BounceTerm is a SIMBL plugin for Mac OS X's Terminal.app that makes the dock icon bounce when a bell or beep is triggered. This can be useful if you have a long-running process going on and you want to be notified when it's done (assuming it beeps, of course).
No configuration is necessary, just open the .dmg file, run Install, and
restart Terminal.app. To uninstall, simply run Uninstall from the .dmg.
If you want to make sure the plugin's working, try running
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n '\a'; sleep 2; done in your shell and focusing a
window in another application. You should see Terminal.app's dock icon bounce
every two seconds.
BounceTerm.dmg (64 KB)
Won't this plugin break if Apple releases an update to Terminal.app?
No. The plugin uses no APIs from Terminal.app, it merely adds an observer for Terminal.app's beep notification (through standard APIs). The worst that could happen is that the notification name changes or goes away, in which case the plugin would simply do nothing.
But most programs I use don't beep. How do I make them beep after exiting?
You just need to run echo -n '\a' after the program. You can simplify the
process by adding a function in your shell's rc file (like ~/.bashrc or
~/.zshrc):
beep() { "echo -n '\a'" }
Now if you'd like to have the dock icon bounce after a command finishes, run:
some command; beep
If you want the dock icon to bounce only when there's an error, try:
some command || beep
Download the official development repository using Git:
git clone git://github.com/brodie/bounceterm.git
Run make to compile the plugin, and make install to install it into
your home directory's SIMBL plugins folder. Run make and make builddmg
to create a disk image of the application.
Visit GitHub if you'd like to fork the project, watch for new changes, or report issues.
Contact information can be found on my site, brodierao.com.