A Linux Program Launcher

This is a Program Launcher written in Rust. For the moment it uses multiple different UI toolkits, namely:

• egui
• iced
• gtk

Features

• Searches for all desktop files in most of the common linux application paths
  • Can be extended using the config file (See Configuration->app_cfg->paths)
• Can be used for dmenu type selection of piped in applications

Why multiple UI toolkits?

I started using egui for this, which is a great toolkit, but it has some limitations. So I thought I'd try some other toolkits. This I think is a reasonably simple UI, but with some quirks (like the keyboard scrolling) which I can use to compare ease of use and feature sets.

Why another program launcher?

There are several reasons I wanted a new program launcher:

1. Wayland and X11 compatibility

Most good program launchers like Rofi, Fuzzel etc. only support either X11 or wayland. Since I still sometimes switch between X11 and Wayland I wanted a launcher, that ran on both systems

2. Wayland clones don't always work

There are some cool projects like Wofi that aim to port X11 programs to Wayland. However I found at least Wofi to have some bugs with my window setup.

3. I wanted a project that can be reasonably finished

I tend to take on huge projects which never end. I saw this as a comparatively simple project.

Arguments

select-from-stdin

Allows piping a newline separated list into Aphorme, which will replace the normal program list. Useful for custom scripts e.g. a shutdown/reboot etc. script. Echoes the selected option.

Configuration

Configuration is now found in $HOME/.config/aphorme/config.toml

gui_cfg

Options for the gui.

icon: boolean

Enable or disable icon loading. True by default.

GuiFramework

Which GuiFramework to used. At the moment EGUI and ICED. Note that at the moment ICED is not compiled into the launcher by default. To do so compile with the feature iced-ui

retain_focus: boolean

Forces window to remain in focus even if other windows try to grab focus.

Known issues: Doesn't work with egui + wayland.

font_size

Size of font. Also affects icon size.

window_size

X and Y dimensions of the launcher. Does not affect font size.

app_cfg

App spanning options.

paths

List of additional paths to search. Home directory can only be denoted by using $HOME Defaults to an empty list.

use_default_paths

Search default paths. If paths is defined appends them to the default. Defaults to true

Default paths are

  "/usr/share/applications",
  "/usr/local/share/applications",
  "$HOME/.local/share/applications",
  "/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share/applications"

preferred_apps

Contains configuration for the preferred apps (aka. the last used apps)

max_weight

Maximum weight allowed. Defaults to 10.

Example Config

[gui_cfg]
icon = true
ui_framework = 'EGUI'
font_size = 12
window_size = [
  300,
  300,
]
[app_cfg]
paths = ["$HOME/Desktop"]

Known issues

Scrolling is somewhat weird (and the scroll bar is visible) in egui

The egui ScrollArea does not allow for movement using the arrow keys. This means I had to implement that myself. The method I chose (just remembering the index) does however overwrite the scrolling using the mousewheel/touchpad gestures etc. This means I had to implement the scrolling with the scrollwheel myself, which 'fights' against the default scrolling. This causes minor visual glitches but so far no actual bugs

Changes

For previous versions see CHANGELOG.md

0.1.15

Breaking changes

• Direct input piping now requires the --select-from-stdin argument

Fixes

• Delay before stdin handling was too short. Now requires --select-from-stdin argument to work.
• Updated libraries

Known issues

• EGUIs RetainedImage is deprecated. Will be removed in a future released of Aphorme

0.1.16

Features

• Added option to retain focus on the launcher. Useful if starting multiple slow launching programs

Known issues

• Focus retention only working with egui + X11. egui does not support focus grabbing on wayland

0.1.17

Features

• Started work on Nix support

Fixes

• Updated to egui 0.26

0.1.18

Features

• Nix support

Fixes

• Removed erroneous error message on program launch

0.1.19

Features

• Window size settable in 'gui_cfg'
• Font size settable in 'gui_cfg'

0.1.20

Fixes

• Nix "Home Manager" path added to default paths. These should now be also searched.
• Some other Nix related simplifications