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PDMENU(1) Commands PDMENU(1) NAME pdmenu - simple full screen menu program SYNOPSIS pdmenu [options] [menufile ...] DESCRIPTION pdmenu is a simple menu program that displays a menu from which the user can pick programs to run. Submenus are supported. When you run pdmenu , you will be presented with a menu. Simply use the arrow keys to move to the program you want to run, and press Enter to run the program. When the program ends, you will be returned to the menu. If you are running pdmenu at the linux console, and gpm is running, you can move the mouse and click to navigate through the menus. Some menu items are actually submenus, and will take you to another menu. Others may cause a text edit window to be displayed, where you can enter parameters for a command before running it. Still others may run a command, and display the output in a window. KEYS Here are all keys you need to get around in pdmenu: [up arrow], 8, - Move up one line in the menu. [down arrow], 2, + Move down one line. [page up], [ctrl-u] Move up an entire screen. [page down], [space], [ctrl-v] Move down an entire screen. [home] Move to the first entry of the menu. [end] Move to the last entry of the menu. q Exit the current menu, or exit pdmenu if used on the first menu. Does not work in the text edit windows. (This will not work if there is also a hotkey set up for 'q', the hotkey takes prece- dence.) ESC Close the currently active window, and return to the previous window, or exit pdmenu if used on the first menu. [ctrl-c] Exit pdmenu immediately. [ctrl-r] Force a redraw of the screen. [enter] Launch the selected menu item. In a text edit window, closes the window. [backspace] Performs a destructive backspace in a text edit window. hotkeys Some letters of a menu item may be highlighted. These are hotkeys; simply press the highlighted letter to select the next menu item with that hotkey. OPTIONS -h, --help Display usage summary and exit. -s, --superhot Enable super hot keys, in which pressing an unambiguous menu hotkey immediately runs that menu item. -c, --color Use color. By default, pdmenu will display in black and white mode. If your terminal supports color, use this switch. -u, --unpark "Unparks" the cursor from the bottom of the screen. When this option is selected, the cursor moves to be on the line of the menu that is currently selected. This makes pdmenu more useable with speech synthesis systems that need to know what line is the current line on the screen. -mmenuid, --menu=menuid Instead of displaying the first menu from the menufile, select the menu with the id "menuid" and display it. -q, --quit By default, at the opening menu, 'q' will exit pdmenu. If the -q switch is specified, this will not be the case. This is use- ful if you want to prevent the user from ever exiting pdmenu. (This also disables control-c and the right mouse button from exiting pdmenu.) -r, --retro This makes pdmenu use an old style for displaying menus. Menus in the background don't change color, or lose their hotkeys. Note that this will also be a little bit faster than the default on slow terminals and the like. -l, --lowbit By default, pdmenu will use nice high bit line drawing charac- ters if it thinks your terminal is capable. Sometimes it gets this wrong and you get borders that look all messed up. Then you should use this --lowbit switch to force it to use low bit line drawing characters. -b, --borderspace Use spaces to draw the borders around the menus. As well as be- ing a perhaps more clean & modern look, this can make pdmenu more usable with screen reader systems since they won't try to describe the borders. -n, --numeric Disables the use of the keys 2 and 8 for moving up and down. This is useful if you want to use numbered hotkeys. menufile ... Specify a menu definition file or files to use. If you specify multiple files, they will all be loaded in together. By default, the first menu in the first menufile will be displayed when pdmenu starts, but this can be overridden by the --menu= option. If menufile is "-", pdmenu will read standard input as a menu file. NOTES To use the mouse to cut and paste as usual, hold down on the shift key when you use the mouse. FILES /usr/local/etc/pdmenurc Default config file. See pdmenurc(5) for details. ~/.pdmenurc If this exists, it overrides /usr/local/etc/pdmenurc. See pdmenurc(5) for details. ENVIRONMENT COLORTERM Set this variable to make pdmenu to use color by default. DISTRIBUTION Redistribution is subject to the GNU public license. BUGS See the file BUGS that came with pdmenu for the current buglist. AUTHOR Joey Hess, <pdmenu@joeyh.name>. SEE ALSO pdmenurc(5) 1.3.6 November 02 2025 PDMENU(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | KEYS | OPTIONS | NOTES | FILES | ENVIRONMENT | DISTRIBUTION | BUGS | AUTHOR | SEE ALSO
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