dmenu_specs

What is dmenu?

• dmenu reads stdin, it splits the input based on a separator (newline character) and displays each item as a selectable entry. Confirming the selection will output that item to stdout.
• dmenu also has a input textbox, that is used to filter the input list.
• input can be arbitrary and will be shown on stdout the same way as regular entries.

rofi extends standard dmenu behavior in the following ways:

• it's possible to force a selected item. Entries that are not part of stdin are ignored
• each line can have multiple actions, depending on the key that was pressed. rofi will return a different exit code on each key (default: Alt-{1-9} > exit codes 10-18)
• filtering is case insensitive by default.
• entries can be colored line by line
• chosen linenumber can be printed instead of line content. If line was not part of stdin, output is empty
• rofi can select a certain line number on startup.

Proposed extended features:

• allow to separate input into a visible output and a hidden string, which matches output.