Fluxbox: combining commands in a user menu

Yes, this should be on the Fluxbox wiki... but asking for an account is long and slow.

I wouldn't have known about this unless I hadn't had a long IRC with a user called mark-t, who was eventually helpful enough to finally give me the answer, but not so that he [or she, perhaps? Who can tell with the Internet?] wanted to tell anyone else.

SO...

The basic Fluxbox menu will probably not suit your needs, and it's a very easy thing to build your own. There is a basic guide which tells you MOST of what you need to know: but what is not clear from the page is that there is a way to have more than one program started up at the same time; and also a way to have a toggled state.

The [much more complete] man page hints to this: it states that any legal key command can be used as a menu item. The difference [which is also not explained in the man page!] is that it has to be written in the form [command {Exec program_1}...{Exec program_n}](label)

The two commands you might be interested in here are MacroCmd, which allows you start two processes one after another; and ToggleCmd, which gives you a switch [although you won't be able to see the state of the switch - maybe a Fluxbox wish?]

So, if I wanted to launch Psi and Opera at the same time, my menu entry would be

[MacroCmd {Exec psi} {Exec opera}](psi-opera-megasymbiotic-launcher)

And if I wanted to toggle JACK:

[ToggleCmd {Exec jackd} {Exec pkill jackd}] (Jack)

Simple really. Just not explained. Welcome to Linux!