I really like the monitoring function in screen c-M and c-_ but whenever an event happens (or doesn't happen if c-_) on a screen I am monitoring the message doesn't go to the hard status line I have.
What I really want, yet have no idea how to do, is set it so when a monitoring event happens, the color of that screen changes. I think this is possible because my active screen is white and the inactive screens are green (on the hardstatusline).
To me, this would be really cool to implement....
EDIT: OK, I'm sure I can do this somehow. What I want is the color of the screen's name to change when activity stops for 30 seconds (or when activity starts, depending on what mode it's in. By default, an @ get placed in the before the name.
Here is my current hard status line (I copied this from a website, so I can't really interpret it exactly.) hardstatus string '%{= kG}[ %{G}%H %{g}][%= %{=kw}%?%-Lw%?%{r}(%{W}%n*%f%t%?(%u)%?%{r})%{w}%?%+Lw%?%?%= %{g}][%{B}%Y-%m-%d %{W}%c %{g}]'
I don't think this is possible. When it comes to the listing of windows I see three ways to display them: Just %w , %-w %t %+w, and %W . The one that gives you the most control is %-w and %+w , which mean 'all windows before current' and 'all windows after current' -- respectively. I can't find anyway to customize them other to make it %-Lw and %+Lw which enable flags to be displayed. Although the status string does support conditionals with %? , that doesn't help in this case since the tab bar is mostly automatically generated.
You can however changed the formatting of the notification message with the activity command.
Can't do this exactly (well, read on, perhaps you can), but how about having something like:
in your screenrc, then inside each screen you are running your monitoring program that based on its activity level sets its screen title using the string:
This will allow you to see the activity status in the caption line (perhaps used a fixed-width string such as '.....', 'X....', 'XXXXX'.
Perhaps somebody has enough .screenrc mojo to configure a caption line that is something like: 'show the window list, but display any windows with the title 'X' in a certain color (and perhaps 'XX' in another color). Or, only set a title on activity and only highlight a window when it has any title. I don't have quite enough mojo for that.