ANNOUNCE: WISH List 0.1.0
David McClamrock
WISH List is a fairly simple multi-column list manager that can be used to
keep track of books, people, papers, recipes, MIDI patches, or just about
anything else that can be listed. The program requires Tcl and Tk 8.4, as
it makes extensive use of listbox item configuration and spinboxes.
The basic display in "List View" consists of (1) a menu bar with File,
Edit, Format, Search/Select, and Help menus; (2) a series of column title
buttons for identifying, selecting, and reformatting columns; (3) a series
of entry widgets for inserting list contents; (4) a series of listboxes for
displaying and selecting list contents; (5) a series of horizontal
scrollbars for the listboxes; and (6) a single vertical scrollbar to make
all the listboxes scroll together. The contents of list rows can also be
displayed in a "Full View" box, consisting primarily of (1) a vertical
series of fairly long entry widgets labeled with column titles, (2) a
corresponding series of "X" buttons to select a list item for display in
the box's text widget; (3) a word-wrapped text widget (with vertical
scrollbar), in which a list item of any length can be displayed and edited;
and (4) a series of buttons at the bottom for doing things like cut, copy,
paste, display the next or the previous row, etc.
Among other leading features of WISH List 0.1.0 are these:
* New Preformatted List: WISH List comes with several predefined list
formats that can be used or modified to create new lists quickly.
Additional predefined formats can easily be added.
* New Custom Format: A new format is specified by list name, column titles,
column widths, and listbox height. When created, a new format is
automatically added to the list of predefined formats.
* Open Recently Viewed List: WISH List will keep track of any number of
recently viewed lists (the default is 50), and will allow the user to open
one with a single right-click.
* Find/Replace: WISH List can obtain search results and display them in
either List View or Full View. The "Find" box has the following features.
(1) Either exact or glob-style matching can be specified (sorry, no
regular expressions, at least not yet).
(2) Option menus allow single-column or all-column specification
for each search term.
(3) Radiobuttons for "or," "and," and "not" make elementary boolean
searching possible.
(4) Additional search-term rows, consisting of radiobuttons, an entry
widget, and an option menu, can be added with a single click or keystroke
so long as they will fit on the screen.
* Insert File: An entire text file can be inserted into a list item with a
single keystroke and a single right-click (if the file has been so used
before), or a few clicks in the standard "Open File" dialog box. There is
no theoretical limit (so far as I know) to the length of a list item.
* Multiple list formats: The native file format is ".wit" (WISH List/Tcl),
consisting of Tcl commands to set variables for list name, column titles,
number of columns, column widths, list height, and list contents (retained
in the form of a list of sublists, with one sublist of items for each list
row). WISH List can read and write .csv and .tsv (comma-delimited and
tab-delimited text) files. It can also write--but not read (at least not
yet)--HTML tables, single-column HTML files (with the column titles and
item contents for each list row, e.g., "TITLE: Practical Programming in Tcl
and Tk," displayed in vertical sequence), and single-column text files.
* Lists can be sorted alphabetically, by any column, with a single
keystroke (and a single click to select the column, if it isn't the first
one).
* Foreign-language and other special characters (ISO Latin-1 only) can be
inserted with a single click.
* Single or multiple list rows can be selected, cut, copied, and pasted as
units. (Listbox item configuration, together with the "foreach" command,
really comes in handy here--it's much easier than trying to mess with
multiple X selections in Linux.)
* Columns can be added, deleted, moved, or copied intact, whether they (or
other columns) contain any contents or not.
I've done a fair amount of testing on WISH List, but I probably haven't
abused it in every possible way. If you get a chance to try it out, let me
know if you find any bugs or if you think of any features that should be
added. A tar.gz archive containing the program code (about 96 KB
uncompressed), documentation, predefined list formats, and a simple
installation script is available on my web page
<http://www.geocities.com/pa_mcclamrock>, or you can ask me for it by
e-mail.
David McClamrock <mccla...@locl.net>