Omni is intended to be a painfully simple way to build a button interface for common shell commands on touchscreen GNU/Linux devices, with an initial focus on the Pinephone.

It accepts input either from a file or STDIN, reading lines in pairs and creating a button with the first line as the button text and the second a command to be passed to the shell when the button is pressed. This exact method for input will likely be changed (or at least extended) in the future.

Getting started:

To start using omni, place the executable in your PATH, or in another convenient location. Create a text file with lines that alternate button labels with shell commands. Then run

$ omni [filename]

Examples:

Yes
echo yes
No
echo no

This tells omni to create two buttons labeled "Yes" and "No", which will echo the indicated word to the terminal.

mediabuttons.omni:

Play
& ssh user@host mediaplayer --play
Pause
& ssh user@host mediaplayer --pause
Next
& ssh user@host mediaplayer --skip
Exit
sleep 0

This could be used as a remote control for a media player running on a remote system. Note the commands that start with &, which causes the menu to persist.