Starlight

A practical application launcher for impractical people

Preface

There's nothing like writing your own application launcher and having complete control over what you can do with it.

This app (written in Racket) is a powerful framework for building your own personal app launcher. It's extensible and extremely customizable in all the ways that matter and none of ways that don't. This is the perfect solution for hackers that like to shoot themselves in the foot.

So what's the big idea

So... when Starlight starts, it parses a file in your home directory called .starlight.rkt. It populates the launcher window with targets defined in the aforementioned file. As you type a target into the input window, your the launcher will narrow down based on whether it matches what you are typing. Once the app field is narrowed down to one selection, striking the "Enter" key will run the code you assigned to that target. The launcher window will then hide itself.

Starlight starts a TCP server and listener on port 9876. Any request to localhost:9876 will cause the launcher to re-appear. It disappears when you

• run another target
• strike "Enter" with nothing in the input field
• or make another request to localhost:9876

Since the launcher is always running, it appears very quickly.

So why is it powerful

Starlight exploits the Lisp's powerful mechanisms for dynamic code execution. As mentioned before, upon starting the Starlight "server", it parses a file in your home directory called .starlight.rkt. This file could contain any valid racket code you want, but the necessary piece is that you define a (quoted) list of pairs named lookup. The first item each pair is a symbol; this is what you type into the input field in the launcher to perform a particular action. The second item in each pair is a form to execute when it's corresponding symbol is chosen and run. For convenience, the function exec is defined so that you can issue shell commands more easily.

For example, a two item starlight configuration would may look like this...

(define lookup
  `((firefox (exec "firefox"))
    (terminal (exec "gnome-terminal"))))

The .starlight.rkt file has access to all the variables and functions of the code that runs the starlight "server". You can, therefore, make changes to the .starlight.rkt file and have the server re-parse this file to make changes to the app in as the starlight code runs. Another example .starlight.rkt file may look like this....

(define lookup
  `((firefox (exec "firefox"))
    (terminal (exec "gnome-terminal"))
    (reload (load-rc))
    (repl (graphical-read-eval-print-loop))))

In this one, executing the "reload" target after you add pairs to lookup will add these recipes to starlight the next time the window shows. Executing the "repl" target will open up a racket REPL that gives you full access to the variables and functions of the running server. The opportunities to shoot yourself in the foot are endless!

The fact that .starlight.rkt can contain any valid Racket forms/code creates the opportunity to do some really neat things. For example, you can create a target called wiki that searches wikipedia for anything that comes after wiki and a colon.

To do this, we have to (re)define the arg-separator global variable so that Starlight will know to run the wiki target even though the input field will contain more text...

(define arg-separator #rx"[ :]")

Now we can write a function that will return a string of the text after the colon in the input field...

(define (get-after-colon theinput)
  (let ([separated (string-split theinput ":")])
    (string-trim (car (cdr separated)))))

Finally let's add another recipe to the lookup variable from before...

(define lookup
  `((firefox (exec "firefox"))
    (terminal (exec "gnome-terminal"))
    (reload (load-rc))
    (repl (graphical-read-eval-print-loop))
    ; this command's syntax is mac specific
    (wiki
      (let [(url (string-append
                   "open -a Firefox 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search="
                   (get-after-colon inputcontents) "'"))]
        (exec url)))))

Finally, the OS can be determined using the (system-type 'os) form in racket. This will allow you to test the OS and provide different lists to lookup based on your current system. This is useful for having just one .starlight.rkt configuration which will work across all your platforms.

Installation

If you're using a mac With racket you can build standalone executables that contain a racket interpreter. In the ./mac-app/ folder you'll see Starlight.app with a cute dinosaur icon apropos of nothing. Drag that into your /Applications/ folder. You can have it start up everytime you log in by going to "System Preferences -> Users & Groups" clicking the "Login Items" pane and adding "Starlight".

Now, you have to make the appropriate files in a directory called .starlight in your home folder. To do it most easily, run

git clone https://github.com/tonyfischetti/starlight-config.git ~/.starlight

and make the configuration file (config.rkt) your own!

Finally, you have to assign a keyboard shortcut to the command curl "http://localhost:9876" which will be able to bring up (or tear down) the launcher. I suggest ICanHazShortcut which is delightfully easy to use. I like to map the curl command to Shift+Backspace.

If you don't have a mac This directions are applicable to Mac users, too First, you have to install racket. Then clone this project into your home directory (or anywhere you'd like, really)...

git clone https://github.com/tonyfischetti/starlight.git ~/starlight

Now, you have to make the appropriate files in a directory called .starlight in your home folder. To do it most easily, run

git clone https://github.com/tonyfischetti/starlight-config.git ~/.starlight

and make the configuration file (config.rkt) your own!

To start the Starlight "server", run the start-starlight.sh shell script in this repository. (Make sure the Racket bin directory is in your PATH environment variable.) Alternatively, you can just run racket -e '(enter! "starlight.rkt")' & in the shell. You may want to run this command at startup so you don't have to remember to start the server everytime you restart your computer.

Finally, we have to assign a keyboard shortcut to the command curl "http://localhost:9876" which will be able to bring up (or tear down) the launcher.

FAQ

Is Starlight for everyone?

I'd like anyone who is interested to look into it but Starlight is certainly not for everybody. It's power is (strictly speaking) unecessary. Starlight is probably best suited for use among Lisp hackers. Given that impractical Lisp hackers tend to write practical solutions to all their problems themselves, I predict no one but me will be using this. If you do, dear reader, let me know :)