obamenu(1) User Commands obamenu(1)
NAME
obamenu - menu generator for the openbox window manager.
DESCRIPTION
obamenu (openbox automenu) is a menu generator for the openbox window
manager. Rather than striving for full and complete xdg compliance oba-
menu offers a reasonable basic level of xdg compliance and focuses on
low resource usage and pragmatic issues.
obamenu consists of a single python file without any exotic imports. It
has been developed with Python 2.7 should, however, work fine with any
Python > 2.5 (possibly even older) and with Python's standard included
batteries.
Usage:
obamenu
That's it. No options, no parameters, simple as that. But ...
As openbox users are not afraid of editing config files, a decision was
taken to make obamenu's configuration powerful yet simple not by com-
mand line üarameters or a config file but by having a short config sec-
tion right within obamenu itself.
The basic idea
It seems reasonable to assume that openbox users are quite different
from users of the more common and usually monstrous window managers.
And while obamenu is perfectly capable to just splash the usual full
menu into your .jwmrc the authors needs (and assumptions on other open-
box users needs) and accordingly obamenu's capabilities are somewhat
more refined.
First some basics. On pretty much any halfway modern Unixoid OS, there
is some directory with ".desktop" files which contain information about
applications needed by the OS; things like its name, the command, pos-
sibly some comment, and so on. On most linuxes and BSD this directory
is "/usr/share/applications". Of course, as with every standard,
there's some idio^H^H^H^H players (like Gnome) who don't care that much
and dump their .desktop files elsewhere and anywhere. Similarly there
is also a place for all those nice application (not OS!) icons. Usually
they are in "/usr/share/pixmaps". Last but not least, there are "Cate-
gories" into which applications are grouped in menus. Btw, obamenu does
not show empty categories to avoid senseless clutter.
So, let's have a look at a obamenu's config section and its bits and
pieces:
# ---- config --- applications_dirs = ("/usr/share/applications", ) im-
age_dir = "/usr/share/pixmaps"
application_groups = ("Office",
"Development", "Graphics", "Internet", "Games", "System",
"Multimedia", "Utility", "Settings") group_aliases = {"Au-
dioVideo":"Multimedia","Game":"Games", "GTK":""} ignoreList =
("evince-previewer", "python3.4", "feh","xfce4-power-manager-
settings" )
terminal_string = "svte -e"
# your favourites terminal exec string # --- End of user config
---
The first one, "applications_dirs" is a list of directories in which
.desktop files are to be found. The default, which should be fine for
most
users, is where .desktop files are usually put by linux or BSD.
Feel free to add more, for instance some subdirectory within
your $HOME. The next one, "image_dir", is quite similar but is
about icon images for applications. A small caveat, though:
While most applications are nicely putting their .desktop files
into the standard directory, the story with icons is quite dif-
ferent. Particularly the wm behemoths like Gnome tend to spread
icon files all over the place. Often, for instance, icon files
are to be found in some obscure subdirectory of
"/usr/share/icons" buried deep depending in the chosen theme and
the icon size. The author of obamenu admits freely to have taken
a rather deliberate choice in that regard by having image_dir be
a simple string rather than a list, which might seem to be a
reasonable way to some. The author, however, didn't consider it
wise to play find and catch with ignorance and idiosyncrasies of
some parties. He rather chose to use the trusted Unix mechanism
of links. In other words: You are advised to soft link all icon
files outside the standard icon directory to /usr/share/pixmaps
or similar. ("find" is your friend, e.g. find /usr/share/icons
-name 'foo.*').
The next setting, "application_groups" looks innocent enough but has
some power with it. Obviously the entries in that list are "menu
groups" or categories into which xdg menus put the applications depend-
ing on some .desktop data. You might want to keep in mind that obamenu
keeps categories in the the order of this setting, i.e. you will find
those categories in the menu in that order, too. And then there are
buts ... The first but is that you almost certaintly don't want more
categories than the number of citizens in your home town. Another and
more interesting but is that, obviously, usage profiles are different.
For me as a developer, for instance, a "shows coloured stuff or makes
sound" category seems sensibly sufficient; some movie editing people
though might have quite different views... which brings us to the next
setting. "group_aliases" is a list of string pairs, the first one be-
ing what is put as category in the .desktop file(s) and the second one
being the category it will end up in. In other words: this is your
chance to rearrange things the way you want them. The author, for in-
stance, has a rather frugal attitude regarding multimedia; accordingly,
he simply throws anything audio or video related into one category
"multimedia". To illustrate, though admittedly somewhat construed, an-
other potentially useful feature, have a look at "GTK" in those string
pairs. Its second string is empty which comes down to telling obamenu
"ignore that stuff. Don't put it into my menu". The reason being that
openbox *only* creates menus for applications being sorted into a cate-
gory. No category, no menu entry. Hint: This setting may also be used
to have translated strings in your menu; simply have the english cat.
string aliased to a translated version.
The second to last setting, "ignoreList" is what its name suggests.
It's a list of .desktop file names (without the ".desktop" part) you
wish to ignore, i.e. to not have in your menu for whatever reason. Fi-
nally the last setting, "terminal_string", is telling obamenu how to
call your favourite terminal emulator for console applications like
"htop". (obamenu automagically takes care of having console applica-
tions called in a terminal emulator).
Note that the auto-generated menu can be put right into the menu sec-
tion of an openbox menu.xml Last but not least you can, of course, also
send obamenu's output to a file which can be edited, inserted manually,
feed your cat, and all the other things Unixoids can do with files.
Just to avoid misunderstandings, here's an example (the authors usage)
of obamenu in a ob menu.xml file:
<menu id="desktop-app-menu" label="Applications" icon="/usr/share/icons/applications.png" execute="~/obamenu" />
License: obamenu is under a dual license depending on who you are. If
you are using it as a private person (which also means non-commer-
cially) it's under a 3 clause BSD license. If you are using it as or in
the context of anything not private, for instance, in a business or an
agency, it's under GPL v.2.
Disclaimer: The author uses mainly jwm. While obamenu has been tested
to work properly it has been considerably less tested than the authors
jwmamenu (same thing but for jwm. In fact, obamenu has been derived
from jwmamenu).
The main motivation behind obamenu was the fact that openbox-menu
(probably the most used menu generator for ob) doesn't compile properly
on FreeBSD and the author saw absolutely no reason why a menu generator
couldn't - and shouldn't - be cross platform (e.g. using Python).
News & Updates:
• ported (from jwmamenu) smarts to get rid of '%x' target specifiers
in Exec spec. (used for file managers but disturbing in menus)
• ported search for category icons in configurable Theme
• some cleaning up and small enhancements, mainly for speed.
obamenu January 2018 obamenu(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.15 on Sat Jun 29 02:34:30 CEST 2024.