New Software: Curses-Based Program Launcher

MinMenu

Okay, so this isn't actually new software, since it achieved a state of general usability about a month or two ago. I am a novice programmer, and this is the first real program I wrote in C. Here is a quote from the project summary:

MinMenu is a curses-based menu that launches programs and runs commands, and is written in the C programming language. The user provides a set of commands, labels, and (optionally) accompanying key selections, and the program makes them available in a menu format inside the terminal. This allows anyone working in a *nix terminal environment to have quick and easy access to their favorite console programs and commands.

I attached a poll to this thread, so as hopeful to keep it from getting buried too quickly.

I occasionally like curses based menu systems. I like it for Debian's dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and the Debian ncurses installer on older machines. But I also like mucking at the commandline. For some reason in linux I don't like doing system configuration stuff in the gui (except desktop theming and stuff). I prefer the command line and and curses based interfaces...

my fedora 11 systems claims that they are
'not in gzip format' and therefore can't
find them.

I can never remember all the switches for CLI commands and it's a pain to have to keep asking for info/man/whatever, so curses make my life much easier

Well, I recently installed Debian 5 (Lenny) on my HD after messing with Live CDs for a while. I don't really like any of my choices in the poll. Being an old dude, I'm an Linux newb but a veteran of the "DOS days". I figured out what a curses based interface was. It's basically what I had with my Apple II+ clone, lol.

I expect to make a fair bit of use of them. I'm still poking around to find ones that do what I'm going to need to do. With Alzheimer's poking it's forgetful face at me from around the next corner, I won't feel like memorizing all the command line options for stuff I'm going to use infrequently. Call me a pansy if you wish. I am immune to your disdain

Expect to see lots of me while I figure out how to get my old nVidia card working and the other multimedia stuff up to snuff. This is going to be FUN!

GG

Originally Posted by Gnarly Gnewb Being an old dude, I'm an Linux newb but a veteran of the "DOS days". I figured out what a curses based interface was. It's basically what I had with my Apple II+ clone, lol.

Odd, but the description of the program that you have developed reminds me a lot of "Automenu," a DOS program I used to put on workstations in my junior high school computer lab in an effort to get other pupils to stop asking me for help navigating the DOS shell and launching programs.

The user provides a set of commands, labels, and (optionally) accompanying key selections, and the program makes them available in a menu format inside the terminal. This allows anyone working in a *nix terminal environment to have quick and easy access to their favorite console programs and commands.

Automenu did pretty much exactly that. (I am not talking about any of the current or semi-current programs you find info on from a Google search.)

That comes to mind, as well as 'DOS Manager,' a somewhat later application which would also do . . . basically the same things you are talking about.

Please don't misunderstand . . . I am in no way trying to disparage your program. (It actually sounds really cool and I am going to check it out.) I am certain that, in many, many ways it is far more sophisticated than either of these ancient specimens were.

Anyone else remember those old applications? Automenu? DOS Manager? Automenu was running in that computer lab on 8088 and 80286 based systems . . . it had to be from like 1987 or earlier. (Which, I guess, in the computing world, is like 376 BC.) DOS Manager would be a little later, maybe 1990?

http://cd.textfiles.com/hof91/HARDDISK/AUTOMN45.DOC

I use some curses based programs, they are nice and do the job without getting in the middle.

Screen, mc, moc... mc however is a bit too complex for me. Too much reliance in the menus and that stuff

Your menu thing sounds nice, however I am fairly sure that you can achieve a similar thing with a bash script and the dialog tool. Haven't tested yours though so I could very well be very wrong

I voted that they can be useful from time to time though that's not exactly how I use them. I use them *all the time*, and they are permanently loaded in my box into an screen session (which is a curses program itself by the way). However, no other option in the poll came closer to how I use them, since I really don't want to drop X, and in any case, I don't use gnome neither.

I'd seen that word "curses" (on a signboard, while driving by a southern church, but that's different)
But I hadn't felt pressed to discover what *n*x "curses" are.
just the few replies above are very informative. me: "WOW, YES!".
User-friendliness doesn't require fancy gooie gui. it requires info on demand. Even better if user can add reminders (annotate the tips). (win3 help files had a crude paperclip annotation thing. dosshell help was a textfile, easily editable.) Ideally, the tips can be read alongside the user actions - toggling between the activity and the help info is disruptive.
I've wondered if a toolkit/framework existed for tips/help, similar to language generators some devs post on their sites. Does any "curses" resemble such a toolkit?

That's nothing to do with the toolkit you choose, or if you roll your own (like openoffice does, for example). Tips and sensitive help are something you have to program yourself, regardless of the facilities and helper libraries that you use.

This thread is about curses, which is a text-based widget toolkit that eases the programming of text based friendly interfaces, nothing else.