PDMENU(1) 1.2.59 PDMENU(1)
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February 25 2000
NAME
pdmenu - simple full screen menu program
SYNOPSIS
pdmenu [options] [menufile ...]
DESCRIPTION
pdmenu is a simple menu program that displays a menu from which the
user can pick programs to run. Submenus are supported.
When you run pdmenu , you will be presented with a menu. Simply use
the arrow keys to move to the program you want to run, and press Enter
to run the program. When the program ends, you will be returned to the
menu.
If you are running pdmenu at the linux console, and gpm is running,
you can move the mouse and click to navigate through the menus.
Some menu items are actually submenus, and will take you to another
menu. Others may cause a text edit window to be displayed, where you
can enter parameters for a command before running it. Still others may
run a command, and display the output in a window.
KEYS
Here are all keys you need to get around in pdmenu:
[up arrow], 8, -
Move up one line in the menu.
[down arrow], 2, +
Move down one line.
[page up], [ctrl-u]
Move up an entire screen.
[page down], [space], [ctrl-v]
Move down an entire screen.
[home]
Move to the first entry of the menu.
[end]
Move to the last entry of the menu.
q Exit the current menu, or exit pdmenu if used on the first menu.
Does not work in the text edit windows. (This will not work if
there is also a hotkey set up for q, the hotkey takes
precedence.)
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ESC Close the currently active window, and return to the previous
window, or exit pdmenu if used on the first menu.
[ctrl-c]
Exit pdmenu immediately.
[ctrl-r]
Force a redraw of the screen.
[enter]
Launch the selected menu item. In a text edit window, closes the
window.
[backspace]
Performs a destructive backspace in a text edit window.
hotkeys
Some letters of a menu item may be highlighted. These are
hotkeys; simply press the highlighted letter to select the next
menu item with that hotkey.
OPTIONS
-h, --help
Display usage summary and exit.
-c, --color
Use color. By default, pdmenu will display in black and white
mode. If your terminal supports color, use this switch.
-u, --unpark
"Unparks" the cursor from the bottom of the screen. When this
option is selected, the cursor moves to be on the line of the
menu that is currently selected. This makes pdmenu more useable
with speech synthesis systems that need to know what line is the
current line on the screen.
-mmenuid, --menu=menuid
Instead of displaying the first menu from the menufile, select
the menu with the id "menuid" and display it.
-q, --quit
By default, at the opening menu, 'q' will exit pdmenu. If the -q
switch is specified, this will not be the case. This is useful if
you want to prevent the user from ever exiting pdmenu. This also
disables control-c and the right mouse button from exiting
pdmenu.
-r, --retro
This makes pdmenu use an old style for displaying menus. Menus in
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the background don't change color, or lose their hotkeys. Note
that this will also be a little bit faster than the default on
slow terminals and the like.
-l, --lowbit
By default, pdmenu will use nice high bit line drawing characters
if it thinks your terminal is capable. Sometimes it gets this
wrong and you get borders that look all messed up. Then you
should use this --lowbit switch to force it to use low bit line
draing characters.
-n, --numeric
Disables the use of the keys 2 and 8 for moving up and down. This
is useful if you want to use numbered hotkeys.
menufile ...
Specify a menu definition file or files to use. If you specify
multiple files, they will all be loaded in together. By default,
the first menu in the first menufile will be displayed when
pdmenu starts, but this can be overridden by the --menu= option.
If menufile is "-", pdmenu will read standard input as a menu
file.
NOTES
To use the mouse to cut and paste as usual, hold down on the shift key
when you use the mouse.
FILES
/opt/pdmenu/etc/pdmenurc
Default config file. See pdmenurc(5) for details.
~/.pdmenurc
If this exists, it overrides /opt/pdmenu/etc/pdmenurc. See
pdmenurc(5) for details.
ENVIRONMENT
COLORTERM
Set this variable to make pdmenu to use color by default.
DISTRIBUTION
Redistribution is subject to the GNU public license.
BUGS
See the file BUGS that came with pdmenu for the current buglist.
AUTHOR
Joey Hess, <joey@kitenet.net>.
SEE ALSO
pdmenurc(5)
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