5 ms·

Plotinus – A searchable command palette in every modern GTK+ application

101 points by Fnoord 7y ago

pjmlp 7y ago
Looks quite interesting! Kudos for using Vala, it needs a bit more love, instead of slowing down GNOME with GJS everywhere.
Fnoord 7y ago
It is available in Arch. I got it to compile on Ubuntu without much hassle. On Nix, it is available but install conflicted with another package. Didn't look into it further. Keybind is already in use for some Gtk+ applications (Firefox IIRC), and it also makes it painful how some apps I use are not Gtk+ but say Qt... which makes me wonder if there's a thing like this for Qt?
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  > On Nix, it is available but install conflicted with another package Huh. I was sort of under the impression that nix was supposed to make that impossible.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    I suppose improbable rather than impossible. Here is the error: error: The unique option `environment.variables.XDG_DATA_DIRS' is defined multiple times, in: - /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos/nixos/modules/programs/plotinus.nix - /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos/nixos/modules/config/shells-environment.nix. (use '--show-trace' to show detailed location information)
- franga2000 7y ago
  Most of this is certainly possible with Qt. KDE Plasma ships with a global menu and Qt >= 5.7 exports its menus to DBus, so that covers those. As for other UI elements (buttons, etc.) I'm not sure - I've seen it done through dll* injection, but I don't know it there's a cleaner way.
cozzyd 7y ago
This looks useful although I feel like it needs a better default shortcut. Ctrl-Shift-P is emacsish in its contortions.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  Perhaps chosen to (EDIT: try to) avoid conflicting with other shortcuts?
- DanAtC 7y ago
  Ctrl-Shift-P is also the command palette in vscode
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    And Sublime Text, Fman, Atom, ...
phkahler 7y ago
Great! Will this enable creation of a useful voice interface?
- franga2000 7y ago
  It does look like a good first step towards that. If I ever find that one service I used that one time to build context-aware intent recognition, I'll definitely try that.
markandrewj 7y ago
Awesome. This is something I like about MacOS, and a feature that that Unity had before Canonical switched to Gnome, that I wish was adopted by more desktop environments.
derefr 7y ago
I’ve always pictured the opposite—rather than taking a GUI and bolting on “fake” command-line like features, why not have a base-class for GUI “main” windows that’s essentially already a true, fully-featured terminal emulator showing the stdin/stdout of the executing process? Then, as you would add graphical controls to the main window in the layout builder, the terminal-emulator-interface part of the window would get squished down further until it just looks like a status-bar. (Which is essentially what status bars are: a very underpowered terminal-emulator only capable of showing the last line of stdout.) But click [or tab into, or Ctrl-` to activate] the thing, and it’d “pop down”, adding more height to the window, if there’s room; or “pop up”, resizing the rest of the window narrower; or just overlay translucently on top, like in games with consoles. Opening this wouldn’t give you a login shell, exactly—it’d be the stdin of the program. But the toolkit would hook the stdin and turn it into a REPL, based on the CORBA/DCOM/DBUS service-objects available in the program; and the GUI toolkit would then enhance this REPL, by introspecting these service-objects, to enable both textual autocomplete/auto-validate of commands, and the drawing of these sorts of graphical command-palettes. (But you’d be able to “shell out” to process these objects with commands, like you could in scripting languages.) Or, to put that another way: Plan9’s Acme editor is a cool idea, making the whole editor into interface where you can just write magic runes on the walls and then activate them. But there’s no real understanding or support for those runes, because they’re fundamentally opaque Plan9 executable binaries. What would this look like if we translated it into the object-oriented world that GUIs live in? What would Smalltalk’s Acme be like? And then, what if all applications in the OS were built on top of it, the way that you can build applications as major modes in Emacs or as plugins in Blender? Or, to put than another other way: if Automator in macOS can already latch onto a running program’s service API and tell it to do things as a batch script, why can’t I interactively access the same APIs from inside the running program itself, as an automatic benefit of using whatever technologies power Automator? Why can’t I do the equivalent of opening the Smalltalk Inspector on my GUI program?
- swiley 7y ago
  > why can’t I interactively access the same APIs from inside the running program itself Isn’t that what the script editor on OSX does? On Linux some TCL programs are like this, I don’t know if it’s a feature of the applications I use or a feature of TCL since I (unfortunately) almost never use it.
Philipp0205 7y ago
This is just awesome. To my regret many GTK application don't care much about keyboard shortcuts any more. That's why I personally often use terminal applications. This project could actually make many applications usable again.
madc 7y ago
Last commit: two years ago..
- oneshot-a4yukdk 7y ago
  It's because gtk+ 4 will no longer support general-purpose loadable modules – the very feature which makes the palette possible. Also the maintainer is disappointed with the attitude of GNOME to third party developers: https://github.com/p-e-w/argos/issues/75#issuecomment-475844513 https://github.com/p-e-w/argos/issues/75#issuecomment-475844...
  - noobermin 7y ago
    Man this is terrible! I was warmed to Gnome 3 (I like the experience unlike most of the loud crowd) but this is inexcusable. Literally a breaking experience for hundreds of third part applications for some reason I just don't understand.
pcr910303 7y ago
For macOS users - if you haven't known before, a similar functionality is built-in to macOS (Props to Apple for this!). Cmd-Shift-/ (a.k.a Cmd-?) opens the help menu item, where you can just type in and it filters all of the menu items matching the query. One can press return to execute the item, or discover new shortcuts to items.
noobermin 7y ago
Seems dead, last commit was in 2017.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
vmchale 7y ago
Nice! I love GUI projects.

101 points by Fnoord 7y ago

Looks quite interesting! Kudos for using Vala, it needs a bit more love, instead of slowing down GNOME with GJS everywhere.

Fnoord 7y ago

It is available in Arch. I got it to compile on Ubuntu without much hassle. On Nix, it is available but install conflicted with another package. Didn't look into it further. Keybind is already in use for some Gtk+ applications (Firefox IIRC), and it also makes it painful how some apps I use are not Gtk+ but say Qt... which makes me wonder if there's a thing like this for Qt?

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
> On Nix, it is available but install conflicted with another package Huh. I was sort of under the impression that nix was supposed to make that impossible.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  I suppose improbable rather than impossible. Here is the error: error: The unique option `environment.variables.XDG_DATA_DIRS' is defined multiple times, in: - /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos/nixos/modules/programs/plotinus.nix - /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos/nixos/modules/config/shells-environment.nix. (use '--show-trace' to show detailed location information)
franga2000 7y ago
Most of this is certainly possible with Qt. KDE Plasma ships with a global menu and Qt >= 5.7 exports its menus to DBus, so that covers those. As for other UI elements (buttons, etc.) I'm not sure - I've seen it done through dll* injection, but I don't know it there's a cleaner way.

cozzyd 7y ago

This looks useful although I feel like it needs a better default shortcut. Ctrl-Shift-P is emacsish in its contortions.

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
Perhaps chosen to (EDIT: try to) avoid conflicting with other shortcuts?
DanAtC 7y ago
Ctrl-Shift-P is also the command palette in vscode
- Fnoord 7y ago
  And Sublime Text, Fman, Atom, ...

phkahler 7y ago

Great! Will this enable creation of a useful voice interface?

franga2000 7y ago
It does look like a good first step towards that. If I ever find that one service I used that one time to build context-aware intent recognition, I'll definitely try that.

markandrewj 7y ago

Awesome. This is something I like about MacOS, and a feature that that Unity had before Canonical switched to Gnome, that I wish was adopted by more desktop environments.

derefr 7y ago

I’ve always pictured the opposite—rather than taking a GUI and bolting on “fake” command-line like features, why not have a base-class for GUI “main” windows that’s essentially already a true, fully-featured terminal emulator showing the stdin/stdout of the executing process? Then, as you would add graphical controls to the main window in the layout builder, the terminal-emulator-interface part of the window would get squished down further until it just looks like a status-bar. (Which is essentially what status bars are: a very underpowered terminal-emulator only capable of showing the last line of stdout.) But click [or tab into, or Ctrl-` to activate] the thing, and it’d “pop down”, adding more height to the window, if there’s room; or “pop up”, resizing the rest of the window narrower; or just overlay translucently on top, like in games with consoles. Opening this wouldn’t give you a login shell, exactly—it’d be the stdin of the program. But the toolkit would hook the stdin and turn it into a REPL, based on the CORBA/DCOM/DBUS service-objects available in the program; and the GUI toolkit would then enhance this REPL, by introspecting these service-objects, to enable both textual autocomplete/auto-validate of commands, and the drawing of these sorts of graphical command-palettes. (But you’d be able to “shell out” to process these objects with commands, like you could in scripting languages.) Or, to put that another way: Plan9’s Acme editor is a cool idea, making the whole editor into interface where you can just write magic runes on the walls and then activate them. But there’s no real understanding or support for those runes, because they’re fundamentally opaque Plan9 executable binaries. What would this look like if we translated it into the object-oriented world that GUIs live in? What would Smalltalk’s Acme be like? And then, what if all applications in the OS were built on top of it, the way that you can build applications as major modes in Emacs or as plugins in Blender? Or, to put than another other way: if Automator in macOS can already latch onto a running program’s service API and tell it to do things as a batch script, why can’t I interactively access the same APIs from inside the running program itself, as an automatic benefit of using whatever technologies power Automator? Why can’t I do the equivalent of opening the Smalltalk Inspector on my GUI program?

swiley 7y ago
> why can’t I interactively access the same APIs from inside the running program itself Isn’t that what the script editor on OSX does? On Linux some TCL programs are like this, I don’t know if it’s a feature of the applications I use or a feature of TCL since I (unfortunately) almost never use it.

Philipp0205 7y ago

This is just awesome. To my regret many GTK application don't care much about keyboard shortcuts any more. That's why I personally often use terminal applications. This project could actually make many applications usable again.

madc 7y ago

Last commit: two years ago..

oneshot-a4yukdk 7y ago
It's because gtk+ 4 will no longer support general-purpose loadable modules – the very feature which makes the palette possible. Also the maintainer is disappointed with the attitude of GNOME to third party developers: https://github.com/p-e-w/argos/issues/75#issuecomment-475844513 https://github.com/p-e-w/argos/issues/75#issuecomment-475844...
- noobermin 7y ago
  Man this is terrible! I was warmed to Gnome 3 (I like the experience unlike most of the loud crowd) but this is inexcusable. Literally a breaking experience for hundreds of third part applications for some reason I just don't understand.

pcr910303 7y ago

For macOS users - if you haven't known before, a similar functionality is built-in to macOS (Props to Apple for this!). Cmd-Shift-/ (a.k.a Cmd-?) opens the help menu item, where you can just type in and it filters all of the menu items matching the query. One can press return to execute the item, or discover new shortcuts to items.

noobermin 7y ago

Seems dead, last commit was in 2017.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

vmchale 7y ago

Nice! I love GUI projects.