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I want create a simple graphical (Qt, Gtk, ...) dialog, concretly a simple print dialog, as a "frontend" to lpr, in bash. What I want? How many pages per page, printing interval. It's (at least) two options.

What is the best util(s) to solve this problem?

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7 Answers 7

Reset to default
26

There is

Other implementations are reported to exist:

If you use gpm, you can even use the mouse in a console environment. It requires a tty, so it will work over ssh, screen, xterm etc. but not when piping/redirecting.

Both sport more or less the same interface so you can switch depending on whether an X display is available

Here is a dialog script that displays a simple YES/NO box:

#!/bin/bash
DIALOG=${DIALOG=dialog}

$DIALOG --title " My first dialog" --clear \
        --yesno "Hello , this is my first dialog program" 10 30

case $? in
  0)
    echo "Yes chosen.";;
  1)
    echo "No chosen.";;
  255)
    echo "ESC pressed.";;
esac

enter image description here

Replacing dialog by xdialog:

enter image description here

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8 Comments

See also zenity and kdialog.
@choroba - ooh my knowledge was dated; I don't use this very often :) Adding those
I know about these, but I don't know how can I put more than one item to dialog box, e.g. a yesno and an inputbox and a fselect. Or is this impossible?
@uzsolt: if you'd be so kind as to click on those links - every single one (edit except perhaps dialog) of them contains 'advanced' examples. However, if you really wanted to do 'complicated' dialgos, I suggest you a. use builtin guis from lpr and cups b. write in python/perl/etc
@sehe I've checked Xdialog's homepage before I've asked this question but I didn't found "advanced" examples. Now checked again, zenity and kdialog too but again not found. Or am I blind? :)
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6

I've searched what dialog creators are. I found yad and with this I can set my desired options:

yad --skip-taskbar --center --title="Print dialog" {--image,--window-icon}=/usr/share/icons/Tango/72x72/devices/printer1.png --form --item-separator=, --field="Pages per sheet":CB 1,2,4,6,8 --field="Pages"

Dialog

And when I choose "2 pages per sheet" and pages "1-12" and after click OK the output will 2|1-12|.

This is what I desired. Zenity or Xdialog can do similar?

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3

Whiptail displays user-friendly dialog boxes from shell scripts

Whiptail is a dialog replacement using newt instead of ncurses. It provides a method for displaying several different types of dialogue boxes from shell scripts. This allows a script developer to interact with the user in a much friendlier manner.

whiptail example

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1

matedialog (AKA mate-dialog) uses GTK+. It may also be the only script GUI dialog tool available under Cygwin.

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1

If you wish to create a pure-Bash graphical dialogue then ctypes has an example of GTK+ dialogue generation. In theory it should be able to call any GUI library installed or shipped alongside the script. As of October 2020 it looks to be actively maintained.

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That looks interesting, I’ll also give several of the other suggestions on this page a try.
1

I know this is an old thread, but I strive to give my 2 cents. There is also guish you could try, though experimental.

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0

You could use gdialog in gnome/ubuntu. I can't find xdialog anymore in 14.10. The answer from @sehe works with it just change dialog for gdialog.

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apt-get install xdialog

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