Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

aragon · Joined: 15 Oct 2007 Posts: 1690 Location: Germany

Home: http://tools.suckless.org/dmenu
Version: 4.0

trapster · Joined: 28 Nov 2005 Posts: 1966 Location: Maine, USA

Good timing with this. I've been playing with dwm for the past week.

But...

jemimah · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 4309 Location: Tampa, FL

You can also try the vertical version of dmenu.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?mode=attach&id=21817

Discussion is here: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=39411

seaside · Joined: 11 Apr 2007 Posts: 836

aragon,

Thanks for posting this. I played around with Dmenu a bit and was going to post a pet at some point and didn't get around to it - (I got sidetracked trying to get Launchy to work on puppy) Very Happy

Anyway, your implementation is much better by using links to .desktop files. Nice idea.

There are many ways to use Dmenu other than running programs. As a file selector for other programs you can do this

aragon · Joined: 15 Oct 2007 Posts: 1690 Location: Germany

@trapster
i think this just happens if a path in PATH does not exist. but it's uncritical.

and yes dmenu 'dies' after command execution, what is positive in my opinion.

@jemimah
will look at the vertical later. thanks for the link.

@seaside
yes, dmenu is kind of swiss army knife for opening/starting things. i do like it very much. i've posted a kind of 'base-version'. i'm also using the awesome-windowmanager that has dmenu 'inbuild'. there i use the functionality to also have a Favourites-Menu and a Places-Menu.

I think you could realize everything for what you have a list (with cat) or a folder (with ls) and for that you are able to define a starter.

aragon

ragaman · Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 186

Does this work the same way as GNOME-DO? If so, thanks a million. I've been waiting for a Puppy version (light) of the said utility.

trapster · Joined: 28 Nov 2005 Posts: 1966 Location: Maine, USA

Is there any way to keep it running after a selection is made?
I have been using MU's GtkBasic-Panel which is nice because you can minimize it when it gets in the way.

aragon · Joined: 15 Oct 2007 Posts: 1690 Location: Germany

@ragaman
on a very basic-level: yes i think so... but i think with gnome-do you could also search in dokuments and such things. you might be able to do something similar with dmenu, but this is not implemented in my package.

@trapster

amigo · Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 1759

There's a patch which adds support for Xft (anti-aliased fonts) here:
http://www.rootshell.be/~polachok/code/dmenu-3.4-xft.diff

Somewhere I have some other patches for it, but I can't find them right now. They come from deli linux which uses dmenu extensively.

aragon · Joined: 15 Oct 2007 Posts: 1690 Location: Germany

@amigo
found some different xft-patches for dmenu-4.0

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=28745&detail=1
http://lists.suckless.org/dwm/0905/8236.html

and will try to add one of them.

there are some other in aur for vertical and history? will look at them also.

aragon

amigo · Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 1759

Ah yes, thanks for the tip -I found lots of goodies there (starting)on aur -even a dmenu-based file-manager.
dmenu is alos in debian, so I am looking at that to see if there are any critical patches.

aragon · Joined: 15 Oct 2007 Posts: 1690 Location: Germany

The first post now also has a package with a patched dmenu (amongst others vertical usage).

@ amigo
i've tried to patch with the vertical-patch AND the xft-patch, but that gave errors, so i decided to only use the vertical as this seems to be more 'usefull' to me.

but one question: is there a way to merge patches (to not have to do it by hand)?

amigo · Joined: 02 Apr 2007 Posts: 1759

"is there a way to merge patches (to not have to do it by hand)?" -Actually, some Revision Control Systems can do this, but I always work them out by hand -one at a time. It's a good way to go along reading lots of code, in order to understand lots -I mean more code...

But, I've saved you a bit of work by working out these:
dmenu-xft.diff
dmenu-xft-add-vertical.diff
dmenu-xft-vertical-add-history.diff
dmenu-4.0-DockApp.diff

Apply them in that order. There's a couple of more that I'm eyeing, but I'm busy creating patch sets for WindowMaker for over 65 bug-fixes. I'm creating a canonical tree for posterity since the original maintainers have quit and the new maintainer won't do anything. I've still got a few bug fix patches to 're-diff' and then I move onto the added feature patches for a more adventurous branch. I'm too old to set down and study code by the hour -but I can while away lots of time and still learn a little by working this way.

The dockapp patch may not do anything, depending on what WM you use. There are several version of the vertical patch(es) which mix/match the opitions available. When I get around to it, I'll get them all together and re-order them so it looks better. There's also a couple of forks or replacements on AUR - fmenu and awmenu which is a gtk runbox -I guess with dmenu guts.

aragon · Joined: 15 Oct 2007 Posts: 1690 Location: Germany

amigo,

all i can say is whow! will go through the patches soon.

yes there are some forks fmenu for instance is just dmenu-4.0 with a vertical patch applied.

i greatly appreciate your work. i'm not competent in diff and patch.

thanks aragon

p.s. good luck with your windowmaker-project.

jemimah · Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Posts: 4309 Location: Tampa, FL

So I had a brilliant idea yesterday. Wouldn't it be sweet if Dmenu could show application icons like Launchy and Gnome-Do? Well a streak of genius hit me and now it can! Well sort of...

Here's what you do: first modify dmenu so that instead of just returning a value when you hit enter, make it return a value every time the selection changes. Then pipe said output through a shell script that figures out which icon to use. Then you can use a program called xteddy to display a nifty shaped icon in the middle of the screen. When the selection changes, kill the old xteddy and open a new one with the new icon.

The only bummer is that most of the icons on puppy are a tiny size. I want to release this launcher with when I release Fluppy, but replacing all the tiny ugly icons is a daunting task.