I'm a Debian Stretch user coming from Windows. In Windows with the launchy app (also available for Linux), I had a method of entering text into launchy that was then appended to the end of a .txt or .md file.
To do this in Windows, I created a file called note.bat that contained the following:
echo %*>>"C:\collectednotes.md"
I'd make launchy aware of note.bat by adding its containing folder to “Launchy” → “Settings” → “Catalog” and adding filetype *.bat.
From there, I'd launch launchy, type note, hit Tab, enter some text, hit Enter, and then the text would be added to the end of collectednotes.md.
A mostly working process is detailed in my answer below. I'll give the green checkmark answer to anyone that can adjust this process (via note.sh and/or launchy plugin setup detailed below) to appropriately handle all special characters.
This may contain the solution to this question:
Which characters need to be escaped in Bash? How do we know it?
Solved (almost). I'm keeping this question unanswered and will give to whoever completes the remaining ~5%. Steps to get the 95% solution with xfce4-terminal version 0.8.3-1:
Install launchy and launchy-plugins (both are version 2.5-4 for me):
apt-get install launchy
apt-get install launchy-plugins
Open terminal to default location of ~/ and create collectednotes.md:
echo "# Launchy Notes Collected Here" > collectednotes.md
Create note.sh shell script:
echo '#!/bin/sh' > note.sh
Create shell script line 2:
echo ALL_ARGUMENTS='"$#"' >> note.sh
Create shell script line 3:
echo 'echo "$ALL_ARGUMENTS" >> ~/collectednotes.md' >> note.sh
If you open note.sh, it will look like:
#!/bin/sh
ALL_ARGUMENTS="$#"
echo "$ALL_ARGUMENTS" >> ~/collectednotes.md
Make note.sh executable:
chmod +x note.sh
Launch launchy and click the gear icon in upper right for settings. If consistency with launchy for Windows is desired, set launchy Hotkey to Alt+Space. If you receive a keyboard shortcut conflict message as I do on Debian with Xfce, first go to Settings, Window Manager, Keyboard tab, and clear Alt+Space as the shortcut for Window operations menu.
Next in launchy settings, go to Plugins tab and enable the plugin Runner. Click the + button and create a new Runner custom command as follows:
- Name: note
- Program: /home/YOURUSERNAMEHERE/note.sh (launchy does not like Program path of ~/note.sh, so a specific path with username is required)
- Arguments: '$$'
Click the Catalog tab and hit Rescan Catalog just in case. Hit OK to close launchy settings.
Now let's test it.
- launch launchy with Alt+Space or your hotkey
- type note (You may have to wait 10 second or so on first run. You'll know things are as expected when you see the text "note" with a orange/yellow icon containing silhouette of a person.)
- hit Tab
- enter some text (no need for single or double quotes or escapes), e.g.: Remember to donate at least $3 to Josh at Launchy https://www.launchy.net/donate.php
- hit Enter
Now open collectednotes.md to confirm the text was captured.
The remaining issues seem to be dealing with single quotes and double quotes. For example, consider the following note:
I don't know what I'd do without Launchy.
Which results in the following in collectednotes.md:
I dont know what Id do without Launchy.
Or:
Would David Allen like universal text capture from anywhere in Linux? My bet is "yes!"
Results in the following in collectednotes.md:
Would David Allen like universal text capture from anywhere in Linux? My bet is \yes!\
Single quoting and/or double quoting the input to launchy doesn't solve it. Note the launchy Runner custom plugin construction component of '$$' is a piece of this puzzle.
I'll give the answer to anyone that can adjust this process (via note.sh and/or launchy plugin setup) to appropriately handle all special characters. Maybe this would add proper escapes to user input with something like gsub.
The rationale for being exacting regarding proper character handling is that this process is useful for copying and logging random chunks of text from web pages, but if common characters like single quotes are not handled as expected, confidence in the system is much reduced.
Related
The problem:
I'm currently working on a programming language, which uses a simple python interpreter. The interpreter loops over every line with a bunch of if-statements.
The file extension I'd like to use is .ccp.
So far my progress. I want the computer to recognise .ccp files as a CalcScript file, and open it with the script.
I don't want to have a default filename which I can open using text = open("filename.idk","r").read(), I want to open a file like a 'normal' file. You double-click on the file in explorer, and it opens it in the python script. Regardless of the filename.
What I've tried:
Tinkering with the default applications in settings
Tinkering in regedit
Converting my .py file to .exe
Scouering the internet
My code:
https://github.com/AnonymousPixel/CalcScript
Sorry for bad English if there was any.
Summarizing my comments on the question, you can follow the steps below to achieve what you are asking:
Use sys.argv to access the command line arguments. For example the following script will just print all the arguments given to it:
import sys
print("Given arguments: ", str(sys.argv))
Let's name it myprogram.py.
You can then call it (I think) with: python myprogram.py arg1 arg2 arg3 and it will run and print the command line arguments.
Notice that the first argument (sys.argv[0]) is the script's path. So arg1 would be sys.argv[1], arg2 would be sys.argv[2] and so on.
I am saying to use sys.argv because as far as I remember double clicking a file with an extension which has a default opening program, will open that program with the file path as an argument.
Next step is to package your python script to an executable. This has been already asked and answered for example here (which is a duplicate, where you can follow the question which came before it to see even more examples). I used PyInstaller to test it (and on Windows OS). My command was like:
pyinstaller myprogram.py
... and it generated some folders and files. Specifically the folder dist\myprogram contained the executable along with its dependencies. You can then run your program by double clicking on it in the dist\myprogram folder. It should pop a CLI window, printing the arguments (ie only the program's path, since we called it without any other) and immediately exit. Or you can open a CLI window and run it with a command like:
myprogram argument1 argument2 argumentN
(supposing your current working directory is dist\myprogram) and it will indeed print the arguments.
Finally you have to set it up as the program which by default opens files with .ccp extension. On Windows 10, you can do this via:
Open up File Explorer.
Find a file with .ccp extension (or create one).
Right click on it.
Click on Properties on the dialog that pops up.
Go to General tab (if you are not already there) on the dialog that pops up.
On the Open with: section there is a button which reads Change. Click it.
Select More apps at the bottom of the dialog.
Make sure you have the Always use this app to open .ccp files checkbox selected.
Scroll to the bottom of the dialog and click on the blue text which prompts for manually selecting the default app, which in turn pops up a file chooser. I am not running on English language so it is a bit difficult to translate it exactly (I followed some online pages to actually see the default translation for the previous steps).
Select your executable as the default.
Confirm your choices by selecting Ok, Apply or anything else required.
Then you will also be able I think to change this extention later via:
Settings --> Apps --> Default Apps --> Choose default apps by file type.
Some references:
PyInstaller website and introductory manual.
Official page for step 3.
Unofficial page for step 3, a lot more detailed.
This question already has an answer here:
Read screen character from terminal
(1 answer)
Closed 2 years ago.
Is it possible to get a snapshot of the text contents of a Linux terminal?
Both tput and terminfo support "cup" mode (e.g. tput smcup to start alternate buffer mode) which implies they must save the screen state somewhere. Is it possible to get these contents?
You can save a snapshot of the text contents of a Linux terminal to
a file using GNU Screen
hardcopy
feature but only if you started screen beforehand. Apart from that,
you can restore terminal contents saved with tput smcup using
tput rmcup but this works only in xterm (not only in xterm
terminal emulator itself but also in other terminal emulators
providing that $TERM is set to xterm. It doesn't work in Linux TTY
though).
Four Methods to Take Screenshot Capture in Ubuntu Linux
Use Print Screen
This is the most common method to take screenshots. Pressing the “Print Screen” button will take the screenshot of the “Entire Visible Screen”.
When we want to take a particular window, we can use “Alt+Print Screen”. Alt+PrintScreen will take only the particular window which is currently active.
Use gnome-screenshot
gnome-screenshot utility is part of the GNOME Desktop Environment, which can also be used to take screenshot. It also has a command line mode (gnome-screenshot)
From the command-line, just type the command “gnome-screenshot” to do the same. The command will take a screenshot and provide a dialog to save it.
$ gnome-screenshot
Capture Only the Current Window:
From the UI, to take the screenshot of the current active window alone, select “Grab the Current Window” and click “Take Screenshot”.
From the command-line, use the -w option as follows to do the same.
$ gnome-screenshot -w
Take Screenshot After Some Delay:
From the UI, you can also set a delay before taking the screenshots. Set the “Grab after a delay” to the required number of seconds. This will be really helpful when we need to take screen shots of navigation.
From the command-line, use -d option to do the same. -d 2 is used for delaying the screenshot for 2 seconds. So within the 2 seconds, we can make the window which we want to take screenshot as active.
$ gnome-screenshot -w -d 2
Capture a Particular Area:
From the UI, if you want to take a particular rectangle area alone, then select “Grab a Particular area” and click “Take Screenshot”.
From the command-line, use the -a option to do the same. Once this command is entered, the mouse pointer will be changed, and you can drag and select which area to take screenshot.
$ gnome-screenshot -a
Take Screenshot Including or Excluding Window Border:
From the UI, you can also include or exclude the window border by selecting/deselecting “Include the Window Border” option.
Use ImageMagic’s Import Command
ImageMagick is an open source software suite for displaying, converting, and editing raster image files. It comes with various command line tools, and one of that is “import”. Now we will see, how we can use import to take screenshots. You can install it by using apt-get on debian/ubuntu as follows:
apt-get install imagemagick
Capture Entire Screen using -window root option
Use the “-window root” option to take screenshot of the complete screen. The screenshot will be saved in the file name provided in the command line.
$ import -window root Pictures/Image5.png
ImageMagick supports more that 100 file types. You can use any one of them to store the output.
Use GIMP
You can also take screenshot from gimp. Launch gimp, and click “File->Create->Screenshot”. A new dialog window will open with options similar to gnome-screenshot.
I have been using YADR Yet Another Dotfile Repository to enable a whole bunch of features in vim.
Given that I split my terminal window, I'd like to reclaim some of the screen estate by shortening the command prompt.
Does anyone know how to edit the zsh files to accomodate this, specifically pertaining to a .yadr setup?
Thanks internet
You can just set PROMPT (and/or PROMPT2, PROMPT3 and PROMPT4) in a file with the extension .zsh in the directory ~/.zsh.after/, for example ~/.zsh.after/myprompt.zsh:
PROMPT1='myprompt %# '
PROMPT2='> '
Have a look at the sections EXPANSION OF PROMPT SEQUENCES and following in zshmisc(1) for some details on zsh prompts.
Also, have a look at the YADR documentation on themes for more details on how to use premade themes.
If you want to just shorten your computer name instead of changing the whole prompt you can issue the command:
scutil --set HostName "here"
I use InstallAnywhere in console mode in Linux for installation and want to run some interactive shell script after finishing the installation. By "interactive" I mean that the script should ask some questions and receive user input.
I tried to run it with "Execute target file" action, but the script prints nothing to the console (it surely executed because prints debug information to output file). I also tried to bring the script to foreground using "fg %1" (it was the last command in InstallAnywhere), but it did not work too.
Is there any way to execute interactive script by InstallAnywhere in console mode?
Rather than using a shell script for user interaction, leverage IA to collect the answers you need, stuff them into IA variables, then use those variables in one or more "Execute Script/Batch file" Actions to do the post-install work.
Say you want to collect a first name, last name and phone then write those to a file in your installation directory (contrived, I know, but hopefully demonstrative).
Add a Jump Label and name it something like "Get User Info"
Add the Console Action "Get User Input" to read the first name. Assign the result to $FIRST_NAME$.
Add the Console Action "Get User Input" to read the last name. Assign the result to $LAST_NAME$.
Add the Console Action "Get User Input" to read the phone number. Assign the result to $PHONE_NUMBER$.
Add the "Jump To Target" Action with a NEXT Jump Action of "Get User Info" (#1, above). Add rules to validate these three variables such that a TRUE result will execute the jump to "Get User Info". In other words, a BAD first name or BAD last name or BAD phone number should evaluate to TRUE. This will send the user back to the "Get User Info" Target Label. Three valid values should evaluate to false, thereby NOT executing the jump. I know. It's weird.
Finally, add as many "Execute Script/Batch file" Actions as needed to for each target installation platform. For each of these actions, add a rule that limits execution of that Action to a specific platform. For the Unix/Linux actions, be sure to check the checkbox "Do not substitute unknown variables" or IA will substitute YOUR script variables with blanks. (word of caution: use the full variable name form ${MY_VARIABLE_NAME} to help IA distinguish your variables from its own variables).
A Unix/Linux version might look like this:
#!/bin/sh
echo <<EOF
Name: $FIRST_NAME$ $LAST_NAME$
Phone: $PHONE_NUMBER$
EOF > $USER_INSTALL_FOLDER$$/$userName.txt
The Windows version is similar:
echo "Name: $FIRST_NAME$ $LAST_NAME$" > $USER_INSTALL_FOLDER$$/$userName.txt
echo "Phone: $PHONE_NUMBER$" >> $USER_INSTALL_FOLDER$$/$userName.txt
Note the use of $/$ which IA converts to the appropriate path separator for the current platform.
After the "Execute Script/Batch file" Actions you can add steps to evaluate the success of the Script/Batch file. Add rules on "Jump To Target" Actions to evaluate the value of $EXECUTE_EXITCODE$. $EXECUTE_EXITCODE$ is the default variable where the process' exit code is stored by "Execute Script/Batch file" Actions.
Real-life installation scripts could be more complex than this. You could collect any number of variables and use them in any number of post-installation script(s). These scripts then focus on doing the work, not on talking to the user. That should be IA's job.
Two parting thoughts:
First, this same technique could be used with a GUI installer, too. In fact, mixing GUI and console input actions in the same project extends your installer to both graphical and console target platforms. The Post-Install scripts remain the same regardless of how you collect the input.
Finally, you should ask your questions (if possible) during Pre-Install. That way the user can decide to bail on the installation if they can't or won't answer the questions. Asking the questions during post-installation could leave the installation hanging, or force the user to roll back, if they are unwilling or unable to provide the information you need.
On Gnome/KDE you can select in which application you want to open file (Right click on file -> Open With -> Other). Is it possible open file that way, but from console?
For example: you print " file.ext" and instead of opening in concrete application, there are that application selection window forced and then users chooses - starts selected program.
I tried to figure out that myself, but not found anything like that.
"edit file.ext" doesn't fits my needs, because it starts preferred application and you cannot choose which. And also on my desktop it says:
"Error: no "edit" mailcap rules found for type "image/jpeg"
So, am I able to forse that "open with" window from console? If yes, can you say how?
Both on windows and mac you can do such things.
//edit at 2009-02-10 14:17
Thank you very much for answers. Command will be used in program code, so unfortunately probably I would not be able to make some extra bash scripts.
For GNOME:
gnome-open <file>
For KDE:
kfmclient exec <file>
These commands should open up the <file> in the preferred application in GNOME or KDE respectively, although I don't have an installation of either to test on.
Take a look at man run-mailcap, you can change or add selected applications for each mimetype modifying the /etc/mailcap, ~/.mailcap files and some others.
Traditionally, on Unix systens (and therefore Linux, too), you start applications from the console (and not from a UI). The command line (or console) expects you to enter the name of the application and then the filename (plus some options).
This allows to use applications (or commands) in shell scripts.
On Windows, there is no real console (the DOS box is just a reminiscence of the dark ages of MS DOS). So the MS developers came up with the idea to have the OS treat anything as a command. If it's not a real command or application, the OS will determine the file type (by extension on Windows and by some header information on Mac). For each file type, there will be an associated application in a look up table.
This is why on Windows, it appears that you can enter the name of a file on the console and you will get the application to edit that file.
If you want a quick way to fix this in the Unix console, create a script called "open" or "o" and use the file command with the option --mime to identify the file type. You can then use a case statement to launch your favorite editor.
As for the error about "mailcap rules": There is a file called "mailcap" on Unix where you can define abstract "commands" (open, edit, view, print) for file types. See the mailcap man page.