Display Reminders In Gnome Panel

It was a long standing requirement of mine to create a reminder software or something which can keep me reminding of things as I always keep forgetting things. So I made a reminder that displays my reminders on the Gnome Panel.
It looks something like this:

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So how do we do it?

1st of all we need to display the program we need in the Add to Panel.

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For that we add to the bonobo server list. We do this by adding the following code in the folder /usr/lib/bonobo/servers/. Let us name the file as GNOME_PerlApplet.server
The content of this file should be :

<oaf_info>
<oaf_server iid=OAFIID:PerlSampleApplet_Factory type=exe location=/home/rsrijith/perl/panel-applet>
<oaf_attribute name=repo_ids type=stringv>
<item value=IDL:Bonobo/GenericFactory:1.0/>
<item value=IDL:Bonobo/Unknown:1.0/>
</oaf_attribute>
<oaf_attribute name=name type=string value=Panel Reminder/>
<oaf_attribute name=description type=string value=Perl Program working in Panel/>
</oaf_server>

<oaf_server iid=OAFIID:PerlSampleApplet type=factory location=OAFIID:PerlSampleApplet_Factory>
<oaf_attribute name=repo_ids type=stringv>
<item value=IDL:GNOME/Vertigo/PanelAppletShell:1.0/>
<item value=IDL:Bonobo/Control:1.0/>
<item value=IDL:Bonobo/Unknown:1.0/>
</oaf_attribute>
<oaf_attribute name=name type=string value=Panel Reminder/>
<oaf_attribute name=description type=string value=Perl Program working in Panel:R Srijith/>
<oaf_attribute name=panel:category type=string value=Amusements/>
<oaf_attribute name=panel:icon type=string value=bug-buddy.png/>
</oaf_server>
</oaf_info>

So this specifies the location of the perl file to run on adding this applet. So here it is /home/rsrijith/perl/panel-applet . This file should print the reminders to be printed on the panel.
The program need the Following packages:

Perl packages:

• ExtUtils::Depends

• ExtUtils::PkgConfig

• Gnome2::GConf

• Gnome2::PanelApplet

You install this using

Linux Package:

• libpanelappletmm-2.6-1c2
• libpanelappletmm-2.6-dev

You install this using

Thus the perl file content is :

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use warnings;
use utf8;
use Gnome2::PanelApplet;
Gnome2::Program->init ('A Stupid Applet Written in Perl', '0.01', 'libgnomeui',
sm_connect => FALSE);

Gnome2::PanelApplet::Factory->main ('OAFIID:PerlSampleApplet_Factory',
'Gnome2::PanelApplet',
\&fill);

sub fill {
my ($applet, $iid, $data) = @_;

if ($iid ne 'OAFIID:PerlSampleApplet') {
return FALSE;
}

my $menu_xml = <<EOX;
<popup name="button3">
<menuitem name="Properties Item"
verb="Birthdays"
_label="Birthdays"
pixtype="stock"
pixname="gtk-properties"/>
<menuitem name="DesktopSwitcher Item"
verb="DesktopSwitcher"
_label="Wallpaper Switcher"
pixtype="stock"
pixname="gtk-stock"/>
<menuitem name="Walldelete Item"
verb="Walldelete"
_label="Wallpaper Delete"
pixtype="stock"
pixname="gtk-stock"/>
<menuitem name="About Item"
verb="About"
_label="About"
pixtype="stock"
pixname="gnome-stock-about"/>
</popup>
EOX

my $cb_mapping = {
Birthdays => [\&amp;properties_callback, 'default!'],
DesktopSwitcher => \&amp;deskswitcher_callback,
Walldelete => \&amp;walldelete_callback,
About => \&amp;about_callback,
};

$applet->setup_menu($menu_xml, $cb_mapping, 'default?');
our $i=0;our @line;

our $label = Gtk2::Label->new;
$label->set_justify("left");
$label->set_line_wrap(TRUE);
$label->modify_font(Gtk2::Pango::FontDescription->from_string("Monospace 10"));
$label->modify_fg("normal", Gtk2::Gdk::Color->parse("Black"));
$applet->add ($label);
$applet->show_all;

Glib::Timeout->add (5000, \&amp;update_value);
#Glib::Timeout->add (500, \&amp;update_list);
sub update_list{
open FILE,"/home/rsrijith/panel_remind";
@line=<FILE>;
close FILE;
}
sub update_value
{

my @string=split(':',$line[0]);
$label->modify_fg("normal", Gtk2::Gdk::Color->parse($string[0]));
$label->set_markup("\n".$string[1]);
update_list();
}
}

sub deskswitcher_callback
{
system('/home/rsrijith/shell/deskback 2>>/home/rsrijith/logs/desktopbackground');
}

sub walldelete_callback
{
system('/home/rsrijith/shell/deletewall 2>>/home/rsrijith/logs/desktopbackground');
}

sub properties_callback {
my $b="";
open BDAY,"/home/rsrijith/shell/birthdays1";
while(<BDAY>)
{ $b.=$_."\n";
}
my $dialog = Gtk2::MessageDialog->new (undef, [],
'info', 'ok',
$b);
$dialog->run;
$dialog->destroy;
}

sub about_callback {
my $about = Gnome2::About->new ('Panel Reminder', '0.1',
'Perl Program working in Panel',
'© 2009 R.Srijith',
'R.Srijith <rsrijith007@gmail.com');
$about->show;
}

This program prints the contents of /home/rsrijith/panel_remind
An Example of the content of that file should be as

So that’s it!! And Happy Birthday Mahima.

• Reminder for Gnome Panel
• Backend For Panel Reminder
• Birthday Reminder For Gnome Panel

Comment me if you have any doubts or if it’s not working.

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