[comp.sys.next.announce] SUBMISSION: Phone-3.4
Darcy Brockbank
Phone Version 3.4
=================
Phone is a personal information manager used to keep addresses, or generic
information in a nice, clean format. It supports NeXT .address files,
flat files, user defined font, and background color, automatic phone
dialing (through modem and speaker), email window opening, and quite a
few other cool things.
Several powerful features were added in version 3.4, with more planned
for 3.5. Version 3.4 features a rewrite of the recognition engine to use
regular expressions. This means that the user can customize Phone to
recognize patterns and hook them onto service menu items. For instance,
support for WWW was added to version 3.4 by writing adding these two
lines to "pattern.tbl" and "action.tbl" underneath the .app directory:
# action:path-to-bitmap:what-kind-of-action:additional-info
url:url.bmp:service:SpiderWoman/Open URL
...
/* pattern.tbl: URL (ie. http://www.next.com, or ftp://hasc.ca/pub/next) */
"[^ \t]+:/[/]?[^ \t]+" = "url";
So, a user can now add their own data types, and what should happen
when their associated button is clicked. For example, when the URL
pattern is found by Phone, it will insert a button, using "url.bmp" to
draw the button (a .bmp is just an ASCII file). When the button is
clicked, the action table instructs phone to call the service menu under
SpiderWoman/Open URL. If the user prefers OmniWeb, they can easily
add their own action.tbl under Phone's preferences. They can then edit
this action.tbl (with their favorite text editor) and have this
action.tbl contain the line:
url:url.bmp:service:OmniWeb/Open URL
This will override the default action for the "url" pattern.
Similarly, users can override the default "mail" action:
email:email.bmp:mail:Mail
with:
email:email.bmp:mail:Eloquent
Which will cause Eloquent to be used when you click on a mail icon. The
format of the "bmp" files is simple, and is used to allow the user to
pick their own color schemes dynamically (by command-clicking on the
icon in question).
A .bmp file is 14 columns by 11 rows. For example, the handset icon used
to hook onto phone numbers looks like this:
_________lddb_
________lddddb
_______ldldddb
______lddbldb_
_____lddb__b__
____lddb______
___lddb_______
___lddb_______
___ldddb______
___lldb_______
____lb________
The codes mean:
'_' or ' ': transparent
'l' : computer-calculated light shade
'd' : dark shade chosen by user
'b' : black
Feel free to download Phone and use it. It's a shareware program, and
costs a measly ten bucks. It's well worth it! Phone contains, by
default, patterns to recognize North American phone numbers, and some
European phone numbers. The German patterns are commented out, as they
will also recognize zip codes as phone numbers (because they can both be
five digits). If you need German phone numbers recognized, just
uncomment the patterns.
Other new features in 3.4
=========================
(1) Fixed a bug which would cause the program to crash when reverting an
UNTITLED document.
(2) Dynamic searching. Searches can narrow each time you type an
additional character.
(3) Record tracking in title bar [current record / total records].
(4) Cleared up the confusing "Modify" button.
(5) Fixed the wacky "Confirm" panel.
(6) Preserving last open record for reference on re-open.
(7) New Recognition Engine -- 5x faster, and user extensible via
regular expressions!!!
(8) Minor bug fixes.
(9) Browser, like in Jargon
(10) Fixed "View Plain Text"
(11) Command-click an icon to change its color.
(12) To debug regular expressions, do dwrite Phone DebugRegex YES
(13) Displaying "Info" in .address files
You can get it from:
ftp://ftp.cs.orst.edu/pub/next/demos/productivity/Phone-3.4.mihs.tar.gz
(HASC.CA is a slow link)
ftp://hasc.ca/pub/next/Phone-3.4.mihs.tar.gz
- darcy