[Awesome WM] Quickly openig console programms without opening terminal

Question

I want to QUICKLY open console programms which are meant to be ran in terminal, for example - vim or ranger.
Right now to launch them, I do the following:
Mod4+Enter (opens terminal)
Type in command + Enter
I hate that I do have to open terminal. I want to take a shortcut. One possibility would be to:
Mod4+r (opens default launcher widget)
Type in "terminator -e ranger" (opens my terminator terminal whith "ranger" command executed)
Problem with this is that there's a lot of complicated typing in widget. What would be the best way to launch these programms quickly?

Answer 1

to start frequently used applications, console or otherwise, i prefer keyboard shortcuts, which you can define in your rc.lua file. another option woud be to use a menu: either the built-in right-click menu (can also be modified in rc.lua), or the new (since 3.4 or 3.5, not sure) menubar that pops up under the top panel when you hit a shortcut key. the last one i dont' like and keep disabled, so no personal experience with that. the other two options i use and modify often, due to changing applications & habits. if you're not familiar with lua, editing the config file (~/.config/awesome/rc.lua) will take some figuring out, but for this use-case at least it isn't difficult.