fman

Command palette

Command palette keywords and names

Give a command your own search words or your own name, without leaving the palette.

A command in the command palette is findable by words that are not in its name, and it can be renamed to a name of your own. Typing transparency selects the row that still reads Set window opacity; typing zip finds Pack. These hidden keywords are never displayed — they only widen what finds a command.

fman ships a set of them, and you can add your own: either from inside the palette or by editing the JSON file by hand.

Editing keywords from the palette

Open the palette (Ctrl+Shift+P), find the row you want, then press Shift+Enter instead of Enter. Enter runs a command; Shift+Enter opens a menu about it.

Three screens, each a normal fuzzy-searchable list:

Screen What it offers Enter Escape
Entry menu Change keywords for "…", Change key bindings for "…", Rename to…, Reset name opens the keyword list or the shortcut list, asks for a new name, or drops the rename back to the palette
Keyword list Add keyword…, then one row per keyword Add asks for a word; a keyword opens the menu below back to the palette
Keyword menu Delete, Go back deletes the keyword, or returns back to the keyword list

Notes:

  • The palette reopens where you left it when you Escape out of the entry menu or the keyword list, with your query and the same row selected — so editing a keyword and immediately trying it out is one flow.
  • A new keyword is lowercased and trimmed. Empty input and words already in the list are ignored.
  • Changes apply on the next keystroke. No restart.
  • The viewer palettes have the same Shift+Enter, for the viewer commands (video_mute, viewer_next_file, …). A viewer entry that ships no command name has nothing to store keywords under and says so in the status bar.

Renaming a command

Rename to… changes what the row says. Rename Quit to Exit and the palette lists Exit — the command itself, its key binding and its shortcut hint are untouched.

The old name is not lost: renaming folds the command's original name(s) into its keywords, so typing quit still finds the row. It is a keyword hit now, so the row shows Exit and underlines nothing.

Reset name appears in the entry menu only while a rename is in place, and hands the label back to fman's own.

Renames live in Command Titles.json — a flat map of command name to one label:

{
    "quit": "Exit",
    "video_mute": "Silence"
}

Same keys, same per-OS user file and same merge rules as the keyword file below; fman ships no titles of its own, so an absent file simply means no renames.

Where they are stored

Command Keywords.json — a flat map of command name to a list of search terms:

{
    "set_window_opacity": ["transparency", "opacity", "alpha"],
    "pack": ["zip", "7z", "tar", "compress"],
    "video_mute": ["sound", "volume", "audio"]
}
  • The keys are command names, the same ones your key bindings use — viewer commands included, which is why the global and the viewer palettes read one file.
  • fman's own list ships with the application and is never modified.
  • Your edits land in %APPDATA%/fman/Plugins/User/Settings/Command Keywords (Windows).json (equivalent per-OS Plugins/User/Settings/ folder elsewhere), next to your Key Bindings (<OS>).json.
  • Unlike key bindings, a command you name in your file replaces fman's list for that command — the other commands are untouched. That is why the in-palette editor always writes the whole list back, fman's terms included: adding one keyword keeps the rest working.
  • Terms are lowercase, and matched the same fuzzy way names are.

Editing the file by hand still works; the palette picks it up the next time it opens.

How a keyword ranks

  • Exact matches come first. Typing a command's whole name, or a whole keyword, puts that row at the very top — which is why exit offers Quit before Extract to opposite, whose name happens to contain e, x, i, t in that order.
  • Otherwise names match first. A row found by its real name ranks above one found only by a keyword.
  • A keyword hit underlines nothing. The typed characters are highlighted in the title only when the title is what matched — a keyword has nothing in the row to underline.
  • All loose keyword hits share one bucket, and inside a bucket rows sort by title length, shortest first. So a command whose keyword only barely matches can outrank the one you meant.

A worked example: why single offers Go to AppData

Add "single pane" to show_only_active_pane, type single, and the first row is Go to AppData:

single
> Go to AppData
  Show only active pane

Nothing is broken. go_to_app_data ships the keyword settings folder, and s, i, n, g, l, e appear in that order inside it — Settings folder — so it is a legitimate fuzzy match. Both rows matched by keyword, so both are in the same last bucket, and Go to AppData (13 characters) sorts above Show only active pane (21).

Two ways to put your row first:

  1. Add the bare word as its own keyword, so it can match exactly: {"show_only_active_pane": ["single pane", "single"]}. An exact keyword is the top bucket and beats every loose hit. Only applies once the whole word is typed — while you are still on singl, both rows are loose again.
  2. Pick a keyword that nothing else swallows. Short, common letter runs like single are subsequences of a lot of English; a distinctive one (onepane, solo) collides with far less.

The general rule: if a keyword surprises you, look for another command whose keyword contains your query as a subsequence — that, plus the shortest-title tie-break, explains nearly every unexpected first row.

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