Is there any way to search through menus (like on a mac)?

nik10110 · 2015-10-17 09:25:56

On Mac OS X there is a search field in most (all?) applications help menu, like in the image below. This makes it a lot easier to find functionality when you are learning a program, or can't quite remember where something was. Is there something similar for linux? Something to install or build or configure?

Thanks,
nik

Mac OS X spotlight menu search:
http://sites.gsu.edu/jcp/files/2014/05/ … vagac5.png

-- mod edit: replaced img with url tag. Please see forum guidlines on image sizes. Trilby --

Last edited by Trilby (2015-10-17 11:40:09)

Trilby · 2015-10-17 11:44:30

There certainly isn't anything like this for "linux". You can search within man pages in linux (the apropos command). There's a good chance there is for a given DE/toolkit, but it would be impossible for it to work with all menus, and not impossible, but challenging to work with all common widget toolkits.

Despite my loathing of it's misuse there is that cliche that "linux is about choice" - there are choices between different types of things (toolkits) that can create and draw menus on the screen. In OSX there is one thing that draws menus - every application that has a menu bar goes through that same mechanism to draw the menu, so there is only one mechanism that need to be hooked into to search the menus.

Are you using a DE? If so, which one?

nik10110 · 2015-10-17 13:13:05

Trilby wrote:

There certainly isn't anything like this for "linux". [...]

Sorry, carelessly phrased by me. What I really meant was "has anyone seen something like this for any of the major toolkits?". That said, you answered that pretty well too.

I was asking mostly out of curiosity, that said it would be a great boon to usability in some programs, say Gimp for example. Oh, and I'm trying Cinnamon at the moment, and am somewhat partial to gtk in general.

olive · 2015-10-17 14:41:55

The menu entries correspond to *.desktop file. So you might search with some bash skill. Here is a basic (non optimized) example.

find / -mount -name "*.desktop" -exec grep -i "searched text" {} +

Last edited by olive (2015-10-17 14:44:16)

nik10110 · 2015-10-17 15:07:46

Thanks olive, but I wasn't thinking of the menu of apps, as much as a program's own menus. See the example I posted in my original post:
http://sites.gsu.edu/jcp/files/2014/05/ … vagac5.png

Ropid · 2015-10-17 15:44:54

There was something about Ubuntu's Unity desktop being able to search through menus of running programs. I can't manage to find screenshots of this. I don't really remember if it was its normal, global search feature presenting results it finds in the program's menu or if it used a different key to pull up that search.

Last edited by Ropid (2015-10-17 16:54:26)

Blasphemist · 2015-10-17 16:30:54

The idea you are asking about has been done in the linux universe. Ubuntu's Unity desktop environment included what they called HUD. You can watch this video to see examples of it's use. Unity can be installed on Arch but I don't have personal experience with it on Arch. I don't know if HUD works or not when using Unity on Arch. There were some privacy concerns when Ubuntu brought this out and that limited it's acceptance. It is much like the voice assists on Android and iOS.
https://youtu.be/w_WW-DHqR3c

Trilby · 2015-10-17 23:26:22

Trilby wrote:

but it would be impossible for it to work with all menus, and not impossible, but challenging to work with all common widget toolkits.

To clarify I realize this is an ambiguous statement. It would be quite challenging for such a tool to work with all common toolkits - but it would be reasonably easy for a tool to do this for any one given toolkit (such as the above-mentioned HUD perhaps). So searching for such a tool for gtk is a reasonable search. Unfortunately I'm not qualified to help in that search.

nik10110 · 2015-10-19 15:01:22

Blasphemist wrote:

The idea you are asking about has been done in the linux universe. Ubuntu's Unity desktop environment included what they called HUD. You can watch this video to see examples of it's use. Unity can be installed on Arch but I don't have personal experience with it on Arch. I don't know if HUD works or not when using Unity on Arch. There were some privacy concerns when Ubuntu brought this out and that limited it's acceptance. It is much like the voice assists on Android and iOS.
https://youtu.be/w_WW-DHqR3c

That's really cool, I'll have to look into how it works. Not a fan of privacy issues, but maybe it can be adapted... or forked. Cheers!

V1del · 2015-10-19 15:09:56

Privacy issues because of the HUD? Would be news, afaik it only searches locally in your app menus. The dash issues with it searching for shopping results are a whole different can of worms

Last edited by V1del (2015-10-19 15:11:53)

nik10110 · 2015-10-19 15:26:42

Seems there is (was?) a way to search through app menus in KDE as well: https://afiestas.org/appmenu-runner-meet-the-kde-hud/ Didn't find any mentions of it more recent than 2012/2013 though. Anyone on KDE mind a quick test to see if it got integrated? Alt-F2 to invoke the runner.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-10-17 09:25:56

Is there any way to search through menus (like on a mac)?

#2 2015-10-17 11:44:30

Re: Is there any way to search through menus (like on a mac)?

#3 2015-10-17 13:13:05

Re: Is there any way to search through menus (like on a mac)?

#4 2015-10-17 14:41:55

Re: Is there any way to search through menus (like on a mac)?

#5 2015-10-17 15:07:46

Re: Is there any way to search through menus (like on a mac)?

#6 2015-10-17 15:44:54

Re: Is there any way to search through menus (like on a mac)?

#7 2015-10-17 16:30:54

Re: Is there any way to search through menus (like on a mac)?

#8 2015-10-17 23:26:22

Re: Is there any way to search through menus (like on a mac)?

#9 2015-10-19 15:01:22

Re: Is there any way to search through menus (like on a mac)?

#10 2015-10-19 15:09:56

Re: Is there any way to search through menus (like on a mac)?

#11 2015-10-19 15:26:42

Re: Is there any way to search through menus (like on a mac)?

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