		xbatt -- battery status display for X11

								1995/04/04
							      Tohihisa Eto
							   eto@forus.or.jp
						     eto@osl.fujitsu.co.jp

1. WHAT IS XBATT? 

  xbatt is an X11 client which displays a battery status of your
notebook computer equiped with APM (Advanced Power Management) BIOS.
The status displayed consists remaining battery life, an AC line
status, and a charging status.


2. SYSTEM REQUIREMENT

  xbatt is designed to acquire a battery status via APM driver
written by HOSOKAWA Tatsumi (hosokawa@mt.cs.keio.ac.jp).
FreeBSD-current (950323 or later) does include this driver (The
driver is also included in FreeBSD 2.0-RELEASE, but not fully
operational.  Patch to the FreeBSD 2.0 is offered as LP-1.0-pl01
on bash.cc.keio.ac.jp:/pub/system/LP).  Make sure the APM driver
is properly configured (kernel reconfiguration may required)
before running xbatt.  You can check the configuration by
executing 'apm' commands, e.g.:

	% apm
	APM version: 1.0
	AC Line status: off-line
	Battery status: high
	Remaining battery life: 50%

  Even with properly configured APM driver, on some hardwares such as
one equiped with older system BIOS or APM bios, 'apm' does not returns
'Remaining battery life'. If so, xbatt cannot work on your system.

For users of IBM ThinkPad230Cs YB5 or YB7: 
  If your ThinkPad doesn't display a remaining battery, BIOS update
kit (from IBM, found in FIBMFEEL forum of NIFTY-Serve, for example)
may help you.  BUT DO AT YOUR OWN RISK.


3. INSTALLATION

  To build xbatt, you need XPM library (libXpm), which is included in
X11R6 contrib.  If you don't want make from source, please install
`2.0-RELEASE/packages/xpm-3.4c.tgz'.

  To make the program, type:
	xmkmf
	make
  which will build xbatt program.  To install the program, type:
	make install


4. FEATURES

  xbatt checks a battery status once in every 30 seconds, and updates
its display if necessary.  To change the interval, you should modify
source files.

  Pressing `q' in the picture of a battery terminates xbatt.  Pressing
other keys forces xbatt to check the status immediately.

  If you uses fvwm, you can 'stick' xbatt to the screen's glass by
adding the following line to ~/.fvwmrc:

	Style "xbatt" NoTitle,Sticky,StaysOnTop


5. ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  The author would like to express his sincere appreciation to
HOSOKAWA Tatsumi, who wrote the APM driver. The author would like to
thank members of the bsd-nomads mailing list, including Noriyuki
Takahashi, for their helpful comments and cooperation to pre-release
testing.


6. QUESTIONS?  

  Comments, bug-reports, and patches are welcome.  Try sending a mail
at eto@forus.or.jp or eto@osl.fujitsu.co.jp .

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