Added support for 'length' attribute for plugins.

[taylorzane]

This feature allows one to truncate the line length of any line (title or menu bar item) to a specified length, per line.

I have also implemented a default line length of 20 characters, to prevent scripts from outputting an unnecessarily long title, or menu bar item, such as in #124.

One may override the default line length by using the length attribute.

Example:

'This is a very long string of text that needs to be longer than 20 characters | length=100'
||
'This is a very long string that can be any length so we will disable the truncation | length=-1'

I will also have to submit a PR for the plugins repo to list this attribute.

[johngibb]

Why not just truncate in your shell script?

$ echo "this is a long string" | cut -c1-10
this is a 

#124

[jcaille]

That's nice !

Should we provide a way to see the full text though ? Maybe by hovering over the menu item ?
What happens if we pass length=0 ? Could that make is so that the text is not truncated ?

[0wnrepo]

you could define these values somewhere, so they are not hardcoded

[taylorzane]

@jcaille I figure some people may have a need for a zero-length string, so making length=0 would prevent users from doing that.

We definitely need a way to view the full length though. I think that hovering is our safest bet. Scrolling would be tough because our script should ideally be stateless,

@0wnrepo You're probably right. Especially if BitBar ever gets a config file, and this ends up as one of the config variables.

[taylorzane]

@jcaille So having a tooltip provide the full string doesn't look terrible. I was also thinking that we could do what most native menu's do, and provide more detail (i.e. the full string) when you press and hold the option key.

This is a 100 character tooltip truncated to the default 20 characters:

This is a 300 character tooltip truncated to the default 20 characters:

[matryer]

When it's truncated, we should add …, don't you think?

[taylorzane]

Heh, probably. Otherwise people may not realize why their output is missing.

[taylorzane]

So the option key modifier works well, as long as your string isn't ridiculously long...It seems like anything over ~200 characters gets automatically truncated. So we may be better off with the tooltip, obviously it's up to the community to decide.

No option modifier:

With option modifier:

(Also, I implemented the ellipsis per request.)

[matryer]

I think the tooltip is a good idea - maybe we can push the default limit up a bit?

We should keep the option alternative as something people can provide for themselves later. That'd be cool.

Like:

Hello | alt="world"

[taylorzane]

I agree. I've found, even with some simple scripts, that 20 characters is a bit too small. Are you referring to passing an option param after the string? Or were you just referring to people who want that, can implement it themselves?

[matryer]

(see my edit)

[matryer]

Yes. But that interface might not work - because it's essentially a different option completely. Needs some thought.

[jcaille]

I think the length keyword is a good idea, but I would personally remove the default for the following reasons

• It does not encourage plugin writer to be succinct.
• The cut might be weirdly placed, or cut off important information.
• It might be seen as a bug by new developers who might wonder why their text is being truncated (and maintaining option is not easily discoverable)
• It might break existing plugins
• Bitbar can display errors inline (allowing to easily see what went wrong). Truncating those errors make it less obvious.
• There is no easy way to disable the truncation.

Just keeping the length parameter available would allow plugins that might output very long text to toggle the option.

[matryer]

@jcaille makes some good points.

[taylorzane]

Fair enough. I didn't consider the issue with errors. But being considered a bug by anyone is definitely not ideal. That's good enough of an argument for me. I'll kill the default, and implement the tooltips.

[taylorzane]

I pushed a new commit. It includes the following:

• Default limit is gone. You must specify length=some_positive_integer for any truncation to occur.
  • length=0 will simply leave an ellipsis with a tooltip of the full message.
• An ellipsis will be appended to any truncated string.
• A tooltip will be added to any truncated menu item, that will display the full string.

I tested this param with multiple different cases:

• With params color, size, font (all possible combinations)
• With param bash
• With param dropdown=false

All mentioned tests worked flawlessly.

[matryer]

Excellent - I wonder if you could update the README too? Here: https://github.com/matryer/bitbar#plugin-api

Something like:

length=.. ensures the content will never grow beyond length+1 characters (full content is available in tooltip)

[taylorzane]

Absolutely. I didn't realize that the API section was moved here.

[matryer]

Nice work :)

[matryer]

... while you're in there, could you stick this link on the shebang word? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebang_(Unix)

[taylorzane]

Haha certainly

[taylorzane]

Alright, README has been updated with the shebang link and the necessary length documentation.

[matryer]

Excellent. Nice work. Thanks to everyone for their input.

[alex-ruehe]

Is there a way to pad a string using the length parameter?

The output from the ping plugin has different widths, depending on the ping time - I would love to have a fixed width - say 10 characters so that the output doesn't "jump" when it's getting longer/shorter. Or is there a way to do it with bash? I tried using printf (printf "%10s" "$MSG") but this didn't work. It works in the terminal but somehow the leading spaces are removed.

[mm2270]

Hi. Not sure if this is the appropriate place to ask this, but since I know this is part of the feature above, is there any way to add tooltips manually to each line of script output for a plug-in? For example, if my lines are not long enough to end up being truncated, can I add a manual tooltip with custom text to the line? Something that when hovered over will pop up explaining what the line is referencing? I could definitely make use of such a feature, and I think it might be useful since it would prevent the need to include a verbose string on a menu line, i.e., the less relevant info can go under a tooltip to make the menu appear tidier.
Thoughts? Should I open a new issue/request for this instead?

[iosdeveloper]

@mm2270 Please open a new issue.

[mm2270]

Will do. Thanks.