TUI Launcher

A proof of concept for a TUI-based launcher written in Python using urwid, initially written for kelbot based on his query about 'a way to fire off a script via a "button" in a terminal'.

How to launch:

Suggested way to launch so it gets the current terminal's width: ./launcher.py --term-width="$(tput cols)" This would use the default config at configs/default.py and default layout at layouts/default.txt.

Creating your own config and layout:

While you could just edit configs/default.py and layouts/default.txt, it's recommended to use them solely as a template by duplicating to for example configs/media_controls.py and layouts/media_controls.txt and to edit those instead.

You can then select this new config file with: ./launcher.py --term-width="$(tput cols)" --config-file ./configs/media_controls.py.

The new layout can be specified with --layout-file ./layouts/media_controls.txt, but it's recommended to just specify the path with layout_file = Path('layouts/media_controls.txt') in the config file instead, as shown in the example configs/default.py.

For a quick reference of the command line arguments: ./launcher.py --help

How to upgrade from the initial script posted to Gist.GitHub.com?

If you used the initial version of this script I posted to gist.github.com a few days ago, then you'll first want to back up your script, or clone this new version in a different location, as the launcher.py would otherwise be overwritten, and you'd lose your config.

This is one of the major reasons behind this update: the separation of config and script.

Step by step instructions:

Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/FiXato/tui_launcher.git
Move into the new directoyr: cd tui_launcher
Make the script executable: chmod +x launcher.py
Create a new config: cp configs/default.py configs/media_controls.py
Create a new layout: cp layouts/default.txt layouts/media_controls.txt
Edit your new config and copy the contents of the commands variable from your previous install, over to the commands variable of the new config.
Instead of manually calling button_rows.append() as in the initial script to add rows of buttons, you can now put the contents of the keys of your commands hash in your layouts/media_controls.txt file, separating the buttons with commas, one row per line. For example, if in your previous install you had:
```
button_rows.append(['Play', 'Stop', 'Pause'])
button_rows.append(['Rewind', 'Skip'])
button_rows.append(['Explore'])
```
You can now just add this to layouts/media_controls.txt:
```
play, stop, pause
rewind, skip
Explore
```
You don't need to include the entire key; just a unique part of it would suffice. It's also case-insensitive, so you don't have to worry about matching capitals.
Reference this layout file by using the proper path for layout_file in your config file configs/media_controls.py.
Launch the script with: ./launcher.py --term-width="$(tput cols)" --config-file ./configs/media_controls.py.

How to support:

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