be used regardless what the current active design is and can only be overwritten by the BAB starter. In particular:
BAB state < Predefinition < BAB starter

Notice: The deco settings require KDE 3.4b1 and up, KDE 3.3 won't respect the deco settings (and even don't "follow" the brushed metal look - sorry, but that was too much a hack, so it was removed in favour of a really exact working process in KDE 3.4)

Due to the way X stores the apps name, non QT applications cannot be handled case sensitive, so if you've got an (non QT) application "Foo" and want it to have the Jaguar deco and another (non QT) app "foo" and what it to have the Panther deco - it's just not possible (but this is imho a very minor restriction)

What is good about predefining?

Now, you can use the BAB starter and call scripts to show an app like whatever you want - why should you use predefinitions?
Well, first you don't have to create scripts - so you can have juk appear in b/m look without creating a script, adding a new startmenu entry a.s.o.
Second, it's much easier to use, as the config dialog provides an intuitive graphical interface.
Third, due to the new (0.6b) way how the kickerapplet handles the apps name, this is the best way to have consistent window titles.

Predefinitions are crap, as i want an Aqua Konqueror, but a Brushed "Safari"!

... and you can easily have them - even not running bab!
1. make a symlink to konqueror, named "Safari":

ln -s /usr/local/bin/konqueror /usr/local/bin/Safari
assuming, you have kde binaries in /usr/local/bin

next, create a script (Ahhh - you said "no scripts"!!! ;)
... to change the caption (otherwise the kickerapplet will display "Safari", while the windeco says "Konqueror")

#!/bin/sh Safari --profile webbrowsing --caption Safari

and store it (executable) as /usr/local/bin/safari

for conveniance, the callable exe is now "safari" (you save a "shift") while the real binary executable is Safari

Last, make a new rule, use "Safari" (case sensitive!) as command and set style and deco to b/m (or leave the deco unset - baghira is clever enough to set the deco itself)

OS Klone

Kicker Menu Applet

Baghira includes a patched version of the original Kicker Menu Applet.
The only difference is, that it dasplay the title of the currently active window in front of the menu.
Notice, that i have to strip this somehow out of the Window Title, what may sometimes fail, if the Application does not follow some basic Windowmanager conventions or has a complex name (i.e. consisting of two or more words...)
If you get an invalid application name, please mail me the exact window title as displayd on top of the window and the shown name
To activate it rightclick a kicker panel, say "Add" and then "Applet".
Choose "Baghira Menu".
Next, make sure qt displays the menubars outside the aplication (usually at top of the screen).
Open the KDE Control Center (kcontrol), choose "Desktop" and "Behaviour" in the "Topscreen Menubar" section, select the "like Mac OS" option.
You're done ;)

Update (KDE 3.4)

Since KDE 3.4, kicker uses a special menupanel, which is autoadded if you use top menus and loads it's menuapplet

If you want the baghira kicker applet (with the apps name) you must remove the kicker menuapplet and add the baghira one.

Unfortunately, you'll have to do that on every KDE restart.
Solution:
Edit the menuapplets desktop file.

It resists in $KDEDIR/share/apps/kicker/applets/menuapplet.desktop

Search for the line
X-KDE-Library=menu_panelapplet
and simply replace it by
X-KDE-Library=b_menu_panelapplet

Style suggestions

Use Aqua as default mode
Stipple Background (for kicker as well)
Use the Aquarius Coloring function
Try 75/125/241 or 84/140/242 as Color
Set inactive colro to background
Do not use rectangular buttons
Center align tabs
Do not use the flatter ListviewHeader
Do not draw treelines
Choose the apple expanders
Use an expander color lighter than your text color (e.g.black -> 180/180/180)
Remove the kicker bevel
Do not use round taskbuttons
Use a custom kicker color, equal to your background color
Animate sliders
Don't use other slider effects
Use Apple Progressbars, don't show the progress value
Use bab to use round buttons for Aqua and iTunes Buttons for B/M design
Use bab to display unvovered buttons for brushed mode, but not for aqua mode
Use fade in effect and 8px sized shadows for popup menus

Deco suggestions

Use the (new) default values for button colors
Center align titles
Set titleheight to 21
Use Panther as default mode
Define the three designs according to their name
Set button positions to close/min/max -- menu (Buttons tab in the windeco config)

Using shell scripts

You can use shell scripts and the dcop shell client to automate style settings for baghira.
With 0.5e the whole thing became much easier for you - and more working ;) Open kwrite and start typing:

#!/bin/sh
#shell scripts do allways begin with this line
#first check if bab is running
if dcop bab; then
dcop bab babInterface start "juk --caption iTunes" 1 2
#bab not running
else
#start juk
juk --caption iTunes
#end if
fi

Baghira comes with this and more sample scripts.
Make them execuatble
me@box:~$ chmod 754 <scriptname>
and place it into a binary path.

KDE Stuff

Try a docker, e.g. kxdocker or kooldock
Get the kwin shadow patch (only up to kde 3.2.2) or try the new xserver from freedesktop.org
To activate the top menu, start kcontrol, say desktop and behaviour and select the appropriate menu option
Then start the menu applet from kicker to embed the menus into kicker

Icons

Original OS X icons are property of Apple Computers Inc. - any version you find around the web violates copyrights.
Anyway, the OSX-e guys seem to do not care.
Furthermore you can find a lot of nice OS X icons at XIcons or at Iconfactory.
You'll need unstuff and icns2png or icoconvert to handle them. (Try google :) You may also want to try the RADE ports on KDE-Look.