labwc-menu - Man Page

Static menus are built based on content of XML files located at "~/.config/labwc" and equivalent XDG Base Directories.

The menu file must be entirely enclosed within <openbox_menu> and </openbox_menu> tags.  Inside these tags, menus are specified as follows:

  <menu id="">

  <!-- A menu entry with an action, for example to execute an application -->
  <item label="">
    <action></action>
  </item>

  <!-- A submenu defined elsewhere -->
  <menu id="" />

  <!-- Horizontal line -->
  <separator />

  <!-- An inline submenu -->
  <menu id="" label="">
    ...some content...
  </menu>

  <!-- Title -->
  <separator label=""/>

  <!-- Pipemenu -->
  <menu id="" label="" execute="COMMAND"/>

</menu>

menu.id (when at toplevel)

Define a menu tree. Each menu must be given an id, which is a unique identifier of the menu. This id is used to refer to the menu in a ShowMenu action. Default identifiers are

• "root-menu" for the root window context menu
• "client-menu" for a window's titlebar context menu
• "client-list-combined-menu" for a list of all windows across all workspaces. Will change focus to the app that gets selected or go to workspace without activating any app if "Go there" is selected.
• "client-send-to-menu" shows all workspaces and sends current view to that workspace when selected.

menu.id (when nested under other <menu> element)

Link to a submenu defined elsewhere (by a <menu id=""> at toplevel)

menu.label

The title of the menu, shown in its parent. A label must be given when defining a menu.

menu.item.label

The visible name of the menu item.

menu.item.action

See labwc-actions(5). Note: XML CDATA is supported for this node in order to maintain compatibility with obmenu-generator.

menu.separator

Horizontal line.

menu.separator.label

In a "separator" element, the label attribute transforms the separator from a horizontal line to a menu title (heading) with the text specified by label in it.

menu.execute

Command to execute for pipe menu. See details below.

Pipe menus are menus generated dynamically based on output of scripts or binaries. They are so-called because the output of the executable is piped to the labwc menu.

For any <menu id="" label="" execute="COMMAND"/> entry in menu.xml, the COMMAND will be executed the first time the item is selected (for example by cursor or keyboard input). The XML output of the command will be parsed and shown as a submenu. The content of pipemenus is cached until the whole menu (not just the pipemenu) is closed.

The content of the output must be entirely enclosed within <openbox_pipe_menu> tags. Inside these, menus are specified in the same way as static (normal) menus, for example:

  <openbox_pipe_menu>
    <item label="Terminal">
      <action name="Execute" command="xterm"/>
    </item>
  </openbox_pipe_menu>

Inline submenus and nested pipemenus are supported.

Note that it is the responsibility of the pipemenu executable to ensure that ID attributes are unique. Duplicates are ignored.

When writing pipe menu scripts, make sure to escape XML special characters such as "&" ("&amp;"), "<" ("&lt;"), and ">" ("&gt;").

Available localisation for the default "client-menu" is only shown if no "client-menu" is present in menu.xml. Any menu definition in menu.xml is interpreted as a user-override.

labwc(1), labwc-actions(5), labwc-config(5), labwc-theme(5)

labwc(1), labwc-actions(5), labwc-config(5), labwc-menu-generator(1).