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Notification-tools are small tools that watch a file and then notify you when the file is modified.

I have started to make programs that runs automatic via cron, but sometime they fail and generates errors in an error log file.
Often when that happens I have moved on to new projects, so I don't see the error for a long time.
So I made these programs that can watch a file for me and the notify me if the file change.

Example:
If you run an Apache server on you computer, you can watch the error log with 'notification-tail /var/log/apache2/error_log'.
Now if the error log changes an icon will appear in the Notification Area.
By clicking the icon a window will open that let you see the last lines in the error log file.

These notification tool uses GTK+ and the gtk_status_icon function, and the inotify library for the file watching functionality.
I have tried to make them ambient, modular and general.
And the code contain a little mini framework, so making similar tool is very easy.

Since I have keeped them general you can combine them with any program or script that writes to a file.

Some information is better in visual form, that why there is a notification-view program, it will watch and display an image file.

Example:
Use a script that counts the daily visitors in the Apache access log and then append the number into a file.
Then you can use gnuplot to make a plot of the data and write an image.
Thereby giving you a daily update of your server traffic.

Or you could make a daily plot over the value in you portfolio or the number of lines in you current project.
As you see only your imagination is the limitation :-)

You can find the tools at sourceforge. http://sourceforge.net/p/notitools/code/ci/e74368594cec090596fc83952997250584524cf5/tree/