Hi all, I use dmenu on Void Linux but from what I understand, it works the same on OpenBSD.
Suckless Tools' dmenu is what I use to launch graphical applications. Here's how I run dmenu for this purpose: dmenu_run -i -l 32 -fn "7x14" -nf yellow -nb black -sf black -sb white The -i means case insensitive. The -l means show results vertically instead of horizontally, and use 32 lines. Your number of lines will depend on your fonts, resolution, screen size, etc. Even as little as 15 or 20 is useful. The -fn is the font. -nf, -nb, -sf, and -sb are normal-foreground, normal-background, selected-foreground, and selected-background. I put that command as the one and only command (other than the /bin/sh shebang) in a shellscript called dmenu_litt.sh, and assign hotkey Ctrl+Shift+semicolon to that shellscript. Obviously you'll choose a hotkey that makes sense to you. So to run firefox, I do Ctrl+Shift+semicolon, then type fir and hit Enter. To run Gnumeric, I do Ctrl+Shift+semicolon, then type gnum and hit Enter. Dmenu is very quick to load and fast to process, so compared to typing speed there's no latency at all. In most cases you type less characters than you would to run it in a terminal. For a touch typist it's much faster than using a mouse. Dmenu works with any WMDE (Window Manager/Desktop Environment) that allows the user to set up a hotkey to run a program. This includes Openbox, LXDE, LxQt, ctwm, fvwm, IceWM, Xfce, dwm, and probably many more. For the person who types over 25 wpm and prioritizes productivity significantly more than pretty, adding dmenu is a game-changer. Dmenu interfaces directly to X with few or no other dependencies, so it's trivial to make it and install it. Compilation takes much less than a minute. You can download it at https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/ , and the downloaded tarball is only 15.6 KILObytes, so this gives you an idea about how simple this software is. Back before discovering dmenu, I spent a lot of time and effort and tooth-gnashing figuring out the best WMDE to use. Now, I add dmenu to whatever WMDE I happen to be using, and I'm good to go. Try it: You just might like it. SteveT
