NAME

icewm-menu-fdo - menu generator for .desktop files

SYNOPSIS

icewm-menu-fdo [OPTIONS] [FILENAME]

DESCRIPTION

icewm-menu-fdo generates a menu for the IceWM window manager from XDG menu descriptors (aka FreeDesktop.Org .desktop files). By including this in the icewm-menu(1), the system applications become available in the icewm start menu.

ARGUMENTS

• [FILENAME]

  The optional FILENAME argument is the location of a .desktop file. When given, icewm-menu-fdo launches the application using the Exec line from the desktop file.

OPTIONS

• -g, –generic

  Include the generic name in parentheses in the title of prog entries.

• –seps

  Print a leading and a trailing separator.

• –sep-before

  Print a leading separator.

• –sep-after

  Print a trailing separator.

• –no-sub-cats

  Don’t nest subcategories in submenus. The correctness of the pigeonholing depends on correct application description which shall always specify a main category. Incorrectly tagged descriptions will be sorted into the Other menu.

• -o, –output=FILE

  Write the output to FILE.

• -t, –terminal=NAME

  Use NAME to start a terminal emulator that supports the ‘-e’ option.

• -s, –no-lone-app

  Attempt to detect a single application with no other content in lower submenus and move this one to the parent submenu. This also detects menus with just one submenu inside, attempting to move it’s application items to the parent menu where possible.

• -S, –no-lone-hint

  Decorate app entries moved by the -s option with a hint about the original menu where it would be displayed otherwise. Implies -s.

• -d TIMEOUT, –deadline-apps=TIMEOUT

  Specifies a certain timeout value in milliseconds, so that the reading of *.desktop files (for applications) is aborted by that time (or soon after). This can help to avoid extended blocking of the caller. Also see -D for the subsequent operation.

• -D TIMEOUT, –deadline-all=TIMEOUT

  Specifies a total timeout in milliseconds after which the application has to terminate, regardless of the final menu construction and decoration reading (applied after *.desktop file reading) was finished or not. This would cause a printing of menu contents which were calculated so far, therefore the timeout should be set a certain time before the actual hard deadline by which the program should be terminated. The output may lack translations and icons.

• -l LANGUAGE, –lang=LANGUAGE

  Instead of the environment variable LANG use LANGUAGE for the locale.

• -L MAX, –limit-max-len=MAX

  Cut the calculated program titles (after translation and adding hints, see -C and -g) at MAX characters, followed by an ellipsis. This can help to restrict the width of the menus in cases where some entry length might get out of hand.

• –flat

  Display apps from all categories in one level with the title containing the category information as prefix.

• -F sep, –flat-sep=sep

  When used with --flat, the specified character sequence is used as separator between the section titles.

• -m filter, –match=filter

  Specifies a filter to show only apps that contain this as substring within their title.

• -M filter, –imatch=filter

  Like --match but applied with any letter case. Might deliver incorrect results with some locale settings.

• –match-sec

  Apply the filter from --match or --imatch to both, apps and section titles.

• –match-osec

  Apply the filter from --match or --imatch to only to section titles.

• -h, –help

  Print a brief usage statement to stdout and exit.

• -V, –version

  Print the program version to stdout and exit.

• -C, –copying

  Print copying permissions to stdout for the program and exit.

USAGE

This utility is not normally used directly. It is used as the executable in a menuprog entry in a icewm-menu(5).

EXAMPLES

The following line in a icewm-menu(5) file will dynamically generate a comprehensive set of menus for easy access to .desktop files, added in a submenu called Desktop Apps.

menuprog "Desktop Apps" folder icewm-menu-fdo

It can also be embedded directly into the loading menu like in the following example. There could be a separator line added before or after (or both) in case where the program could generate useful content.

includeprog icewm-menu-fdo --seps

ENVIRONMENT

XDG_DATA_HOME or XDG_DATA_DIRS are considered as suggested by XDG Base Directory Specification.

TERMINAL may define a terminal emulator that supports the ‘-e’ option. The option is ignored if the specified command could not be found and a default is used instead.

CONFORMING TO

icewm-menu-fdo complies roughly to the XDG .desktop file and menu specification, see “Desktop Entry Specification” (Date: 2020-04-27, Version: Version 1.5) and “Desktop Menu Specification” (Date: 20 August 2016, Version: Version 1.1).

CAVEATS

The icewm-menu-fdo program is only built when the icewm(1) package is configured with the –enable-menus-fdo option and only works with –enable-i18n option.

Integration of XDG menu files is somewhat of varying quality, heavily depending on the correctness of metadata like translations and sections (menu category) hints.

SEE ALSO

Base Directory Specification, Desktop Entry Specification, Desktop Menu Specification, icewm(1), icewm-menu(5), icewm-preferences(5), icewm-programs(5).

BUGS

Please report bugs at Github.

AUTHOR

Eduard Bloch.

See –copying for full copyright notice and copying permissions.

LICENSE

IceWM is licensed under the GNU Library General Public License. See the COPYING file in the distribution or use the –copying flag to display copying permissions.

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