Ubuntu Cuttlefish is a Gtk program similar to EventGhost for Windows, or Tasker for Android: It waits patiently for some sort of user-defined stimulus to occur, and then when that happens, it performs a list of reflexes.
(I call it "Ubuntu Cuttlefish" here because (a) the name "cuttlefish" has many meanings on github and (b) it seems to be purpose-built for Ubuntu, since I've not seen it mentioned elsewhere.)
This repo is a collection of some fairly simple but hopefully useful plugins for cuttlefish, all written in Python.
This is a simple plugin I created as an example (to myself) of how to create a functional cuttlefish action with configurable parameters. Cuttlefish has an option to show a notification when a reflex is triggered, but this lets you choose the text of the notification, and even add a picture if you want.
You can use this plugin to trigger an action based on a window appearing, disappearing, gaining focus, or losing focus. The four input fields are all optional, and if you leave them all blank, the reflex will trigger for any window. Since that's probably not very useful, you can use the xprop(1) command to inspect a window of interest to you, for help choosing values to refine cuttlefish's selection criteria. The WM_NAME prop gives you the window's name, the WM_CLASS prop gives you the window's type, and WM_WINDOW_ROLE gives you the window's role. Note that not all programs will provide all properties for all their windows.
Perform an action when a certain key combination is pressed, no matter what application is currently in the foreground. Your window manager probably has similar functionality, but again, this was useful for learning. Requires the python-keybinder package installed in order to work.
The hotkey you choose is entered as a text string. Modifier keys are enclosed in <angle brackets>, and are followed by the main key. Example: "<Ctrl><Shift>F1"
React when receiving a UDP message on a specific port. Optionally only react if the message body matches the regular expression you enter.
First of all,
you'll need to install cuttlefish. As
Cuttlefish only exists in the Ubuntu 12.04 repos you can add the PPA manually
to your /etc/apt/sources.list ::
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/noneed4anick/cuttlefish/ubuntu precise main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/noneed4anick/cuttlefish/ubuntu precise main
And install via: ::
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install cuttlefish
Alternately you can build and install it manually; this is probably better, since it looks like some volunteers have picked up the half-idle project and are trying to keep it moving.
After that, copy any of these plugins to your ~/.cuttlefish/plugins
directory, and reload cuttlefish via its Edit → Plugins → Reload Plugins
menu entry. You'll now have them available for your own actions and reactions.
David Perry (aka Boolean263)
GPL v3, same as cuttlefish itself. See LICENSE for details.