What is "Manjaro ToolBox" and how does it have a CLI Translator?!

[hohenheim]

On my GNOME machine, I started searching for terminal. When I got to typing ‘term’, I saw another app appear in the list of options, simply titled “Toolbox”.

When I opened it, it does open up a CLI toolbox that looks like this:

I’m assuming this is a default Manjaro app, but I haven’t found any info about it on the forum or online. So, I had three specific questions:

1. Does indeed come as default with Manjaro, and where I can find more info about it?
2. How do I invoke it directly from a CLI (instead of looking it up on the GNOME menu)? I’ve tried toolbox, manjaro-toolbox & ToolBox, but none of them work.
3. The CLI translator is quite powerful. It’s actually both a dictionary and a translator, giving accurate definitions of English words as well as pretty good translations of both words and sentences from other languages (I tried French and English). But this begs the question: what’s it based on? It’s a fantastic tool and solves many problems for me, but I’d rather not have any invasive/non-free software (e.g. Google Translate APIs etc) on my machine.

Thanks a lot, and appreciate any help on these questions!

[cscs]

@hohenheim

a default Manjaro app

Not really… its more of a collection of scripts organized in a TUI.

GitHub - puxplaying/toolbox: Collection of terminal applications for Manjaro...

1. Oddly enough, the package name is actually bmenu, and yes it comes in the gnome edition
   (manjaro/gnome/Packages-Desktop · master · Profiles & Settings / iso-profiles · GitLab)
   Though not any of the other official editions.

2. bmenu
   (again this is a bit odd)

3. It uses this: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/soimort/translate-shell/gh-pages/trans.awk
   Specifically invoked by:
   gawk -f <(curl -Ls git.io/translate) -- -shell

PS - the author of it is @pux

[hohenheim]

Thank you so much, this is so helpful! Just on 3 – I’m more or less a newbie when it comes to understanding privacy in this context. It looks like the tool does use Google, Bing & Yandex APIs, but at the same time it doesn’t need any log in.

As such…should I treat it as a privacy risk? I suppose to an extent it is, since it must have to ping these services (again, based on my limited understanding I’m assuming it needs to ‘phone home’ to Google/Bing/Yandex for its translations), but I’m not sure what info (if any) it gives these services about my OS, machine, IP address, location etc?

(I know this is a lot of questions – if there’s a way I can find out these answers myself, I’d be super grateful for your direction! )

[cscs]

I guess it would be somewhere between how you feel about the makeup of and interaction between curl, that script, and those servers. Its at least going to be your outward facing ip pinging those endpoints. But doubtful to be much more than that.

Heres the project page for the translation script
(its pretty large for me to analyze on the fly right now)

GitHub - soimort/translate-shell: :speech_balloon: Command-line translator...

@hohenheim

(I know this is a lot of questions – if there’s a way I can find out these answers myself, I’d be super grateful for your direction! )

Probably could just start from

• Search Engine > “manjaro toolbox git”
  (Let Me DuckDuckGo That For You - LMDDGTFY)

• Finding the project, looking around, specifically in /bin/ there was reference to bmenu

• Listing the contents it appeared the same, as did the information for the package:
  pacman -Fl bmenu
pacman -Si bmenu

• The package information will show a lot, including the project page:
  URL : https://github.com/puxplaying/toolbox/

• Back at the project (or on local files) you can search for the actions in the executables.
  In the case of the translate, I will link the line directly here:
  toolbox/bin/toolbox at master · puxplaying/toolbox · GitHub

[pux]

@cscs

bmenu
(again this is a bit odd)

I agree this is a source of confusion, which lies a bit deeper. This project and bmenu from @Chrysostomus were two different things, when I started on toolbox. As I didn’t know about bmenu’s existence.
With a collective effort we made toolbox the refreshed version of bmenu. To keep the convenience we decided to stay with bmenu as it already was part of the repo.

@hohenheim

Does indeed come as default with Manjaro, and where I can find more info about it?

Yes, this comes pre installed on the Gnome edition.

manjaro/gnome/Packages-Desktop · master · Profiles & Settings /...

@hohenheim

How do I invoke it directly from a CLI (instead of looking it up on the GNOME menu)? I’ve tried toolbox, manjaro-toolbox & ToolBox, but none of them work.

By typing bmenu

@hohenheim

1. The CLI translator is quite powerful. It’s actually both a dictionary and a translator, giving accurate definitions of English words as well as pretty good translations of both words and sentences from other languages (I tried French and English). But this begs the question: what’s it based on? It’s a fantastic tool and solves many problems for me, but I’d rather not have any invasive/non-free software (e.g. Google Translate APIs etc) on my machine.

As @cscs pointed out, please take a look at the upstream project of translate-shell.

Oh and don’t forget to try the + key in the main menu

[hohenheim]

Thank you both, this has been extremely informative. Really appreciate it!

And @pux, I tried the + key in the main menu, and am enjoying the ‘rabbit hole’ so to speak

EDIT: Sorry, I just have to add a BIG thank you to the creators of this tool now. As a relatively new Linux user, I still wasn’t entirely convinced about the power of the CLI, but the penny’s finally dropped after using this toolbox. Seriously, being able to use a browser, music player, translator and more right from the CLI is somehow freeing. Much appreciated!