HUD shown over terminal app with commands visible

Most expert users know how powerful the command line is on their Ubuntu system, but one of the common criticisms of it is that the commands themselves are hard to discover and remember the exact syntax for. To help a little bit with this I've created a small patch to the Ubuntu Terminal which adds entries into the HUD so that they can be searched by how people might think of the feature. Hopefully this will provide a way to introduce people to the command line, and provide experienced users with some commands that they might have not known about on their Ubuntu Phone. Let's look at one of the commands I added:

UnityActions.Action {
  text: i18n.tr("Networking Status")
  keywords: i18n.tr("Wireless;Ethernet;Access Points")
  onTriggered: ksession.sendText("\x03\nnm-tool\n")
}

This command quite simply prints out the status of the networking on the device. But some folks probably don't think of it as networking, they just want to search for the wireless status. By using the HUD keywords feature we're able to add a list of other possible search strings for the command. Now someone can type wireless status into the HUD and figure out the command that they need. This is a powerful way to discover new functionality. Plus (and this is really important) these can all be translated into their local language.

It is tradition in my family to spend this weekend looking for brightly colored eggs that have been hidden. If you update your terminal application I hope you'll be able to enjoy the same tradition this weekend.


posted Apr 18, 2014 | permanent link