Radical menu system for AwesomeWM

=======================================

Warning If you use Awesome git master, please use the awesome3.6 branch

This is Radical, one of the largest Awesome extension module. It provide un unified interface to generate multiple types of menus.

News

December 2016

This module master branch is now for Awesome 4.0+. If you use Awesome 3.5, please use the awesome3.5 branch.

Installation

Installing Radical is simple, just move to ~/.config/awesome and clone the repository

cd ~/.config/awesome
git clone https://github.com/Elv13/radical.git

The require it at the top of your rc.lua:

    local radical = require("radical")

Usage

Unlike awful.menu, radical act like other Awesome 3.5 layouts. You need to add items one by one. This have the benefit of letting you interact with the items themselves programatically.

The most simple kind of menus, contexts one, can be created like this:

    local menu = radical.context{}
    menu:add_item {text="Screen 1",button1=function(_menu,item,mods) print("Hello World! ") end}
    menu:add_item {text="Screen 9",icon= beautiful.awesome_icon}
    menu:add_item {text="Sub Menu",sub_menu = function()
        local smenu = radical.context{}
        smenu:add_item{text="item 1"}
        smenu:add_item{text="item 2"}
        return smenu
    end}
    
    -- To add the menu to a widget:
    local mytextbox = wibox.widget.textbox()
    mytextbox:set_menu(menu, "button::pressed", 3) -- 3 = right mouse button, 1 = left mouse button
    
    -- To add a key binding on a "box" menu (and every other types)
    menu:add_key_binding({"Mod4"},",")

In this example, a simple 3 item menu is created with a dynamically generated submenu. Please note that generating submenus using function will generate it every time it is being shown. For static menus, it is faster to simply create them once and passing the submenu object to the "sub_menu" item property.

:set_menu can also take a lazy-loading function instead of a menu. The second and third parameters are not mandatory, the defaults are "button::pressed" and 1, respectively.

:add_key_binding will add a key binding. It can also take a function as 3rd parameter. However, it wont correctly place "context" menu as it have no idea where you expect them. It work better with "box" menus.

Menu types

The current valid types are:

• Context: Regular context menu
• Box: Centered menus (think Windows alt-tab menu)
• Embed: Menus in menus. This can be used as subsections in large menus
• Bar: A compact horizontal wibox widget
• Flexbar: An extensible horizontal wibox widget
• Dock: OS X like dock with auto hiding and rectangular items

Menu style

Each menus come in various styles for various applications. New style can also be created by beautiful themes. The current ones are:

• Arrow: Gnome3 and Mac OSX like menus with border radius and an arrow
• Classic: Replicate awful.menu look

Arrow also have a few types:

• radical.base.arrow_type.NONE
• radical.base.arrow_type.PRETTY
• radical.base.arrow_type.CENTERED

Note that both menu and items have a margins property to ajust details:

    my_menu.margins.left = 12
    local item = my_menu:add_item {test="Need room"}
    item.margins.top = 3

Item style

Like menus, items can have their own style. Valid values:

• Basic: The most simple kind of items, no borders or special shape
• Classic: 1px border at the end of each items
• Rounded: A 3px border radius at each corner
• Arrow_alt: "Powerline" arrow with alternating colors
• Arrow_prefix: The item prefix are "Powerlined"
• Arrow_single: The item start with a < and end with a >

Menu layouts

On top of each styles, menu can also have different layouts to display items:

• Vertical: Items are displayed on top of each other
• Horizontal: Items are displayed alongside each other
• Grid: Items are displayed as a 2D array

Item layout

Item layouts are how widgets (icons, label, prefix) are disposed in the item

• horizontal: Default layout used by the context style
• icon: Look like a desktop icon, used by horizontal menus
• centerred: Align widgets at the center instead of using all space

Using styles and layouts

    local radical = require("radical")
    
    local m = radical.context {
        style      = radical.style.classic      ,
        item_style = radical.item.style.classic ,
        layout     = radical.layout.vertical    }
    

Tooltip

Radical also have its own styled tooltip widget. It can be used in menus, but also in every widgets using the set_tooltip method:

local mytextbox = wibox.widget.textbox()
mytextbox:set_tooltip("foo bar")

Options

Radical offer a (very, very) wide range of options to allow the creation of rich and novel menus. The options are available in 2 formats: menu wide and item specific. Menu wide options will take effect on all items and on the way the menu itself is being displayed while items ones apply only to a specific item. Multiple items can have multiple sets of options.

Menu options

Item options

Colors options

The colors option are available for both menus and items objects.

Common methods

All menus provide a bunch of methods. Most of them have been coverred above, but here is the list:

Signals

Menu also emit many signals, the syntax is usually PROPERTY_NAME::changed. Some others are item::moved, item::swapped, item::removed, item::appended

Here is an example of how to catch an "opacity" change:

    mymenu:connect_signal("opacity::changed",function(value)
        -- Do something
    end)

Most item_layout also repackage the default widget signals. It usually does the same as using the buttonX menu attributes, but is preferrable in some scenarios like when a modifier is applied.

mods is an array with the applied modifier as key. If the value is nil, then the modifier is not present. Usual modifiers are Control, Shift, mod1 (Alt) and mod4.

An example of how to use them:

    local menubar = radical.bar{}
    menubar:connect_signal("button::press",function(data,item,button,mods)
        if mods.Control then
            print("Foo menu pressed!",item.text,button,data.rowcount)
        end
    end)
    
    -- Also work on items
    menubar:add_item{text="bar"}:connect_signal("button::release",function(d,i,b,m)
        print("bar click released!")
    end)

Beautiful options

Radical also use the some of the same theme options as awful.menu, plus some:

Styling can also be done using the icon_transformation option. This feature allow masks such as desaturation, tinting, invert or some matrix to be applied on the pixmap before it is being drawn. This function take the path/surface as only parameter and return the transformed surface.

Other elements can be added to items such as prefix and siffixes. Those elements sometime need extra color groups. The add_color_group method allow to register such new category.

Some generic menu can also register beautiful namespaces using the add_colors_namespace method. For example, the tasklist namespace can be used by adding elements such as beautiful.tasklist_bg_urgent to your theme.

Extending Radical

Radical is not designed to be used "as is". Every menus are different. While common ones can be created without extending Radical capabilities, more advanced one most likely will. Good news, this is what Radical have been designed for. The previous generations proved to me that any lack or native extensibility will cause the code to bloat when it come to adding a feature. Radical horizontal design allow to add more modules and properties without having to touch the "core" files.

Object model

The Radical object model is similar to the Awesome one. Each objects have a set of signals developers can listen to to have changes notification. The big difference is that Radical object model automatically generate the properties themselves. If one desire to add a new one, it is possible to listen to item::added to apply it on the item or apply it directly on the menu itself depending if the property is for the menu or for an item. Here is an example how it work:

    local menu = radical.context{}
    
    -- Create the setter
    menu.set_foo = function(m,value)
        print("Setting value to:",value)
        m._foo_real = value
    end
    
    -- Create the getter
    menu.get_foo = function(m)
        print("Getter called, returning",m._foo_real)
    end
    
    -- The property is now created, this will call the setter:
    menu.foo = "my foo value"
    
    -- This will call the getter:
    print(menu.foo)
    
    -- The signals will be automatically generated
    data:connect_signal("foo::changed",function(m,value)
        print("foo changed:",value)
    end)
    
    -- New signals don't need to be registered and can be called right away
    data:connect_signal("my_new_signal::action_name",function(m,value1,value2,value3)
        print("Callback",m,value1,value2,value3)
    end)
    
    -- Manually emiting a signal
    menu:emit_signal("my_new_signal::action_name",value1,value2,value3)
    

State model

Radical support multiple states per item at once. The "current state" is the one with the smallest ID. A state ID is an integer from -inf to inf. More important states, like urgent versus checked can be implemented by using an appropriate ordering. The default set of states is subject to changes, so it is wiser to use a completely different range if someone want to replace the currents one. Each states can be assigned a background and foreground color using the radical.theme.register_color(id, radical_name, beautiful_name, true ) method. Toggling a state can be done using the item.state[] meta table:

    local my_state_name = 9999 -- <== The ID
    local menu = radical.context{}
    local item = menu:add_item{text="text"}
    
    -- Activate a state
    item.state[my_state_name] = true
    
    -- Desactivate a state
    item.state[my_state_name] = nil
    

Radical will take care of choosing the current state and redraw the item with the right background and foreground colors.

Layout

TODO

Style

TODO

Item layout

TODO

Item style

TODO