DEV Community: Jezer Mejía

I've created another LightDM Greeter

Jezer Mejía — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 13:57:42 +0000

Through these past months, I’ve read a lot the LightDM documentation. Now I’m kind confident that I could create all the greeters I want in any time. That’s why I created another one!

Before, I said I updated web-greeter, read my post. This new greeter is practically the same, a LightDM greeter that allows to create wonderful themes with web technologies, like HTML, CSS and JavaScript! The difference is the language that’s based on: Node.js with Electron. I named it Nody Greeter

Why another web based greeter?

Why not? I mean, options are great! If you want to use a greeter with Python running behind it, that’s okay, but if you want a bit more performance, Nody Greeter is meant for that.

Node.js is fast, really fast, not as much as C/C++, but in contrast to Python, it’s a great improvement.

Check this video to see the difference.

Note this may vary. Sometimes web-greeter is faster, sometimes nody-greeter, but in general I could say nody-greeter is more responsive.

Is there any difference?

Practically, there are no differences, both web-greeter and nody-greeter do the same. Their API is the same, so every theme working in web-greeter should work without problems in nody-greeter.

Although, there are some differences:

Nody Greeter is faster than Web Greeter
As Web Greeter is interpreted, its python dependencies should be always present. Update Python and it breaks. Nody Greeter is built with Electron, so no dependencies.

LightDM Web Greeter 3.0.0 arrives

Jezer Mejía — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 17:27:46 +0000

LightDM is a light display manager for Linux, which have lots of different greeters/themes to choose. The previously known lightdm-webkit2-greeter, a greeter that allows themeing with web technologies like HTML and JavaScript, has been abandoned since 2017-2018, before transitioning to web-greeter 3.0.0.

So, I decided to fork it and continue the Antergos team work, and finally it is here, web-greeter 3.0.0, a greeter that uses PyQtWebEngine to show gorgeous themes created with simple or very complex web technologies.

Theming

See the Glorious theme by Manilarome~ It’s glorious.

Also, web-greeter 3.0.0 comes with two great themes, Gruvbox theme and Dracula theme

See the live demo

New features!

Gruvbox theme can show the battery and brightness status, two new optional, but great, features!
As this release uses PyQtWebEngine, which relies in Chrome 83, themes have support for ES2020.
Also, users can specify the cursor theme for web-greeter in the config file, inside /etc/lightdm/web-greeter.yml

Changes

There are lots of changes since the latest Antergos release. See the 3.0.0 release for further info.

Migrated from C to Python. Webkit2Gtk replaced with PyQtWebEngine
Name changed to web-greeter
Updated API usage for LightDM 1.26.0
lightdm-webkit2-greeter.conf renamed to web-greeter.yml
Themes are now installed inside /usr/share/web-greeter/themes

If you are using LightDM, I recommend you to use this greeter, try some themes and create your own!

LightDM Web Greeter updated!

Jezer Mejía — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 17:14:50 +0000

LightDM is a light display manager for Linux, which have lots of different greeters/themes to choose. One of these greeters is the previously known as lightdm webkit2 greeter, then named lightdm web greeter, a greeter that allows theming with web technologies like HTML and JavaScript.

Sadly, this greeter was abandoned as Antergos team didn’t have time to develop their distro. The latest version, 2.2.5 uses an outdated WebKit engine, which could cause some new web technologies to not work in the greeter. Also, the Debian package is not working, a shame.

Luckily, Antergos team were developing a 3.0.0 version, getting rid of WebKit and using the QtWebEngine, based on Chromium, with Python. So, I decided to update some things about this greeter based on this pre-release.

Whither

Whither is the “new” tool that 3.0.0 would be using, developed by Antergos, allows to create web applications in a similar way to Electron.js, but in Python.

Web Greeter

So, I’m here to introduce a new pre-release. You can install it from the GitHub Repository. Though, you need to install the whither sdk to run it.

Changes

Command line arguments support, such as —-help, —-theme, —-debug and others
Some fixes with the LightDM API, as power functions didn’t work
Man pages updated
Every local request is made through web-greeter:/ url scheme
WebKit no longer here. Replaced with Chromium
Some API changes. 2.2.5 deprecated functions and globals were removed

If you are using LightDM, I recommend you to use this greeter, try some themes and create your own!

Use the Glorious theme by Manilarome~ It’s glorious.

I made a Node.JS CLI that splits and shows a text on console, just that~

Jezer Mejía — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 00:55:49 +0000

When I was making a simple Node.JS console game, I thought I would need something that prints your text in the console without looking awkward when it surpass the console width, and without the need to use the mouse wheel to move up and down in the text.
I found Inquirer.js, an amazing package that allows pretty and useful command line applications. And, despite Inquirer doesn’t have the feature I wanted (though you could use the editor type; but looks weird to me), I got inspired by its Paginator util used in its list type prompts, so I decided to make something similar to it.
I made the Cl-Paginator package. It splits the text to fit in the terminal and then prints it, allowing the user to move around the text, a-waiting for the user interaction to continue the code.
Here’s an example:

import { Paginator } from “cl-paginator”

var pag = new Paginator()
await pag.print(“Hello world” /* or a bigger text */, /* and some options */)

// This won’t continue until the user presses the “return” key

console.log(“Finished!”)

Wanna try it?

See Cl-Paginator on npm, and Github

npm install cl-paginator

It's my first time writing a post here! Also my first time creating an NPM package~