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GMenu2X - Documentation

Installation

The simpliest way of installing GMenu2X is to copy autorun.gpu and the folder gmenu2x to the root of your sd card, but you can also install it to a different location.

If you want to install the program to a different location you have to edit the file autorun.gpu.

For example if you want to install it to the nand (useful if you have multiple sd cards) you have to edit the file like this:

autorun.gpu

#!/bin/sh
cd /mnt/nand/gmenu2x
exec ./gmenu2x

Controls

X, Stick left: Goes up one directory in file browser.
X: Cancel action.
B, Stick press: Launch selected link / Confirm action.
L, R: Switch between sections - PageUp/PageDown on lists.
Y: Bring up the manual/readme.
VOLDOWN: Decrease cpu clock.
VOLUP: Increase cpu clock.
VOLDOWN+VOLUP: Reset clock.
A+VOLDOWN: Decrease volume for the selected link.
A+VOLUP: Increase volume for the selected link.
A+VOLDOWN+VOLUP: Reset volume for the selected link.
SELECT: Bring up the contextual menu.
START: GMenu2X options.

Configuration

Before you can use gmenu2x you have to create the links to the applications and the games you want to appear in the menu.

From version 0.3 you can create links directly from gmenu2x. To do that, bring up the option menu by pressing SELECT and choose Add link in '...' , then browse to the game/application directory and select an application. The link will be added to the selected section.

Sections

You can create any number of sections just by creating a new directory under sections/ and adding the corresponding icon with the same name as the directory plus the '.png' extension.

For example if you want to create the "emulators" section, you have to create the directory sections/emulators and place the icon as sections/emulators.png.

There are 4 pre-configured sections: applications, emulators, games and settings.

From version 0.6 sections are also creatable from gmenu2x.

Links

Links are located in the corrisponding section directory (IE: sections/games).

The links are plain-text files containing the informations needed by GMenu2X to display and launch the games. A sample link looks like this:

title=SNES
description=SquidgeSnes: Super Nintendo Emulator
icon=icons/snes.png
clock=266
exec=/mnt/sd/snes/squidgesnes.gpe

The syntax is made of a number of keys and values lines. Keys are case-sensitive so title is not the same as Title.

Here is a list of keys.

title

This is the title of the application/game, it's value is only used for display purposes.

description

Optional
A short description of the application/game.

icon

Optional
The path to the icon for the application/game. If not specified a default icon will be used or the png file with the same name as the exec param if the file exists.
The icon size should be 32x32px.

clock

Optional
Sets the default clock speed for the link (can be modified at run-time)

volume

Optional
Sets the volume for the link (can be modified at run-time).

exec

The path to the application to launch. If the file doesn't exist the link will be disabled, so that you can create links for applications that are not installed or that are on different sd cards, and GMenu2X will only show the valid ones.
The path can be relative instead of absolute and GMenu2X will check for the existence of the file based on the workdir directive or on the current path (usually /mnt/sd/gmenu2x).

workdir

Optional
If specified Gmenu2X will chdir to this path before the launch of the link. If not specified GMenu2X will chdir to the path of the exec key (IE: /mnt/sd/drmd if exec=/mnt/sd/drmd/drmd.gpe).

params

Optional
Optional parameters to pass to the application/game to launch.

There are some magic string which will be replaced before the launch of the link: * [selPath]: this string will be replaced by the selector path. * [selFile]: this string will be replaced by the selected file's name, in the selector, without its extension. * [selExt]: this string will be replaced by the selected file's extension. * [selFullPath]: this is a shortcut value that means [selPath][selFile][selExt]

wrapper

Values: true, false
Optional, default:false
If true GMenu2X will launch the link around a script that will relaunch GMenu2X after program termination.

dontleave

Values: true, false
Optional, default:false
If true GMenu2X will not terminate when launching the link. Useful for launching programs in background.

selectordir

Optional
If a valid directory is specified, then gmenu2x will show a list of files to launch with the link when it is selected.

selectorbrowser

Values: true, false
Optional, default:false
If true the selector will allow to change the folder.

selectorfilter

Optional
If this directory is specified, then only files matching this filter are shown on the selector screen.

You can specify multiple filters separating them with a comma (,).

A typical filter could be ".zip,.smc"

selectorscreens

Optional
If this directory is specified, gmenu2x will search here for a file with the same name as the file selected in the selector but with the png extension and it will display it as a screenshot.

Screenshots should be of a maximum size of 160x160px.

aliasfile

Optional
A file that contains a list of aliases for the files in the selector. Useful for those emulators that have roms with fixed file names like MAME, CPS2 and NeoGeo.

The alias file must contain a list of aliases like this:

pacland=Pac Land

The selector

The selector is useful to launch a link with a file that can be selected from a list.

The link's property that activates the selector for the link is selectordir.

The selector displays a list of files matching a given filter and showing a corresponding screenshot if present.

If the params property is empty it will be substituted by the selected filename, otherwise you will need to use some magic string that will be replaced with the selected file's informations. (See the params property documentation for details on the supported magic strings)

The corresponding params property if not specified is "[selPath][selFile][selExt]" (note that quotes are included).

Example params line

Customising the interface

You can customise the appearance of GMenu2X by changing wallpapers and fonts and other gui elements. They are located in imgs/ and icons/.

GMenu2X uses a custom version of SFont (Included in the source package). You can use sfontmake or SFont FontbuilderGUI (Win) to create fonts for GMenu2X.

Since version 0.9 GMenu2X extended the characters supported by adding utf8, so the official sfontmake utility is no longer compatible wih GMenu2X. GMenu2X uses a modified version of sfontmake which supports those characters. This utility has not been released yet, but send me an email if you need it.