The Code

For the purposes of this hack, I am keeping the code for HAWG.widget as bare-bones as possible, forgoing an About box and other optional bits, which you can add if you prefer. It won't be particularly pretty, but it'll work:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<widget version="1.0" debug="on">
    
    <!--
    HAWG 1.0
    by Me
    Based on Cap'n Hector's Zen Monitor
    
    It's not pretty, but it works! ;-)
    -->
    
<window title="HAWG" name="main_window" width="500" height="500" alignment="left" 
visible="true" />

 <textarea>
  <name>HAWGS</name>
  <size>12</size>
  <columns>100</columns>
  <lines>25</lines>
  <bgColor>#FFFFFF</bgColor>
  <bgOpacity>250</bgOpacity>
  <editable>false</editable>
 </textarea> 

 <action trigger="onLoad">
  function updateHAWGS( ) {
   HAWGS.data = "HAWGS: " + runCommand("top -l 2 -ocpu -F -n3")
  }
  updateHAWGS( );
  main_window.visible = true;
 </action>
        
 <action trigger="onTimer" interval="10">
  updateHAWGS( );
 </action>

 <action trigger="OnMouseDown">
  closeWidget( );
 </action>

</widget>

The first part of the code is simply the XML declaration, followed by a bit of metadata about the program. The real programming begins with the window declaration that defines how large our widget's main window is going to be. Currently, HAWG is a screen hog and takes up a large chunk of space. This 500 by 500 window spread is invisible, however, until we stick something into it. I coded all the windows definitions in one line, but notice that for defining the text area, I switched to the other style of XML input that Konfabulator understands. I created a textarea named HAWGS (this is the handle by which I can refer to this textarea later in the program), defined its size so that it will actually hold all of the top output without scrolling, and made it white (in order for bgColor to work in textareas, you must also define opacity using bgOpacity) and noneditable. I did not include any data, so without anything else, this will simply display a white rectangle on the screen. We're relying on top to provide the text that will be displayed in the box, and for that we need to set up an action and define a function for that action.

I've set up three different actions. The first, onLoad, launches (as the name suggests) when you launch HAWG.widget in Konfabulator. I've defined a function called updateHAWGS( ), which drops a HAWGStextarea into place with "HAWGS: ", followed by the results of our runCommand. Right after defining this function, we invoke it, make sure the window is visible, and come to the end of the onLoad action.

The second action simply automates the updateHAWGS( ) function on a regular interval (every 15 seconds) using the built-in onTimer trigger.

Because there is no static text field defined in our widget, it is nearly impossible to Control-click on the HAWG.widget window (there's nothing to grab hold of) to navigate to Konfabulator's contextual menu. This makes the widget hard to close, so I've included a third action that invokes closeWidget() when you click (OnMouseDown) anywhere on the HAWG.widget window.