Zenity is a utility used to add GUI forms to scripts and receive feedback from the user. It was designed for use with Linux and GNOME. It uses GTK+ and GLADE libraries. The official website for Zenity is:
http://live.gnome.org/Zenity. I have ported the latest version (2.28.0) of this software to Windows (win32). It should work for both XP and Vista.
1: Help files don't build.
2: When executing from a batch script, the annoying black window belonging to "cmd.exe" stays in the background all the time. I have a written a program, "bg_start", to take care of this
http://www.placella.com/software/bg_start/.
3: Even though the "win32-3" version is built with support for LIBNOTIFY, this feature does not really work as it requires a "notification daemon", yet I'm not able to find one that works in windows.
4: The program refuses to install on
64-bit systems. To overcome this, you can right-click on the installer, select properties, then tick the box near "Run this program in compatibility mode". It will work just fine then.
How to build from source:
Warning: this is my personal experience, correct as of October 2009 for Zenity 2.28.0, your results may vary!
First thing required is a build environment consisting of a console, a compiler, as well as, GTK+ and GLADE. I set one up as described here:
http://www.gtkforums.com/post-4848.html#4848. I also installed "Strawberry PERL", required by intltool, and added the path to PERL binaries to the "$PATH" environment variable in "/etc/profile". And since "intltool" provided with MINGW was outdated I build one from source code and installed it. After downloading Zenity source code and extracting it it, I went ahead and ran the "configure" script. There were many missing dependencies. Most of these are available as binaries from
http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/binaries/win32/ and
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html. They can be downloaded as a compressed file and extracted into either your GTK or your mingw directory (as you see fit). There are, however, also a few pesky ones, like "scrollkeeper". As far as I know, there is no way to build it using MINGW and MSYS. To get around this, one can execute the following commands from your bash shell (MSYS) (excluding the dollar signs):
$ echo "int main(){}" > foo.c
$ gcc foo.c -o /bin/scrollkeeper-config
$ rm foo.c
This made the "configure" script happy, but, as far as I can see, it also made impossible to build the help files for Zenity.
After the configure script was happy that all the dependencies were satisfied, Zenity still didn't build and "GCC" was complaining about not being able to find "langinfo.h". Eventually I found it in the form of the "libgw32c" library from
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html. I extracted the archive in "/mingw". To make the system aware of this library and resolve a conflict, the following commands need to be issued in MSYS (modify the path to libgw32c to match it's location on your PC):
$ export CFLAGS="-I/mingw/include/glibc -DMINGW_BUILD"
$ export LIBS="-lgw32c"
$ mv /mingw/include/glibc/stdlib.h /mingw/include/glibc/stdlib.h.bak
At this point it is necessary to run "./configure" again to enable "LC_MESSAGES". This should fulfill all requirements and Zenity should build. It will, however, not work. Paths to external files are hard coded into the executable at compile time. For Linux this is perfectly fine as the files within the operating system are very well organised, for Windows this does not work. My solution to this was to modify the source code and get Zenity to check an environment variable (which can be set at install time) to get a path to external files. You can download my patch here:
zenity-2.28.0_win32-3.patch It can be applied from inside Zenity's root folder (where the configure script is and where you should have saved the patch) with the following command:
$ patch -p0 < zenity-2.28.0_win32-3.patch
And now Zenity can be built:
After you export the environment variable "ZENITY_DATADIR" and assign it a value corresponding to the directory containing "zenity.ui" and the pictures from the "data" directory, the program should actually run, too!
I'm not going to explain how the program should be packaged for it to work correctly, if you need to know this I suggest you download the installer and have a look around. Also, you can look at my NSIS script here:
zenity-2.28.0_win32-3.nsi
Comments to date: 23. Page 1 of 1. Average Rating: 
ema Argentina | 4:19pm, March 31st, 2013  |
Thanking you since 2009!!! |
Willi Leipzig Germany | 5:08am, February 25th, 2013 |
EDIT
the backslashes in my previous comment are missing:
I had to removed the trailing backslash in the path added to windows xp's path environmental variable (...zenity bslash bin bslash to ...zenity bslash bin)
@ jack: works for me under octave 3.6.2 with MinGW and zenity package from sourceforge 0.5.7 |
Willi Leipzig Germany | 4:52am, February 25th, 2013 |
I'm running it successfully on a Win XP within a virtual Machine on my Ubuntu (for testing and porting programms). Great work!
Installation works easy, but I had to change the (automatically added) path from ...zenitiybin to ...zenitybin. Not sure if that's a bug of my machine or the installation routine.
(@ jack, france: works for me within octave 3.6.2 MinGW and zenity 0.5.7 package.) |
Lucio Italy | 1:10am, February 17th, 2013 |
Hi, very nice one i use it a lot under Linux, and now i would like to try it under windows, but i get one error:
** (zenity.exe:5160): WARNING **: Could not load ui file (null)datazenity.ui: Failed to open file '(null)datazenity
.ui': No such file or directory
Seems like that under the installer some file does not been writed.
Very nice work thank you!
Admin: Hi Lucio,
that error means that the installer did not set the ZENITY_DATADIR environment variable, it should point to the "data" folder inside the folder where you installed zenity. Not sure why, perhaps running the installer in compatibility mode with WinXp might have helpped. Anyway, here's how to do it: http://www.itechtalk.com/thread3595.html.
Bye |
Wolf-Dieter Groll Germany | 5:30am, September 24th, 2012  |
I like Zenity very much on Linux (5 - Excellent), but the Windows Version wiped out the whole system PATH variable during installation!
So keep your fingers off, or at least save your PATH before installing Zenity and restore it afterwards.
I haven't done so, thus now I have to repair my system...
Regards
Wolf-Dieter
|
Brian Snipes United States | 4:01pm, March 13th, 2012  |
Snarl for Windows works for notifications - http://snarl.fullphat.net/ |
iGore Germany | 10:03am, March 10th, 2012 |
Hi. I have a problem with the progress-bar in Zenity for Windows. I'm writing a PHP-script for the cmd and i want that the progress-bar is moving from 0% to 100% in a certain time. Quasi as a sleep function with the possebility to cancel the progress-bar.
In tutorials I found this code:
$foo = system('echo "25"; sleep 1 echo "# Message 1" echo "50"; sleep 1 echo "# Message 2" echo "100") | zenity --progress --text "In progress" --percentage=0');
This code open the progress-bar but directly with 100%.
So my question is: How to use the progress-bar in the cmd of Windows 7 correct?
T... read more » |
Jeremy USA | 1:20am, February 25th, 2012  |
Hi i have a problem is that I want to enter in a graphical user and password, so anyone can use this option and not root, then I have not found a way to say that zenity accept me and I run a user
/ usr / bin / firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/, unless I do it manually by editing the script (do not want that) I need to invoke this instruction without root privileges given by the script 1st to 2 having the menu (firefox addons) because addons are not useful in the root. Sorry my English is bad.
elif ["$ option" = "Firefox addons"]
Then
zenity - hide-text - entry - title = "enter your pa... read more » |
Novato España | 10:40pm, February 9th, 2012 |
Hi, I'm starting to use zenity for the first time, I think fantastoco but not how to make a variable, for example in Linux is as simple as this:
var = $ (zenity - entry)
But if I put it in a. Bat for example I get this instead:
"var" is not recognized as an internal or external command, program or batch file.
It is probably silly but I am a newbie, hope can help.
Google Translator
hola, estoy empezando a usar zenity por primera vez, me parece fantastoco pero no se como hacer una variable, por ejemplo en linux es tan simple como esto:
var=$(zenity --entry)
Pero si pong... read more »
Admin: Hi Novato,
There are some sample usage files in the "examples" folder, which can be found in the folder where you installed zenity.
That said, I don't know how to set variables to the value returned by zenity directly. Instead I output the value to a file and then read it into a variable (there probably is a better way though). Example:
@echo off
zenity --calendar > "%~d0%~p0\zenity.tmp"
set /p OUTPUT= < "%~d0%~p0\zenity.tmp"
del "%~d0%~p0\zenity.tmp"
zenity --info --text="You entered: %OUTPUT%"
|
Joel Tijuana, México | 12:31am, September 14th, 2011 |
Good, how about a lite version for those who already have gtk2 installed :)?
Good job
Admin: Well, the chances that one will have exactly the correct version of gtk+ installed are fairly slim, so no... |
iGore Ger | 9:41am, July 18th, 2011 |
Hi. I'm trying to write a simple php script, that i run in the cmd of Windows 7(64). My problem is that i dont get back the return value of the pushed button, only the return value of the entry.
$msg = "this is my message";
$rv = shell_exec('zenity --entry --title "Entry" --text "'.$msg.'"');
echo $rv;
How do i get the return values of the pushed button?
thx in advance,
iGore
Admin: So you want to know if the user pressed 'OK' or 'Cancel'. Well, you are using the wrong PHP function call for that. You should, in fact, be using 'system()'.
Here's an example:
<?php
$msg = "this is my message";
ob_start();
$retval = 0;
$string = system('zenity --entry --title "Entry" --text "'.$msg.'"', $retval);
ob_end_clean();
echo $string . "\n" . $retval;
?>
|
Sundi US | 7:48pm, May 15th, 2011 |
Does anyone know if I can use the "--no-cancel" command with this version of Zenity to hide the cancel button with the progress bar |
Benjamin California | 12:27am, April 30th, 2011 |
Thank you so much for porting Zenity to Windows! This made it really easy to get my bash scripts to work in both Linux and Windows! This really helped a lot. |
Luciano Seibel Brazil, Sapiranga | 8:36am, March 11th, 2011 |
Great!!! For win32 but on my WIN7 64 bits doesnt install ...
Admin: To use in 64-bit Windows 7 you can right-click on the installer, select properties, then tick the box near "Run this program in compatibility mode". It will work just fine then. Hope this helps. |
Shantanu Kumar Bangalore, India | 1:37am, March 1st, 2011 |
Zenity for Windows is an excellent tool, but it wiped out my PATH variable on 32-bit Windows 7 and replaced it with its own when I installed it. Hence rating it as dreadful. :-( |
KIAaze Location unknown | 1:05pm, February 23rd, 2011 |
The environment variable ZENITY_DATADIR is incorrectly defined by the installer.
|
Dony Brazil | 4:35pm, January 10th, 2011 |
Excelent job man!
Thanks, i was searching something like this!
Don't stop! |
TheCric France | 11:30am, November 13th, 2010 |
Very useful on Windows - Great job - Thanks a lot |
Agnus Brazil | 2:19pm, July 21st, 2010 |
Thanks a lot!
Great Job!
Thx
Regards |
Hans Austria | 1:38am, April 19th, 2010 |
Fine tool, this makes life for scripters much easier. |
Jack France | 5:07pm, January 29th, 2010 |
I am trying to run it with a portable version of Octave. How to make zenity on win portable.
Admin: Sorry man, I don't even know what Octave is... |
Eric HAMON Gretz, FRANCE | 3:38am, December 29th, 2009 |
Excellent. It's very easy to make it portable too.
Thx
Regards |
steve Hungary | 4:44am, November 30th, 2009 |
Thanks a lot! :)
Great tool, i missed it from win... |
This page was last updated: 8/Nov/2009
