[xmonad] Using conky as the main status bar -- possible?

[Konstantin Sobolev]

Hi

> I haven't figured out how conky takes stdin. I can't find from the
> documents anything about outputting stdin stream, there are no
> variables[1] for that. I should have taken this to Conky's mailing
> lists first, but as I recall someone used conky with xmonad well. I
> couldn't find the post from archives, but maybe somebody pops up.

I'm using conky as a statusbar, you can see it here:
http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Image:ComboP.png
I found only one way to show messages there: using files. For example
here's my urgency handling code:

myPP = PP { ppCurrent           = const ""
          , ppVisible           = const ""
          , ppHidden            = map toUpper
          , ppHiddenNoWindows   = const ""
          , ppUrgent            = map toLower
          , ppSep               = ""
          , ppWsSep             = " "
          , ppTitle             = const ""
          , ppLayout            = const ""
          , ppOrder             = id
          , ppSort              = getSortByIndex
          , ppExtras            = []
          , ppOutput            = printUrgency
          }

printUrgency :: String -> IO ()
printUrgency s = do
    h <- openFile "/home/kos/.conky/urgent" WriteMode
    hPutStrLn h (filter isLower s)
    hClose h

(upper/lower case is a dumb way to filter out everything except
urgency messages)

and then in conkyrc:

${execi 5 cat /home/kos/.conky/urgent}

I made a more versatile system on my laptop, with a single globally
writable /tmp/message file. Anything written to it is shown for 5
seconds in my conky. Mostly used for messages like "laptop mode on",
"wifi off", "LCD brightness 60%" written by udev/ACPI scripts