Blezz - Guided Keystroke Launcher

Idea

Complicated shortcuts are hard to remember and hard on the fingers, yet it is still nice to have shortcuts to scripts and used actions readily available.

With Blezz i intend to give an alternative to shortcut systems. It provides a little interface that shows up at launch, to guide the user through his own setup. Every keypress can go to new directory, or execute an action. It is possible for the user to make his own setup as simple or complex he wants, by adding content to a file.

As it is possible to execute shell scripts from Blezz almost any action imaginable is possible.

Install

Inspect the makefile if you feel paranoid. Afterwards, do:

make
sudo make install

Dependencies

Building: argp and xcb and their headers are needed for building this project.

Running: systemd is required to only allow one running instance.

The packages can normally be found in your distros repos, but their name varies, below i list the packages, that should contain the needed libraries, for some distros.

If any mistakes are found, please let me know in the issues.

On Ubuntu

apt install libxcb1-dev libxcb-icccm4-dev libxcb-ewmh-dev

On Fedora

dnf install libxcb-devel xcb-util-devel xcb-util-wm-devel

On Arch

pacman -S libxcb xcb-util xcb-util-wm

Uninstall

If copied to the /usr/bin directory, make uninstall removes it, effectively uninstalling it.

Note: Any configuration file made for the program will remain

sudo make uninstall

Configuration

There is two possible ways to configure Blezz. The content file is mandatory for getting any use out of the program. The config file is providing optional information about how the program should run.

Content file

A basic language have been formed to provide structural information about what the user wants to browse when he runs Blezz.

Note: The first directory declared will be the starting menu, until more configuration is possible.

Note: It does not matter if a directory is declared before or after being reffered to.

#This is a comment.
directoryName:                    #Defines the name of a directory for linking.
dir(char,linkedDirectory)         #Links to another directory. Binds to last mentioned directory.
act(char,description,bashCommand) #Executes the command. Binds to last mentioned directory.

(An example can be found in cfg/content)

Config file

A very basic configuration file can be formed by a single type of statements.

name=value

The options for this file is:

Name	Value	Default
font	Name of an x font. (Find by using xlsfonts)	fixed
directoryUpKey	Character that on keypress will go a level up.	.
actionIndicator	Character shown before actions to indicate that they are actions.	!
directoryIndicator	Character shown before directories to indicate that they are directories.	>
startDirectory	Name of the start directory.	Main
windowWidth	Width in pixels.	600
showKeyAsUpper	1 or 0 as true or false.	0
showMenuNames	1 or 0 as true or false.	1
showMenuNamesNested	1 or 0 as true or false.	1
backgroundColor	RGB as hexadecimals, eg: ff122a.	000000
foregroundColor	RGB as hexadecimals, eg: ff122a.	ffffff
topIndentation	Numbers of pixels between the top border and the text.	5
leftIndentation	Numbers of pixels between the left border and the text.	20
bottomIndentation	Numbers of pixels between the bottom border and the text.	10
windowXPosition	Must be either l, m, or r sets initial placement according to screen.	m
windowYPosition	Must be either t, m, or b sets initial placement according to screen.	t
windowXOffset	Offset on the x axis in pixels from initial placement.	0
windowYOffset	Offset on the y axis in pixels from initial placement.	0

(An example can be found in cfg/config)

Usage

How to start, control, and exit Blezz.

Start

To run Blezz, simply call it with optional paths to your configuration file like this:

./bin/blezz -c ./cfg/config -p ./cfg/content -d SuperStartDir

The extra arguments can be avoided by: saving your config file as $(HOME)/.config/blezz/config. saving your content file as $(HOME)/.config/blezz/content. having your intended start directory named Main.

Controls

Controls are, with the current exception of ESC, configurable through the config file, this is the defaults.

Key	Action
ESC	Closes the menu.
.	Goes up a level.
A-Z	Select an element.

Exit

Terminate Blezz by pressing the close button or going a level up from the starting directory.

TODO

You are more than welcome to open issues, or contribute on any of the currently opened ones.