Search-based application menu actions outside a heavy DE?

Iranon · 2012-06-07 18:44:33

Ubuntu's HUD seems the obvious supplement to search-based launching. I'd like to have the functionality, but don't care for the rest of the Unity.
The only equivalent I've come across so far seems KDE-specific, I prefer to start with a simple WM and bloat it up myself.

Is there a working equivalent without excessive dependencies? Preferably something that allows a consistent experience between search-based application menu and search-based launching.

Many thanks for your consideration.

cricky · 2012-06-07 18:47:50

Hi Iranon,

Have you had a look at Gnome Do?

I think it weill do what you want and also it has a range of plugins to extend functionality.

Inxsible · 2012-06-07 18:56:48

launchy might do what you want to a degree. gmrun never hurts if you know the command and IIRC, you can have gmrun save the last X commands that were typed in thereby giving you that search based launch

and finally, dmenu is the one I use.

Trilby · 2012-06-07 20:38:07

Openbox has pipe-menus and various packages provided pipe-menu-generating scripts.

Iranon · 2012-06-07 21:08:32

Thanks for the replies, but as far as I can tell none match the topic.
I'm not looking for a way to launch anything, if I was I'd be wasting everyone's time given the number of well-known tools available.
I have used everything mentioned, a few derivatives, Synapse and Kupfer.

I'm looking for search-based access to an application's menu items (nothing to do with my WM's application menu, dynamically generated or not). This: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/HUD

Trilby · 2012-06-07 21:41:49

Sorry. That does make your goal much more clear. I don't know of any tool that does this.

It probably would take long to write one that just pulled all the menus from the currently focused window and dumped them into dmenu to select from. Perhaps that could be my next project.

Edit: As I have very few apps that have menus, it wont be my next project. But it could be yours. I'm prety sure it will be toolkit dependent though. There might be an X11 function to query the menus of a give app, I'm not sure. I'm sure there is a gtk function to do so for gtk apps.

If you left the display and selection to dmenu, the code you'd have to write would be limited to extracting the menu's, piping them into dmenu, then calling the function associated with a given menu item returned from dmenu.

Last edited by Trilby (2012-06-07 21:47:59)

Iranon · 2012-06-08 07:15:36

Thanks for the pointers, this sounds like a worthy project... probably beyond my ability though.

Trilby · 2012-06-08 19:17:54

I had a typo above when I said it "would be hard", I meant it probably wouldn't be hard. The only peice of the puzzle that I don't know how to do off the top of my head is to grab menu information from another application. But a perusal of the gtk/qt/xlib documentation should provide such info. Using an xlib/xcb function would be the most portable, but I'm not sure if such a function would exist or be easy to use. Gtk/Qt would undoubtedly have such a function - but then it might not work with apps written in other toolkits.

Gnome based desktops avoid such concerns by effectively limiting all the apps to using (some version of) gtk.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-06-07 18:44:33

Search-based application menu actions outside a heavy DE?

#2 2012-06-07 18:47:50

Re: Search-based application menu actions outside a heavy DE?

#3 2012-06-07 18:56:48

Re: Search-based application menu actions outside a heavy DE?

#4 2012-06-07 20:38:07

Re: Search-based application menu actions outside a heavy DE?

#5 2012-06-07 21:08:32

Re: Search-based application menu actions outside a heavy DE?

#6 2012-06-07 21:41:49

Re: Search-based application menu actions outside a heavy DE?

#7 2012-06-08 07:15:36

Re: Search-based application menu actions outside a heavy DE?

#8 2012-06-08 19:17:54

Re: Search-based application menu actions outside a heavy DE?

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