pdmenu (HPR Show 2443)

Dave Morriss

Table of Contents

Introduction

Pdmenu is a tool written by Joey Hess which allows the creation of a simple menu in a terminal (console) window. It is in his list of less active projects, and the latest version is dated 2014, but it seems to be quite complete and useful as it is.

I like simple menus. As a Sysadmin in my last job I used one on the OpenVMS system I managed which helped me run the various periodic tasks I needed to run - especially the less frequent ones - without having to remember all of the details.

I do the same on my various Linux systems, and find that pdmenu is ideal for the task.

Installation

I found pdmenu in the Debian repositories (I run Debian Testing), and it was very easily installed. The C source is available as a tarfile, though I haven’t tried building it myself.

Running pdmenu

Simply typing pdmenu at a command prompt will invoke the utility. It uses the file /etc/pdmenurc as its default configuration file, and this generates a menu with a demonstration of some of its features.

This is not particularly useful but it can be overridden by creating your own configuration, which by default is in ~/.pdmenurc. The pdmenu command itself takes a configuration file as an argument, so there is plenty of flexibility.

The configuration file

Example

I use the ~/.pdmenurc file at present, so I will talk about that. This file contains definitions (commands) that look like this example from the pdmenu manual page:

#Set a pleasing color scheme.
color:desktop:blue:blue
color:title:blue:white
color:base:blue:white

#this is a comment
menu:main:Main Menu:Things to do at foobar
    show:_Games..::games
    exec:_Mail::pine
    exec:_News::slrn -C
    exec:_WWW::lynx
    exec:_Irc::irc
    exec:_Directory Listing:display:ls -l
    exec:_Who's online?:truncate:w
    exec:_Finger:edit,truncate:finger ~finger who?:~
    nop
    exit:E_xit

menu:games:Games:Some text-based games
    exec:_Tetris for Terminals::/usr/games/tt
    exec:_Adventure:pause:/usr/games/adventure
    exec:_Zork:pause:/usr/games/zork
    nop
    exit:_Back to main menu..
  • The first block of lines use color commands to set the colours of the menu display.

  • The next block defines a menu with the menu command. The menu’s internal name is main, and its title is ‘Main Menu’. The text “Things to do at foobar” is displayed at the bottom of the screen as help text.

    • The first item in the menu is a link to another menu called ‘Games’ which is defined later in the file.
    • The underscore before the ‘G’ makes it a hot-key which is highlighted
    • The exec command makes a menu entry which runs a command
    • The nop command leaves a line in the menu (with optional text)
    • The exit command exits the current menu to the level above

Example of the menu 1 Example of the menu 2
Top level menu and sub-menu from the above example

There is quite a lot more to be said about pdmenu but I’ll leave you to investigate further if it seems interesting to you.

However, I will mention the group command and how it can be used to create dynamic menus, just to give you some idea of the power and flexibility of this utility.

Dynamic menus

I am using pdmenu to help manage various administrative tasks I do for HPR. The latest menu I have built helps me intercept the notes from newly uploaded shows, which I check and edit if necessary, generate HTML if needed and then upload the result for incorporation.

I use a number of scripts for all of this which I will not go into here. I get alerted when a new show is in the process of being uploaded. I have a tool that checks to see if the upload has finished, and when it is complete I grab the notes and save a local copy. I then process these notes as necessary.

Here is the menu definition:

menu:showsubmission:HPR Show Submission:Deal with incoming shows
    exec:_Show status:pause:~/HPR/Show_Submission/NS_test
    exec:_Rsync new show notes::~/HPR/Show_Submission/sync_hpr
    exec:_Copy notes:pause:~/HPR/Show_Submission/copy_shownotes
    nop:--
    group:_Process unprocessed shownotes
        exec::makemenu:~/HPR/Show_Submission/makemenu
        show:Process notes::process
        remove:::process
    endgroup
    nop:--
    exit:E_xit HPR Show Submission

The interesting bit is the group command. It invokes an exec with the makemenu flag. This takes the output of the group and makes a menu out of it. I call a script I wrote called makemenu (not very originally!) which works out which files need processing and offers a menu to do it. The menu is called process, and the show command is used to display it. Once finished the menu is deleted with the remove command.

I have made an example using dummy show number 2465 to demonstrate the base menu and the dynamically generated sub-menu. I’m using the same colours as the previous example.

Example of the base menu Example of the sub-menu
Top level menu and sub-menu from my pdmenu menu

Here’s what my makemenu script generates to make the sub-menu:

$ ./makemenu
menu:process:Process notes for 2465:Process notes for 2465
exec:Show _raw (2465):pause:~/HPR/Show_Submission/do_show 2465
exec:_Parse raw (2465):pause:~/HPR/Show_Submission/do_parse 2465
exec:_Edit notes (2465):pause:~/HPR/Show_Submission/do_vim 2465
exec:Run _Pandoc (2465):pause:~/HPR/Show_Submission/do_pandoc 2465
exec:Run _Midori (2465):pause:~/HPR/Show_Submission/do_midori 2465
exec:_Upload HTML (2465):pause:~/HPR/Show_Submission/do_upload 2465
exit:E_xit processing for 2465

This system is under development so may well change in the light of experience.