About AppLaunch

AppLaunch is a MacOS X version of the common “Run” or “Launch” dialogs provided by other operating systems and window managers such as Windows or KDE. It consist of a input box where the user enters a command line that will be passed to the applications workspace. A command in the AppLaunch meaning is not only a “pure” shell command, since version 2 it may also be a file, an application or an URL. For executing this command the program uses the shared workspace instance. The program is written in Objective-C using MacOS X' Cocoa framework, the build environment is Xcode as part of the Apple Developer Tools. For a easy to use handling the program can be dragged into the users dock right next to the Finder icon so that it is good accessible (see the screenshots for an example). The GUI events are caught as known from the dialogs above, so if the user launches the program and presses ESC it will be shut down.

I searched SourceForge as well as Google and Apples list of MacOS X applications to find a similar tool for MacOS X, but currently there seems to be nothing like that. Since I'm coming from Windows via Linux to MacOS X I missed such a command line to launch my Unix programs. That is the reason why most of the times working with Aqua I have a Terminal window opened for quick running Unix and MacOS X applications residing not in my Dock.