XMENU(1)

NAME
xmenu - menu utility for X

SYNOPSIS
xmenu [-w] [title]

DESCRIPTION
xmenu is a menu for X, it reads a list of newline-separated items from stdin, shows a menu for the user to select one of the items, and outputs the item selected to stdout.

The options are as follows:

-w  Asks the window manager to draw a border around the menus. This option may be buggy in some window managers, specially tiled ones.

Each item read from stdin has the following format:

        ITEM := [TABS] [[IMAGE TABS] LABEL [TABS OUTPUT]] NEWLINE

That means that each item is composed by tabs, followed by an optional image specification, followed by tabs followed by a label, followed by more tabs, followed by an output, and ended by a newline. Brackets group optional elements.

    The initial tabs indicate the menu hierarchy: items indented with a tab is shown in a submenu of the preceding item not indented. An item without initial tabs is a top-level item.

    The image is a string of the form "IMG:/path/to/image.png". It specifies a image to be shown as icon at the left of the entry.

    The label is the string that will be shown as a item in the menu. An item without label is considered a separator and is drawn as a thin line in the menu separating the item above from the item below.

    The output is the string that will be output after selecting the item. If an item does not have an output, its label is used as its output.

    The newline terminates the item specification.

If the argument title is given, the title of the menu window is set to it.

USAGE
xmenu is controlled by the mouse, but can also be controlled by the keyboard. Items can be selected using the arrow keys, Tab (with and without Shift), Enter and Esc.

Down, Tab
    Cycle through the items in the regular direction.

Up, Shift-Tab
    Cycle through the items in the reverse direction.

Right, Enter
    Select the highlighted item.

Left
    Go to the menu above.

Esc Go to the menu above or exit xmenu.

RESOURCES
xmenu understands the following X resources.

xmenu.font
    The font in which the labels should be drawn.

xmenu.background
    The background color of non-selected items in the menu.

xmenu.foreground
    The color of the label text of non-selected items in the menu.

xmenu.selbackground
    The background color of selected items in the menu.

xmenu.selforeground
    The color of the label text of selected items in the menu.

xmenu.border
    The color of the border around the menu.

xmenu.separator
    The color of the separator between items in the menu.

xmenu.width
    The minimum width, in pixels, of the items in the menu.

xmenu.height
    The size in pixels of the height of a single menu item.

xmenu.borderWidth
    The size in pixels of the border around the menu.

xmenu.separatorWidth
    The size in pixels of the item separator.

EXAMPLES
The following script illustrates the use of xmenu. The output is redirected to sh(1), creating a command to be run by the shell.

        #!/bin/sh
        cat <<EOF | xmenu | sh &
        Applications
        	IMG:./web.png	Web Browser	firefox
        	IMG:./gimp.png	Image editor	gimp
        Terminal (xterm)				xterm
        Terminal (urxvt)				urxvt
        Terminal (st)					st
        Shutdown						poweroff
        Reboot						reboot
        EOF

For example, by selecting “Applications”, a new menu will appear. Selecting “Web Browser” in the new menu opens firefox.

SEE ALSO
dmenu(1), 9menu(1), thingmenu(1)