README

                          Shell Is The New Launcher
                            

                               WHY FROM SHELL?


If you always have a shell just one <mod-tab> keystroke away, then you must 
ask yourself why using a GUI launcher or selecting from application menu when 
you already have a perfect launcher, that is the shell in terminal window, 
which likely comes with auto-completion and history, already loaded and 
running, awaiting orders, why not just use it?

Granted, this is not for anyone or any environment, but if you like me, using 
dwm, and always have a couple of shells ready for commands, try to launch from 
shell.

And if you are convinced, welcome aboard, my fellow shell launcher!


                                     BUT?


When running an X Window program from shell, there is a couple of things need 
to be dealt with:

    1. Possible messages from the program to standard output and error and
    2. The terminal is now running the program, the shell is in background.

Within the conventional launcher, you wouldn't see those messages and you 
don't want to see them, and there is no terminal to take over.  If one program 
takes one shell's terminal, that would be lots of terminal windows.

You can run with

    $ nohup command arg1 arg2 &> /dev/null &

To make sure the messages go to black hole and the program detaches, so it 
doesn't interfere with the shell and it continues to run even after the shell 
exits.

The drawback of using shell as launcher for X programs is you need to type 
lots of extra characters, but the following HELPERS section got you covered.


                                   HELPERS


There are a few ways to reduce the typing:

    1. add the following function to your shell

        x()
        {
            nohup "$@" &> /dev/null &
        }
        complete -cf x  # Bash

    2. use the x script in this repository

When using a helper, you only need to type:

    $ x comman<TAB><ENTER>


                                  COPYRIGHT


UNLICENSE has been applied to this repository.