Menu_engine

One of the most important utilities in the repository is the universal menu engine to avoid using interactive menus that require a mouse pointer, the utility is inspired by the various dmenu replacements and it can use one of them as a backend to display item lists, the concept is simple:

flowchart LR
A[display list of elements]
B[chose element]
C[do something with the chosen element]
A --> B --> C

The advantage in a similar approach is that there is an homogeneous way to access most common operations that a user does with a desktop environment

The L.sh utility

#

The menu utility has the following requirements

• It has to be fast ⚡
• It must be extensible with new items and new operations to run on that items
• It must filter types of object to display

In order to accomplish this requirements the utility follows a domain model where the menu items are called elements that are defined by a type which indicates how elements has to be retrieved from the system and what the system has to do with the selected element

flowchart TD
A[element]
B{type}
C[elements retrival]
D[what to do with element]
A -- has --> B -- defines --> C & D

Usage

#

The utility is called as follows:

L.sh -b [backend] [lists of types]

Where:

• backend is the program that has to print the elements on display, all dmenu replacement are valid options, (default is defined in the configuration file MENU_BACKEND)

  NOTE when called from the hyprland bindings the script will use a different backend that the one defined in the configuration file !!!!

• list of types is a list of types to be considered when searching elements to display (default behavior is to print all known types) the elements type are defined as files in the $HOME/.local/lib/menus/ directory and are defined as follows

$HOME/.local/lib/menus/type.sh

#!/bin/bash
source "$HOME/.config/scripts/settings.sh"

# this function  must print the elements to select from in the format type:element, to add type use sed 's/^/type:/g'
list_type(){ }

# this function is invoked when the element is selected with it as first argument:
# run_type SELECTED_ELEMENT
run_type(){ }

Implemented types

#

The repository contains a set of already implemented type:

• app launch exec binaries of .desktop files
• btdevice connect to bluetooth devices
• clipboard get content from the clipboard history
• file open files
• ghpage open github pages site of a given repository
• ghrepo open github repository page
• ksprofile switch between kanshi profiles
• network connect to wifi networks
• notification display notifications
• otp copy otp codes pass-otp integration for password store
• password copy a password store in a password store
• site open a firefox tab in a given site
• s open sites
• steam open steam games
• system power management options
• vault open obsidian vault with obsidian
• wallpaper change wallpaper
• window move focus to a specific window

password menus configuration

#

The password menu can show password from multiple password repositories, set the PASSWORD_STORES, see configuration section

Github menus configuration

#

To use github menus correctly the parameter GITHUB_REPOVIEWER_ACCOUNT must be set, see configuration section

Adding sites to the site type

#

The site type load the sytes to display from a file in the filesystem at the following paths

• ~/.local/lib/sites.json this is a default under version control that should NOT be edited and should be used as reference instead
• ~/.local/lib/sites.json.d this is a directory for extra sites.json files that are installation specific

So in order to add a site do as follows

inside $HOME/.local/lib/sites.json.d/mysites.json

[
  { "site": "my-site","link": "https://mysite.com"}
]

Where:

• site field is the name displayed inside the menu
• link field is the site url to open with firefox

Add custom types in menus

#

To add custom types create a file in the $HOME/.local/lib/menus directory following the structure above

Runtime

#

The menu is structured as follows, the L script load sources based on filters given as parameters an get data from each sources in parallel, then it prints the menu and run the action specified by the item type

sequenceDiagram
participant L
L ->> L: source all scripts in lib/menus based on filters
L ->> L: print menu
L ->> L: execute run_ function of the selected item type