FAQ

From AWN Wiki

Please note that all of the following is intended to work for versions 0.2 and above.

[edit] How do I start AWN?

Find it in the Gnome/Xfce menus under "Accessories" (or the KDE menu under "Utilities") as "Avant Window Navigator", or run the following at the command prompt:

avant-window-navigator &

[edit] How do I access the preferences for AWN?

Right-click either end of the bar and choose "Preferences", check the "Settings" or "Preferences" menu in your desktop's application menu for "Awn manager", or run the following at the command prompt:

awn-manager &

[edit] I installed AWN, but I can't run awn-manager.

AWN must be run at least once before you may run awn-manager.

[edit] How do I close AWN?

Right click on either end of the bar and choose "Close" or run the following at the command prompt:

killall avant-window-navigator

[edit] How do I add launchers to the bar?

There are two methods to add launchers:

• Just drag and drop! If you use this method, you can't just delete the launcher file that you just dragged onto AWN, as AWN uses that file to retrieve the launcher data (such as which program to launch). It's safest to drag from the Applications menu into AWN.
• Select "Add" in the "Launchers" section of AWN Manager. Due to limitations in Awn, you will have to restart the dock. For power users, these user-created launchers are stored in the folder ~/.config/awn/launchers. Regular users can just use the "edit" button.

[edit] How do I change the order of my launchers?

Open AWN-Manager. From there, select "Launchers" on the left hand pane. You can drag and drop the launchers to change their position on the dock.

[edit] How do you add a place or location (home folder or a drive for example) to the dock?

If you want to add your home folder, create a new launcher on the dock using the command "nautilus" (without the quotes).

If you want to add a different location, use the command:

nautilus /path/to/your/location

[edit] How can I launch more than one instance of an application that I have a launcher for?

Middle-click the launcher. "Middle-click" is also known as "button 3". Note that creating an additional instance will create a new task in the task manager section of the dock because grouped tasks have not yet been implemented, and the icon used will be taken from the application, not the launcher.

[edit] How can I make AWN run when my desktop starts up?

#!/bin/bash
sleep 10 && avant-window-navigator

Gnome: Go to System > Preferences > Sessions and add a new entry for the command avant-window-navigator, as seen in the example screenshot:

Xfce 4.4 and above: Go to Xfce Menu > Settings > Autostarted Applications and add a new entry for the command avant-window-navigator, as seen in the example screenshot:

KDE: Open Konsole and issue the following commands:

cd ~/.kde/Autostart
ln -s `which avant-window-navigator`

[edit] How do I make AWN look more like the LG3D or Leopard Dock?

Open AWN-Manager. Click on the "Bar Appearance" tab from the "General Preferences" section, and then select "3d Look" from the "Look" drop down menu.

You are, of course, free to play around to create your own custom look by changing the settings for bar angle, height, and icon offset.

[edit] Where do I get more applets?

AWN ships with only the Launcher/Taskmanager applet. Many other applets, such as the Main Menu, "Stacks", CPU meter, and GMail notifier applets can be found in Awn Extras. Once you have installed some applets, you can add them to the dock via awn-manager, in the "Applets" section.

[edit] Why does my bar have one or more thin, vertical, white lines that extend beyond the dock?

Most likely, there is a problem with one or more of your applets. Here are some common problems:

• In General: You might be missing one or more dependencies required to run your applet. This is especially true of Python-based applets, which almost always have runtime dependencies (as opposed to build/compile-time). Awn Extras has an entire page devoted to the dependencies needed for its applets.
• Notification area applet: Because the system tray specification limits the number of system trays on a user's desktop to one, you need to remove all system trays/notification areas from your existing panels before you can use AWN's.

The recommended way to figure out what's wrong with your applet(s) is to run AWN via the command prompt, determine which applet(s) is/are causing the errors by analyzing the error output, and reporting bugs via Launchpad or the forum, depending on whether you got the applet from Awn Extras or separately from the forums, respectively.

[edit] Why is the notification area applet so ugly?

Unfortunately, the freedesktop.org system tray specification (which the applet uses to communicate with the applications that support tray icons) was written before compositing became popular, and has not been updated since. The lead developer is planning to rewrite the notification area applet so that it fits in Awn better (visually speaking), but until then, several members of the Awn community suggest and use stalonetray. The following is how one of our developers runs stalonetray on the command line:

stalonetray -geometry 104x48-4-4 --skip-taskbar --sticky -t --skip-taskbar --window-type dock \
            --grow-gravity W --icon-gravity SE --ignore-icon-resize TRUE \
            --respect-icon-hints false --max-height 48 --icon-size 24 -i 24

The equivalent settings for your ~/.stalonetrayrc file are as follows:

geometry 104x48-4-4
skip_taskbar 1
sticky 1
transparent 1
skip_taskbar 1
window_type dock
grow_gravity W
icon_gravity SE
ignore_icon_resize TRUE
respect_icon_hints false
max_height 48
icon_size 24

[edit] How do I reset AWN's preferences?

Resetting Awn's preferences can be useful when you wish to return to the dock's default appearance.

In order to reset all of AWN's preferences to their defaults, close Awn and run the following at the command prompt:

gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/avant-window-navigator

[edit] How do I reposition AWN?

By default AWN sits centered on the bottom edge of the screen. The option to reposition it does not currently exist, but it is a planned feature.

However, if you're feeling adventurous, you can try to change with gconf-editor (or gconftool) the key "/apps/avant-window-navigator/bar/bar_pos". It's a float with values between 0.0 and 1.0, which translates roughly into the percentage of the screen at which the bar will center (horizontally, bottom-aligned). Default is 0.5, which means centered. Setting 0.0 will align it left, and likewise a value of 1.0 will glue it to the right side of the screen. (Note: vertical position is always fixed.)

[edit] Why do some launchers make new tasks appear and some reuse the launcher?

This is because AWN matches precesses to tasks by looking at the task name. Example: You have a launcher named "Terminal" in my dock. This launcher launches a program whose title (the text at the top of the window is "~ - Terminal"; AWN uses launcher as task icon. If you rename "Terminal" launcher to "Command Line", AWN does not use launcher as task icon, because "Command Line" is not part of the program's title. If you configure the terminal to have the title "~ - Command Line" (from its preferences), AWN uses launcher as task icon. If you rename you Bash Command Line launcher to "Terminal" or "Konsole" or whatever it has in the title, it will not launch a new instance. If you want the opposite behaviour, make sure the launcher name is not part of the window's title. Lastly, you can middle click to launch a new instance of a used launcher.

-- (Semi-)Quoted from: https://answers.launchpad.net/awn/+question/11017

[edit] Why doesn't AWN use the icons from my icon theme?

This is because that would be very difficult to do technically. AWN automatically uses the icons that the program itself provides. It'd be much easier changing the .xpm in /usr/share/pixmaps if you want a different icon. Make sure you make a backup of that folder if you decide to do so, and that would have to be done as root.

[edit] AWN grabs the focus on a large piece of the screen in Openbox. How do I fix this?

AWN and Openbox interact strangely: Openbox seems to think that AWN has the focus over a very large area of the screen outside of the actual dock. The simple solution to this is to tell Openbox to place the AWN dock on the "always below" layer. This allows windows placed in the AWN area to grab the focus, while dock icons are still clickable if pointed to directly.

To enact this policy, add the following to .config/openbox/rc.xml, under the <applications> section:

<application name="avant-window-navigator">
 <layer>below</layer>
</application>

Reconfigure Openbox, and restart AWN for the changes in layering to take effect.

A similar solution may apply to other *box variants, but this has not been tested. Updates to this FAQ by people running those managers are welcome.

[edit] Why doesn't Awn have the parabolic zoom effect that other docks have?

Awn has a dock architecture that is different from most of the others, in that each applet runs in a separate process. They each have their own "window", and are shown on the dock via Gtk+'s GtkPlug mechanism. This approach was used so that applets would be easier to develop and so unstable applets would not crash the entire dock. The downside is that it is much more difficult to apply all of the graphical transformations necessary to perform the more advanced effects (such as parabolic zoom) on the applet windows, as opposed to a singular graphics surface (which other open source docks use). As always, patches to implement this effect are welcome on the bug tracker.

Another explanation can be found on the blog of one of the Awn developers: Why things are the way they are...

[edit] Why does Wine make Awn so slow on my Debian-based system?

Awn developers have received several reports with regards to Awn becoming noticeably slower when Wine is running on a Debian-based distribution and while using the Nvidia binary video drivers. Based on these reports, it has been confirmed that the combination of Wine 0.9.57 (or later) and version 169.12 of the Nvidia drivers (or later) fixes this performance issue.

[edit] How do I turn Awn into a launcher-only dock?

Currently, launcher-only support is not available with the "Launcher/Taskmanager" applet that is activated by default on Awn. However, one of the Awn developers has written an experimental applet called "Simple Launcher" to fill this gap. Please follow the instructions below to remove task management support from your dock. Unless otherwise noted, all steps are mandatory.

1. If you're running Ubuntu, make sure that you're using the Testing Package Archive. Otherwise, you need to be running Awn and Awn Extras 0.3.1 or greater with vala applets support.
2. Close Awn.
3. Open Awn Manager. Click on the "Applets" icon in the left pane.
4. Deactivate the "Launcher/Taskmanager" applet.
5. Make sure that there are no "Standalone Launcher" or "Standalone Taskmanager" applets in your dock. If there are:
   1. remove the Standalone Taskmanager applet (if it exists)
   2. make sure that the process named "taskmand" is not running (use the System Monitor ("Processes" tab) or the command line (via killall taskmand) to accomplish this)
   3. remove any Standalone Launcher applets.
6. For each launcher you want to add to the dock, activate a "Simple Launcher" applet
7. Start up Awn again.
8. For each Simple Launcher in your dock, follow the usage instructions on the Simple Launcher wiki page so that the launchers point to the proper applications.