qwerty-launcher README

qwerty.py is a graphical, but keyboard-oriented application launcher for X11. It is designed to be a faster alternative to application launching menus.

qwerty.py has also dock-like functionality: one press of a key either launches an application, if it is not running yet, or switches you to already running application.

Concepts

qwerty.py is a keyboard-oriented in a sense that all application are assigned with a keyboard button. It also has an advantage over fully keyboard-driven methods of launching programs (when you, for example, assign a keyboard shortcut for each application in your desktop environment): you do not have to memoize all shortcuts, as they are shown on the screen. Another advantage is that you can have more applications than 26 letter keys (applications tend to compete over global shortcuts: is W for Web browser or for LibreOffice Writer?), thanks to use of sections.

It is assumed that you will assign the launch of qwerty.py to a global keyboard shortcut in your desktop environment, or maybe you have another way to run it easily.

qwerty.py shows you a window with buttons in a keyboard-like layout. You can click these buttons with a mouse, but usually you will just press corresponding key on the keyboard.

The top row of buttons, one with digits, represents menu sections. Buttons with letters represent applications within selected section. So, with standard keyboard layout you can have up to 10 menu sections, each containing up to 26 applications.

When you activate a letter button, qwerty.py does the following:

If there is an already open window of this application, that window will be activated.
If there are more than one window of this application, a popup menu will be shown to select the window to be activated.
If there is no such window, the application will be launched.

So, for example, to launch LibreOffice Calc (given you did specific configuration), you will press the following keys:

One key to run qwerty.py itself. For example, I used to bind qwerty.py to the PauseBreak key.
One digit key to switch to Office section. For example, the digit 3. You do not have to press it if that section is already active.
One key for the application itself. For example, the letter C.

Menu sections and their contents are configured in configuration file. At the moment you have to edit it manually; probably later there will be a GUI to simplify it's editing.

Visual presentation of launcher window is customized by use of CSS stylesheet.

Configuration file

The configuration file is in QSettings format, which is a variant of INI file format. There is an example of configuration file under config-samples/qwerty.conf.

By default, qwerty.py looks for it's configuration file named ~/.config/qwerty-launcher/qwerty.conf. You can specify another configuration file with -c command-line option.

The configuration file consists of several option groups.

[global] group supports one option, css_path. There you can specify a custom path to your CSS stylesheet.

[state] group contains last_used_section key. It is used to remember the number of menu section which you used the last time, in order to open it by default at next launch.

Other groups must be named like [section_#], where # is a digit from 0 to 9. They represent menu sections, numbered from left to right.

Each menu section should contain a title key, which specifies the title of the section. It can also contain an icon key, which specifies the icon for the section.

Except for that, each section should contain a series of application descriptions. Options that describe a single application button must all start with the same uppercase letter, which denotes the button.

For each application, the following options are used:

L\title (where L is the letter of the button): application title to be shown on the button.
L\icon: the name of application icon. The icon is searched by that name in your current icon theme.
L\command: the command which will be used to launch te application.
L\class: window class (WM_CLASS of the window), which is to be used to detect windows of this application.

CSS Stylesheet

You can find examples of stylesheet used to customize qwerty.py appearance under config-samples/qwerty.css and default.css. See also Qt documentation for detailed reference of available selectors and properties.

For example, this is what qwerty.css does:

By default, qwerty.py looks for the stylesheet under ~/.config/qwerty-launcher/qwerty.css. You can specify another path in the configuration file.

Prerequisites

Python 3.8+
PyQt5
python-xlib

LICENSE

GPL-3, see LICENSE file.