OnTop OSD

An Electron based overlay for Linux desktops aimed to be modular and used in kiosk contexts.

Usage

OnTop OSD is designed to be used with your own HTML/CSS/Javascript stack, basic examples exploring currently implemented options can be found in examples/.

Config File

The config file is provided as JSON and exposes the following arguments:

• osd_html: Path to html for the OSD
• position: Where to position the window
  • x ,y:
    • relative: If true relative will reference the x and y co-ordinates from your screen width and height
      • offset: A real value to add to x or y, usefull when used in conjunction with relative
    • percent: An integer to divide your x or y value, can be used with relative to pick a position on screen
• width, height: Dimmensions of your element
• functions: Functions define basic Electron IPC methods to communicate between javascript and node
  • method: What kind of action to take when triggered
    • write_file: Create a file, see write_file_path for scoping destination
    • filename: Name of the file to create with write_file method
• write_file_path: Directory to be used when invoking write_file IPC function
• startup_functions: IPC to run from node to the OS when its started
  • condition: Only run the function if your condition matches
  • check_current_user: Returns true is the OSD is run by specified user
  • user: username for check_current_user
  • action: What to do on invocation
    • sendIPC: Run a basic IPC send
  • ipc_data: JSON array to send when using sendIPC action, uses format {"event": "", "data": ""}

CLI arguments

• --config-file: Path to your JSON config as defined above

Building the app as a deb

1. Install NPM LTS.
2. Install requisite Node components:

npm install

3. Ensure packging dependencies are installed (each OS will have different requirements here):

dnf install jq fakeroot
apt-get install build-essential jq dpkg-dev
npm install -g electron-packager electron-installer-debian

4. Build the package:

electron-packager . --platform linux --arch x64 --out dist/
electron-installer-debian --src dist/ontop-osd-linux-x64/ --dest dist/installers/ --arch amd64