Using Kupfer in Depth
Adding Applications and Scripts
Kupfer will show all applications that are configured visible in your menu editor.
If you want to add an application manually, you can create a new .desktop file and place it in one of the standard directories for applications, for example ~/.local/share/applications, where Kupfer will find it.
If you have a collection of scripts that you want to call from Kupfer, you can add the scripts folder as a catalog directory to Kupfer in the preferences. Scripts that you add to Kupfer's catalog this way can be run directly or in the terminal as long as they are executable.
You can also save command-lines by using the action Add to Favorites.
Opening Files and Folders
Using the action Open, files and folders are opened in their preferred application. The application associations can be changed, see Applications.
Show Hidden Files
Use Alt+→ instead of just → when descending into a directory to list hidden files too.
The Comma Trick
The comma trick allows the user to use actions on many objects at the same time.
Simply press comma , when an object is selected. The object is put on a "stack", and you can find yet another file or object, press comma to put it on the stack. When you subsequently invoke an action, the action is carried out on all of the objects at the same time.
Some actions are only "multiplied" when used with many objects, other are smarter than that:
Selecting many files and using the Create Archive action, all files will be packed into the same archive.
If you select multiple contacts and use a Send Email action, it creates one email directed at all the contacts.
If you select multiple subcatalogs (For example Firefox Bookmarks and Epiphany Bookmarks) and use Search Contents.., you get a subcatalog search restricted to the objects of those two catalogs! You can even bind a trigger to this command(!)
The comma trick is directly taken from Quicksilver (the example given in the external article should work identically in Kupfer).
Grab Current Selection
To use the current selected text, from any application, with Kupfer, you can configure a global keyboard shortcut for the action Show with Selection in Kupfer Preferences.
If configured, pressing the global keyboard shortcut will summon Kupfer with the current selection as the focused object.
Command-line Connection
The command kupfer on the command-line will focus Kupfer if it's already running, otherwise it will start it.
The command kupfer can be used to send files or text from the command-line to Kupfer. For example, if you are using the shell in a directory where you have a file called "report.pdf", you can focus this file in Kupfer by running kupfer report.pdf.
You can also send text if you pipe the output of a command into kupfer.
Managing Context and Current Selection
If you find the object you want to use, then invoke an action, Kupfer goes away to perform the action (for example start a program or play a song). When you come back to Kupfer, it will still keep the same object and action selected. Some actions make sense to be repeated (like skipping to the next song) and it can be useful to perform different actions on the same object.
However, you always have the top level catalog reachable when you "come back" to Kupfer -- say you went into the subcatalog "Albums" to browse your albums only; you select an album to play, and play it. You come back with the album selected -- but your next search will still go over the top level catalog, not just albums.
How to come back into the subcatalog you were in? You do that by simply browsing, not searching the first thing you do when you focus Kupfer again. A quick way is to press down-arrow or space to open the browse window; think of it as saying "I want to stay in this subfolder". With the browse window open, your next query will search the current subcatalog.
This way you can work both ways -- you can quickly drill down into folders to find a file, and when you come back for the next action with Kupfer you can either summon any normal toplevel object (just start typing), or stay around where you were, deep in that folder (press space, then type a query).
Saving Commands as Files
You can use keyboard shortcut for Compose Command (by default it is Ctrl+Return) to create a command object out of the currently focused command in Kupfer. This object can be saved as a runnable file if you use the Save As... action. The resulting file will can be executed when opened from the file manager (it requires that Kupfer is already running).
Ignoring Accents
You can find an object by an unaccented version of its name (this is more or less only implemented for latin-based alphabets). For example an item named Suð í can be matched with sud i because the accent is removed and the ð transliterated to d.