Installation
Edit config.mk to match your local setup (dmenu is installed into the /usr/local namespace by default).
Afterwards enter the following command to build and install dmenu (if necessary as root):
make clean install
Running dmenu
See the man page for details.
Usage: dmenu [OPTION]...
Display newline-separated input stdin as a menubar
-b show dmenu at the bottom
-h N set dmenu to be N pixels high
-w W set dmenu to be N pixels horizontally
-x X set dmenu horizontal position
-y Y set dmenu vertical position
-i dmenu matches menu items case insensitively
-l L dmenu lists items vertically, within the
given number of lines
-m dmenu appears on the given Xinerama screen
-p PROMPT prompt to be displayed to the left of the
input field
-r, print out the current text each time a key is pressed
-si i preselected index after the menu opens
-fn FONT font or font set to be used
-nb COLOR normal background color
-nf COLOR normal foreground color
-sb COLOR selected background color
-sf COLOR selected foreground color
-v display version information
pango-imlib
Thumbnails get cached according to XDG thumbnail spec. http://specifications.freedesktop.org/thumbnail-spec/thumbnail-spec-latest.html
Pass -g to generate thumbnails immediatly for the piped images. Pass -is to specify image size (keeping aspect ratio). Pass -ia to specify image alignment (top-center/center/top/bottom/*-gapless, where top-center is default) Note, that using too big images cause slowdown because images are loaded each time, selection image differs from last image.
Example pipe listing with images: IMG:/mnt/pictures/lolcat.jpg\tThis is a lolcat\n IMG:/mnt/pictures/david.jpg\tThis is a picture of david\n This is a item without a picture\n
Additional options: Pass -si to specify starting index to dmenu. ex. -si 5 to start from item 5.