blnk

https://github.com/poikilos/blnk

In a "blink," your program, file, or URL appears, expanding environment variables or automatically re-writing absolute home paths if present on any OS.

On any operating system, automate creating and following blnk shortcut files (similar to X .desktop files), expanding %% or $ environment variables (including %CLOUD% for ~/ownCloud or ~/Nextcloud if present) automatically.

This is a from-scratch Python rewrite of blnk-cs (which was C# and formerly called blnk).

Features

• Automatically resolve cross-platform folder naming issues (such as if you are using a cloud app to sync files)! Cross-platform examples:
  • "C:\Users\someone\Documents" becomes "~/Documents" on non-Windows systems but ~ is replaced with the actual user profile.
  • "D:\Meshes" becomes "/Nextcloud/Meshes", "/ownCloud/Meshes", or "~/Meshes", whichever exists (first in that order).
  • "C:\Users\someone\ownCloud" becomes "/Nextcloud" or "/ownCloud", whichever exists.
• Automatically launch the correct program for files if the file isn't a blnk file, in case Linux detects the content type as text and you associate the file type with blnk.
  • The following extensions are known:
    • kdbx: keepassxc
    • nja: ninja-ide
  • The path ~/.local/bin is checked even if the matching program from the list above isn't in your PATH. That check resolves the issue of the feature only working from a terminal (such as if you added PATH=$PATH:/home/owner/.local/bin only to ~/.bashrc).
    • However, resolve the issue for yourself permanently using the step starting with "Add the local bin folder to your path for GUI applications" under "Install on Linux".
• The --non-interactive (or -y) option ensures that no graphical dialog boxes are shown (They will also not be shown if there is no GUI session). If there is no interaction, the caller should show the error output (not standard output necessarily) and check the return of the program. The blnk shell script for GNU+Linux systems uses the option in that way and serves as an example.

Install

• On GNU/Linux systems, run ./install-mimetype.sh
  • The script will try to install the "application/x-blnk" mimetype.
  • Manually associate the application/x-blnk file type with the blnk command wherever you have installed it (Try which blnk to find it if it is in your PATH).
  • Otherwise, you would have to associate text/plain files to blnk and it will try to edit the file if there is no Exec line, or handle the file extension correctly (feature status: See _choose_app in blnk.py; It can't use xdg-open because if the target were plain text, then calling xdg-open would create infinite recursion of xdg-open to blnk then back).
  • It may mimetype $file where $file is your file ending in .blnk still may fail. So:
    • See https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/9856/why-does-xdg-mime-query-filetype-fail-to-find-a-new-added-file-type

See also: "Mimetype" in doc/development.md.

Install on Linux

• Ensure you've installed python3
  • If necessary on your distro such as Ubuntu, install the python-is-python3 package.
• Install geany to open text files if you associate text files with blnk due to not having a separate MIME type.
• Clone or extract the repository to ~/git/blnk (if another location, change instances of that below and in the executable shell script blnk) then:

mkdir -p ~/.local.bin
ln -s ~/git/blnk/blnk ~/.local/bin/blnk

• Add the local bin folder to your path for GUI applications: If ~/.local/bin is not already in your path, add it to ~/.profile so it works in both the graphical environment and terminals. Add the following line to ~/.profile:

export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin"

Enable logging

(on Linux)

• Install via mkdir -p ~/git && git clone https://github.com/poikilos/blnk ~/git/blnk
• Add ~/.local/bin to your PATH then:

ln -s blnk ~/.local/bin/blnk
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/blnk

Use

• Associate blnk files (or plain text files if you're ok with then opening in geany) with "blnk".
• Make a shortcut in the current directory to a path with blnk -s followed by a path.
  • This feature many replace filehandoff.

Check logs

(requires that you first do the "Enable logging" steps and run blnk)

cat ~/.var/log/blnk/*

Troubleshooting

Force automatic re-generation of icon on next run of blnk:

xdg-desktop-icon uninstall ~/.local/share/applications/blnk.desktop
xdg-desktop-icon uninstall ~/Desktop/blnk.desktop
rm ~/.local/share/applications/blnk.desktop
rm ~/Desktop/blnk.desktop

Development

See doc/development.md.