                     Module Developer Reference
                     ==========================

CONTRIBUTIONS
=============

Contributions are always welcomed. The main communication happens in the #szs
channel at irc.freenode.org. There is also a mailinglist at szs-devel@wegi.net.
To subscribe send a mail to minimalist@wegi.net with the following Subject:
subscribe szs-devel



SOURCE
======

We use the darcs (http://www.darcs.net) Version Control System for the
developement of szs. The main repository is at http://darcs.wegi.net/szs
To get the source run 'darcs get http://darcs.wegi.net/szs'. To stay up-to-date
run 'darcs pull'.  

If you want to submit patches please run the following 2 commands in the szs
source directory: 

$ echo Yourname <youruser@server.com> > _darcs/prefs/author
$ echo szs-darcs@wegi.net > _darcs/prefs/email

Make yourself familiar with darcs, a good manual is at http://darcs.net/manual/
To send us the patch simple run 'darcs send', the patch will be automatically
forwarded to the szs-devel@wegi.net mailinglist. 



HOWTO MAKE A MODULE
===================

A szs module is a simple python script which has a main() function returning a
list. The first item must be a statustext or ''. All other items are bars. Bars
are those colored gauges at the right side of your statusbar. the following
syntax applies to bars:

<value>%<label> 

where <value> must be between 0 and 100 and <label> is optional.

szstoolbox.py provides some usefull tools, especially for reading the config
from szs.cfg. 

In szs.cfg you can configure your module, The following rules apply:

  -- the config key has to start with: <modulname>.
  -- if you need to separate values you must use ','
  -- if you need a sub separator use ':'
  -- if you need more separators you could use anything except ',', '%' and ':'
