Menoku

About Menoku

The Idea

The idea behind Menoku is to make an application menu laid out like a Sudoku board. A single window is divided into nine groups of nine icons, making an array of nine by nine. Each icon can either load a new menu of up to 81 icons or can launch an application. To select an icon, you can either click on it or use your numberpad to select which group of nine icons to choose from and then which of the nine icons to activate. (See the Screenshots page if this isn't clear)

Why is this a good idea? Well, the purpose of Menoku is to try to make a more effecient menu system, and it does so by combining the best elements from several common application launching methods:

The Program

Menoku is a Qt4 application written in C++ under the Gnu General Public License. It uses an XML menu specification with the goal of extensibility in mind. It works perfectly under Windows and most Unix-like systems, and with very minor tweaks could also work for Macs! Right now Menoku is BETA level code. It's a new and exciting idea, but the interface could probably use a lot of work. That said, it should be perfectly stable and it has been well tested.

As it stands, the sole developer of Menoku is Nathan Gaylinn. He wrote all of the Menoku code except for the OS-independent system tray and keyboard shortcut code which was borrowed from a Jabber Client called Psi under the GPL. However, this could change. If you would like to help improve menoku and help it grow, please send an email my way!