PSO: Pretty Straightforward Opener

xdg-open is bloated.

It is hard to configure, easy to mess up and its configuration is not portable.

pso is a portable POSIX-compliant shell script that is suppose to be a drop-in replacement for xdg-open.

pso have no dependencies other than the GNU Operating System.

It supports regular expressions, URIs and mime types.

It can be easily configured by hand and it is capable autoconfigure itself while using it.

pso is a ~100 lines self explanatory script that can be collocated in the suckless spectrum

Installation

Clone this repository somewhere (in this example $HOME/.local/opt )

mkdir -p $HOME/.local/opt && cd $HOME/.local/opt
git clone https://github.com/galatolofederico/pso.git && cd pso

Copy the configuration files

cp -r config.def/* ~/.config

Create a symbolic link named xdg-open

ln -s pso xdg-open

Add the folder to the $PATH of your X instance as first element (in order to override xdg-open). For example if you are using .xinitrc you have to add

export PATH=$HOME/.local/opt/pso:$PATH

Configuration

The base configuration file is located in $HOME/.config/pso.config (although this can be changed setting the PSO_CONFIG_FILE environment variable).

It defines:

Variable	Meaning
PSO_REGEX_CONFIG	Location of the files regular expression association rules file
PSO_MIME_CONFIG	Location of the mime types regular expression association rules file
PSO_URI_CONFIG	Location of the URIs regular expression association rules file
PSO_FOLDER_CMD	Command for opening the folders
PSO_ASK_MENU	Command for the application chooser menu (or "false" for disabling it)
PSO_ASK_AUTOSAVE	Should pso save mime type associations when chosen? (true/false)
PSO_LOG	Location of the log file (or "false" for disabling it)

you can check out the default values here

Rules

pso behaves in this way:

• IF it have to handle a folder
  • Use the command specified in PSO_FOLDER_CMD
• If it have to handle a file:
  • Check the file name against the files regular expression association rules
  • Check the mime type against the mime types regular expression association rules
• If it have to handle a URI:
  • Check the URI against the URIs regular expression association rules

Each rule is in the form:

parametric_command:rule

Examples

If you want to open all your pdf with zathura you have to add

zathura %s:application/pdf

to the $PSO_MIME_CONFIG file.

Or if you want to open all your text/ files with st -e vim you have to add

st -e "vim %s":text/.*

If you want to open all your .log files with st -e vim you have to add

st -e "vim %s":*\.log$

to the $PSO_REGEX_CONFIG file

If you want to copy to your clipboard the magnet: links you have to add

echo "%s" | xclip -selection clipboard:magnet:(.+)

to the $PSO_URI_CONFIG file.

If you want to open your folders with set -e ranger you have to set $PSO_FOLDER_CMD as:

PSO_FOLDER_CMD="st -e ranger %s"

The parametric_command are evaluated using GNU printf

The regular expressions are evaluated using grep -E extended regular expressions engine.

pretty straightforward, isn't it?

License

This code is released under an open source license (in this case GPLv3) as all the code should be. Feel free to do whatever you want with it :D