Given an application name, the launch actuator launches that application. Application names are expected as common English names; these are converted to their formal names including the full path by a map which is loaded from the launchAc.cfg data file. For example, “mozilla” is mapped to “/usr/bin/mozilla” The actuator looks up the given name in the map and makes a system call to the program that it finds there.
A close actuator exists which is the inverse of launching—they undo and redo one another—but its action has not yet been implemented. It will be necessary to obtain user confirmation before going ahead and closing programs.
There is currently no support for specifying application-specific options and flags, but this could be added without a great deal of effort. The chief difficulty lies in modifying the parser grammar.