Shell Scripts Frontend Tool

Shell function library useful to build script frontends.

The library defines a set of functions to display messages and read values from the user on X (using zenity or kdialog) or console (using dialog or plain text) and has been designed to be used by sourcing the library code from other scripts.

The library supports L10N if gettext.sh is installed.

Basic usage

On the typical case the library must be sourced and the SSFT_FRONTEND variable must be set to the desired frontend (zenity, dialog or text); if the variable is not set the default frontend is noninteractive.

To choose the theoretically best looking frontend use the function ssft_choose_frontend as follows:

. ssft.sh || exit 1
[ -n "$SSFT_FRONTEND" ] || SSFT_FRONTEND="$( ssft_choose_frontend )"

Functions and usage documentation

If the script is executed without arguments it prints an usage message and also supports the options --doc, --help and --version

To get a list of available functions call the script with the --doc or -d argument:

$ ssft.sh -d
ssft_set_textdomain
ssft_reset_textdomain
ssft_pager
ssft_choose_frontend
ssft_print_text_title
ssft_display_message
ssft_display_error
ssft_display_emsg
ssft_file_selection
ssft_directory_selection
ssft_progress_bar
ssft_read_string
ssft_read_password
ssft_select_multiple
ssft_select_single
ssft_yesno
ssft_show_file

To get a description of what a given function does call the script with the arguments --doc FUNCTION_NAME, i. e.:

$ ssft.sh -d ssft_choose_frontend

Function: ssft_choose_frontend

Description: print the name of the preferred frontend, but don't set it

Sample scripts

See the ssft-test.sh script for a full usage example; it is distributed with the code inside the test directory and the Debian package leaves a copy on /usr/share/doc/ssft/examples/ssft-test.sh.gz.