spmenu

What is spmenu?

spmenu is an X11 menu application based on dmenu which takes standard input, parses it, and lets the user choose an option and sends the selected option to standard output.

In addition to this, it also serves as a run launcher through the included shell script spmenu_run, which handles both $PATH listing, .desktop entries and file listing.

It is designed to integrate well with my dwm fork, speedwm.

Improvements over dmenu

• Proper configuration file, including keybinds.
• dwm-like key/mouse bind array (See keybinds.h and mouse.h)
• Vim-like modes, including indicator.
• The ability to move around items with keybinds.
• Customizable/dynamic line/column size.
• IME support
  • Was removed from suckless dmenu years ago due to issues I’ve resolved
• Powerlines
• Web browser like keybindings.
• 256 color support through SGR codes.
• Image support
  • Somewhat based on this repository
• Option to block typing.
• Rewritten arguments, old arguments still work though.
• Hiding each part of the menu.

..and more! Note that spmenu is still compatible with dmenu. Just pass the original arguments.

Dependencies

• libX11
• libXrender
• freetype
• imlib2
  • Used for image support, can be disabled if you don’t want this by:
    • build.sh: Setting imlib2=false in buildconf.
    • Makefile: Editing toggle.mk and commenting out a few lines.
• libXinerama
  • Can be disabled if you don’t want/need multi-monitor support by:
    • build.sh: Setting xinerama=false in buildconf.
    • Makefile: Editing toggle.mk and commenting out a few lines.
• tcc compiler
  • You can swap it out for GCC or any other C99 compatible compiler by:
    • Makefile: Passing CC="gcc" to the make command.
    • build.sh: Adding CC="gcc" to the buildconf. command if you want)
• OpenSSL
  • Used to calculate MD5 of images if image support is enabled, can be disabled if you don’t want this by:
    • build.sh: Setting imlib2=false and openssl=false in buildconf.
    • Makefile: Editing toggle.mk and commenting out a few lines.
• Pango
  • Can be disabled if you don’t want/need Pango markup by:
    • build.sh: Setting pango=false and pangoxft=false in buildconf.
    • Makefile: Editing toggle.mk and commenting out a few lines.
• libconfig
  • Can be disabled if you don’t want/need config file support by:
    • build.sh: Setting libconfig=false in buildconf.
    • Makefile: Editing toggle.mk and commenting out a few lines.

Installation (GNU/Linux, *BSD)

emerge dev-vcs/git, pacman -S git, apt-get install git

git clone https://git.speedie.site/spmenu

cd spmenu/

./build.sh # Run as root. Install any missing dependencies.

Report any issues with the build.sh script. There’s also a Makefile which you can use but it may require editing host.mk and toggle.mk manually.

Installation (macOS/OS X/Mac OS X)

NOTE: Adds Xquartz as a dependency. I highly recommend you use Homebrew to install all the dependencies.

Follow ‘Installation (GNU/Linux, *BSD)’ for the most part. macOS requires some minor changes though, such as disabling pango, pangoxft, imlib2, and openssl. It is not possible to compile spmenu with these as of now, unless you’re a developer.

PREFIX must also be set to /usr/local instead of the default /usr if you’re using macOS Catalina or newer, because Apple made /usr read-only.

See this wiki article for more information.

Installation (Gentoo GNU/Linux)

If you are on Gentoo GNU/Linux, you can add my overlay which includes x11-misc/spmenu as well as other useful packages.

Installation (Arch GNU/Linux)

If you are on Arch GNU/Linux, you can add my repository which includes spmenu as well as other useful packages.

There’s also a PKGBUILD. To use it, simply make install_arch in the directory the PKGBUILD is located.

If you wish to package spmenu for your GNU/Linux distribution, feel free to add it to this list.

TODO

Pull requests would be greatly appreciated for any of these issues!

General

• Image support: Stop using OpenSSL for caching images, mostly because MD5() is deprecated as of OpenSSL 3.0, but this would also make it very easy to have LibreSSL compatibility.
• Image support: Ability to display icons, similar to rofi
• Text drawing: Use cairo for text drawing over Xft.
• Lines: Rofi-like newlines in the same entry
  • Just need to XMoveResizeWindow() as well as mh += bh and y += bh for each added line.
• Matching: Add support for contextual completions similar to xprompt
• Matching: FIFO, used to dynamically refresh entries.
• Matching: Regex matching
  • Probably use some minimal public domain library for this, I’d like to avoid adding more external dependencies unless it’s a common dependency most people already have.
• X11: Move from Xlib to libXcb

Unlikely, but maybe at some point in the distant future

• Wayland: Wayland support, but only if it doesn’t require writing any extra code which as of now seems unlikely, or if someone makes a patch.
  • Before this can even be done, replace Xft with cairo, deal with keybinds in some Wayland compatible way, remove .Xresources usage and figure out a way to preserve X11 compatibility as I do not want to use Wayland as of now.
  • You can just use XWayland anyway if you happen to use Wayland, so it’s not like you will be unable to use spmenu in its current state.

Bugs

• Text drawing: Pango will sometimes spit out errors for invalid markup. Silencing this would be a good idea.
• Image support: Images take a long time to load sometimes, particularly when items are selected using the cursor so what we really need is a way to skip over images after a set time limit.

Scripts

There’s a page dedicated to user scripts over on the wiki. Feel free to contribute and try scripts on there.

More information

See the included man page.

License

spmenu is licensed under the MIT license. See the included LICENSE file for more information!

Wiki

spmenu has a wiki for more extensive documentation. Contributions to the wiki are appreciated!