xanadu - README.rst

-rw-r--r-- README.rst
      1 xanadu
      2 ======
      3 
      4 xanadu is a standalone desktop metaphor for desktop environments that do not
      5 bundle one, such as standalone window managers. xanadu acts as an underlay
      6 surface beneath regular windows that displays the contents of a specified
      7 directory as icons. These icons can be activated to perform arbitrary
      8 operations on the selected file or folder, such as opening it with a default
      9 handler.
     10 
     11 Currently, the displayed folder is ``${XDG_DESKTOP_DIR:-$HOME/Desktop}``.
     12 
     13 xanadu is Gtk-based and so styling will be determined by your configured Gtk
     14 theme.
     15 
     16 Usage
     17 -----
     18 
     19 xanadu does not launch new processes itself. Instead, it simply prints the full
     20 path of activated items to the standard output stream. This makes it easy to
     21 use better-suited tools to figure out what to do.
     22 
     23 For example, this will delegate item handling to the useful ``mimeopen`` script
     24 packaged by many *nix distributions ("perl-file-mimeinfo" on Arch Linux), and
     25 folder handling to ``thunar``:
     26 
     27 .. code-block:: sh
     28 
     29    xanadu | while read item
     30    do
     31        if test -d "$item"
     32        then
     33            thunar "$item"
     34        else
     35            mimeopen $item
     36         fi
     37    done
     38 
     39 For alternative tools, I recommend `Default applications`_ on the Arch Wiki.
     40 
     41 .. _`Default applications`: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Default_applications
     42