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 precedence.)

       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.

       -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 useful 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 characters 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.

       -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

       /etc/pdmenurc
              Default config file. See pdmenurc(5) for details.
       ~/.pdmenurc
              If this exists, it overrides /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, <joey@kitenet.net>.

SEE ALSO

       pdmenurc(5)