Add possibility to import Fly-Pie menus

[in4matix]

Description

I have 3 primary menus that are invoked by 3 hot-key combinations. This is my primary navigation and launching workflow setup on my Ubuntu 22.04 LTS system.

I guess this is really more a question; will it be possible to import menus created in Fly-pie into Kando?

Affected Desktop Environments

Linux

Additional Information

My Menus:

Main:

Dash Pinned Apps:

Home:

[Schneegans]

Hi there! Thanks for the donation! :sparkling_heart:

In theory, this could be possible. Both, Fly-Pie's and Kando's menu configurations are stored in JSON files and the format is almost identical. However, there are some difficulties:

• Most prominently: Icons. Fly-Pie uses icons from your GNOME icon theme. At least for now, Kando does not have access to this but comes with some built-in icon themes. I am not sure how easy it would be to access the user's icon theme... this is very platform-specific...
• For now, Kando only comes with a much smaller set of menu item types. Item types which are available in both are Launch App, Open URI, Simulate Hotkey, and Submenu. So all other menu items cannot be mapped.

So it would be possible to translate the overall structure, but some key information would be lost. Which makes me wonder how useful this would be in practice.

A manual porting of the configuration should be pretty straight-foward as well. You can print Fly-Pie's config with dconf read /org/gnome/shell/extensions/flypie/menu-configuration. Kando's config is in ~/.config/kando/menus.json. You will see that both a very similar.

[in4matix]

Only a pleasure.

The way I use Fly-Pie is that I have a dedicated folder of icons especially for Fly-Pie, so all the menu icons are "custom" icons. This way the user has more control over how they want menu icons to appear. So in my case, all I have to essentially do, as I understand, is to ensure that Kando has access to my "Fly-Pie" icons folder, right?

[Schneegans]

Yes. This will work once #383 is resolved. However, this is pretty high on my priority list :wink:

[in4matix]

Excellent! Perhaps not the best way to get to know Kando, but I feel Linux user's have an advantage coming from Fly-Pie in that we have good experience with this modern and advanced way of using menus. So, in my case, I will not be moving away from Fly-Pie as I understand it quite well and it is a huge part of my daily workflow. I will use Kando, for now, to gain experience, and using in tandem with Fly-Pie.

One thing that is missing in Fly-Pie, and not sure if possible in Ubuntu, but would be a cool addition to both Fly-Pie and Kando, is to be able to invoke a menu with mouse right or middle click(s) ...?

Another option, that unfortunately does not work correctly in Fly-Pie at the moment, is to use a little trigger button "widget" out of the way, in one of the corners of the screen similar to the Floating Dock extension.

[Schneegans]

One thing that is missing in Fly-Pie, and not sure if possible in Ubuntu, but would be a cool addition to both Fly-Pie and Kando, is to be able to invoke a menu with mouse right or middle click(s) ...?

This is not easily possible without either root permissions or at least some daemon running in the background. However, there are some tools which do this for you. A very good one is input remapper. With this you can make a mouse button simulate a hotkey for opening a Fly-Pie / Kando menu!

For the second issue... You can open a Fly-Pie menu via the command line with

gdbus call --session --dest org.gnome.Shell --object-path /org/gnome/shell/extensions/flypie \
           --method org.gnome.Shell.Extensions.flypie.ShowMenu 'Menu Name'

This means you can get creative! You could for instance - at least I think so - create an entry in the floating dock which opens Fly-Pie.

[in4matix]

Thanks so much for this tip! I must really get into the habit of reading manuals!

Screencast from 30-06-2024 21:39:55.webm