Menu{Master,Maestro,etc} question(s)

[Bill Campbell]

On Tue, May 08, 2007, Mike Schwartz wrote:
>     I have probably three (3) customers who still use MenuMaster.  All 3
>are still on SCO Open Server, and may not want to migrate to Linux, although
>this *is* one of the big things they don't want to deal with on Linux.
>
>     I terms of money, none of the 3 would want to pay more than a couple of
>hundred dollars for an upgraded version, though.  I approached them (and the
>list) several years with the opportunity to purchase the original MenuMaster
>(and Maestro, etc.) rights and code for $10,000.00, but I wasn't available
>to gather enough support to do that.

This keeps coming up on the list, I have to ask what would be so difficult
in doing a replacement menu program to replace menumaster and friends.

I write a fairly simple python script with a curses interface that displays
all the executables in a directory and it's children (by default
$HOME/lbin), allowing one to execute programs by highlighting them and
pressing ENTER.  One navigates the programs using the normal arrow keys, vi
cursor keys, j, and k, pgup, pgdown, home, and end, entering the number of
a selection.  One can limit the selection using the normal vi ``/'' key to
enter a pattern then select from the limited set.

The attached screen shot shows the selection from ``/catb'' which allows me
to open ssh sessions to machine ``catbert'' as different users.  To log
into the public IP of catbert, I pressed ``/catb<ENTER>jj<ENTER>''.  I
could have used the down-arrow key instead of the ``jj'', but that would
have required I take my fingers off the home keys.

I consider this a CBE (Crude But Effective) tool that is considerably
faster and easier to use than digging around in a graphical directory
browser to find programs, and can be easily tailored to a specific
application simply by creating a directory structure with meaningful names
for the executables.

Bill
--
INTERNET:   bill at Celestial.COM  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX:            (206) 232-9186  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676

With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law; and every time
they make a law it's a joke.
		-- Will Rogers
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