Instant infos via aliases?

[kartal]

I have started using farr as info keeper via aliases. For example I have put all the ip adresses of my computers in my network as aliases in farr. So if I type "laptop wireless" it shows what the wireless and wired ip is. This is just an example to use farr as instant info desk. However creating aliases is not that instant. Would there an easier way of creating aliases for this kind of purpose? Any plugin to achieve such thing?

example

1000>>>laptop wireless>->laptop wireless 192.168.1.102


thanks

[lanux128]

have you tried the 'showmemo' command? also take a look at this thread: http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=13053.0

[mouser]

my suggestion:
wait for the Information Reference plugin, and don't waste your time setting these aliases up manually.
I keep waiting for someone else to write this plugin idea which will basically let you search a specially formatted text file for notes and data by keyword or tag.

[kartal]

thanks for heads up. New version sounds tempting!

[lanux128]

I keep waiting for someone else to write this plugin idea which will basically let you search a specially formatted text file for notes and data by keyword or tag.

i wish i could help you mouser but i know naught about writing a plugin. anyway, the information reference plugin sounds very good.

[s.newave]

my suggestion:
wait for the Information Reference plugin, and don't waste your time setting these aliases up manually.
I keep waiting for someone else to write this plugin idea which will basically let you search a specially formatted text file for notes and data by keyword or tag.

That someone wouldnt be you by any chance would it Seriously though a plugin such as this should be on the top 3 plugin todo list

[czb]

I had to miss this plugin request. What is it supposed to do exactly?

[mouser]

Maybe we should make this thread into a discussion of how the "Ultimate Reference Info" plugin should work.  I've given it a lot of thought but it's involved enough that getting the details worked out here before coding it would be a good idea.

Some of the issues were discussed here: http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=13295

Here is the basic idea of the plugin:

The purpose of the plugin is to let the user find and display Reference Information from within text files.

• An example would be that you have a file containing an address book, you want to be able to type "info phone hospital" and have it find the phone number for the hospital.
• Or perhaps you work in a job where you constantly have to look up order codes based on some keywords so you want to be able to type "info order muffler porshe" to show all the entries related to muffler and porshe keywords.

It should be possible to ADD items to these files from within FARR as well.

So it's basically a combination note taker and reference info finder.

My feeling is that the plugin should be able to be told about multiple reference files and let you select which one you are interested in as the first argument.  the next arguments would be search terms.

I think each reference item should have a title, keywords, and text contents (maybe html contents too?). Search would occur in titles, keywords, and text.

So that's what i've come up with so far.  This might be a plugin that should be coded in a fast compiled language (as opposed to javascript, just because it may have to search through large collections of data).

It's also possible that this plugin might take advantage of the planned spreadsheet view for FARR, and already implemented html view.

Some unresolved issues:

• What should the file format be?  Or should it allow the user to customize the file format possibilities so as to use existing csv, xml, xls files?
• Might one alternative approach be to keep each note in a separate file, arranged in a hierarchical tree?
• What should the "add new entry" gui dialog look like (i think their should be a nice gui dialog for adding an entry which helped user select tags); what should the simple line to add a note without a gui look like.
• What nice copy-to-clipboard options should be provided and how?

[kartal]

I personally think that txt based formats should be read by the plugin. User  also should be able to choose whether they want to keep things in hierarchy files or one file. I keep most of my note files in text format so this plugin would be a breeze for me. One thing that can be cool is that user should be able to define which folders should be searched by the plugin. Also appending to existing text file could be great. We should have control over the formatting of the text that will be append. I like your addnote.exe but one drawback is that it does not have formating control and it is too bold for my needs.

[mouser]

One idea would be to allow any number of fields that the user wants for each entry (like xml allows any number of properties), and have the plugin display them usefully.

So for one file i might have entries that look like:
@title = Central Hospital
@phone = blah blah
@address = blah blah
@hours = blah blah
@insurance = accepts all insurance
@tags = hospital, health, emergency

So the point is that when parsing the note file, the plugin would collect the list of all available fields.  when displaying resuls matched it could show them in a grid/spreadsheet mode with a column for each field.

[kartal]

Maybe user can create "template" pages. If user calls the template page name that means that the user wants to enter data.
For example my template page name is "hospital" and it looks like this
[template]
@title = Central Hospital
@phone = blah blah
@address = blah blah
@hours = blah blah

If I type "add hospital" Farr would ask the title, phone adress. Or I could type them in an order like we do with aliases. Farr can add the infos to existing template page. In this case template formatting needs to stay on top of the file whole time I would guess. Or it could create new files with template formating based on user settings.

If I type "look hospital Dr. Jones" Farr would do a text searc and display the info based on template page format.

[mouser]

template idea is nice.

the biggest problem with this plugin idea is that it threatens to be so complicated that it never gets coded, so we need to figure out a nice reasonable set of ideas.

[kartal]

As a starter adding notes should be done based on appending to existing text files with controlled formatting then? I use your addnote.exe but having no formatting control makes it little useless. Because all I would need is one line of note but addnote would add multiple lines.

My suggestion is that add note should let us choose the formatting and what kind of info line(date, time etc) should be appended.

[nitrix-ud]

the biggest problem with this plugin idea is that it threatens to be so complicated that it never gets coded, so we need to figure out a nice reasonable set of ideas.

i agree

at first i thought this plugin idea was pretty much like searching for lines in a file (which is very similar to searching for files in a folder...)
i think this plugin will be great

however i DO think a simple core function for aliases would really be great, aside from this powerful plugin
this function is :
dosearchfile similar to dosearch....
or simply a new form of keyword for dosearches

dosearch +modifier_specifying_file_to_be_searched

then you can add an action modifier... and you can do many things

for instance i found a simple .ahk script on the autohotkey forum, it works as follow :
if you run msn.ahk email@hotmail.com
it opens the conversation with your friend email@hotmail.com

with a core function in less than a minute you can set up the following alias :

msn
^msn (.*)
dosearch +file_with_list_of_friend_emails +open_msn_ahk $$1

then set open_msn_ahk as the following alias :
msn.ahk $$1

i can find dozens of uses...

[Armando]

I would be interested to know :

1- who would use such a note taking feature (apart from the "searching for lines in a file" function)
2- why would one use it
3- how much would one use it

(basically, how would it fit into one's workflow and current application setting/"ecology")

The reason why I'm asking these questions is that there are already a lot of note taking applications around. I currently use something myself and was trying to figure out if I'd need something like that from farr (apart, like I said, from the "searching for lines in a file" function, which I could use for quick searches). Probably not, but maybe ... I'm always opened to new solutions.

Of course, there must be many people wanting such a feature, otherwise it wouldn't be in the making!  I'm just curious about how would one use that, and how it would fit into one's workflow and current "application ecology".

[mouser]

Armando I think you are the most likely case:
No need for notetaking functions but maybe some use for reference information searching.
That's why the ability to add note items should take a back seat.

I think the only reason to support some note taking is because it would be easy and would be well suited for people who do NOT already use a proper notetaking application.

(ps. for those who use a notetaking application -- what would be nicer is a plugin for FARR that interfaces to their existing note taking application!)

[Armando]

I think the only reason to support some note taking is because it would be easy and would be well suited for people who do NOT already use a proper notetaking application.

(ps. for those who use a notetaking application -- what would be nicer is a plugin for FARR that interfaces to their existing note taking application!)

Both points make a lot of sense.

I was already thinking of asking Pierre (SQLNotes developer) if there could be a way to create a farr plugin to send notes directly to SQLNotes, and, even more so, to directly search SQLNotes' database. It should be possible, probably even more when SQLNotes will use an SQL Server Back-end.

[mouser]

now that is a great idea regarding sqlnotes.  it would be a nice present to DC community too.  And it could make good use of the planned grid/spreadsheet display mode for FARR.

[Armando]

yeah, I'll certainly try to talk him into it in a few weeks...
As one of the main beta testers, I won't push him to hard though : his main priority right now is probably to get SQLNotes out of beta (by adding the calendar and a few other important features, and... squashing the bugs)!

[kartal]

Having simple note text appending feature would not hurt in my opinion. My notes are in plain text and I would really use a faster way to enter text data, on the fly. As I mentioned before I already use addnote.exe from mouser but addnote`s formatting does not fit in my info formatting. So even a modified addnote.exe with little more formatting options would be beneficial to everyone I believe. This wont make sense to those who use note taking apps with special formats but people who use plain text for many things will benefit greatly.

One other method I was using is actually using notepad to create the text notes. Basically you can create an alias that passes predefined directory with file name. If the file exists notepad opens the file if it does not it creates a new one. This is nice and very quick method however notepad.exe does not provide appending to end or starting of the file as far as I know.



As far as plugin goes I would vote for note searching as first implementation.

[kartal]

Btw I hope that Farr will support unicode and international characters in the info plugin?

[Nod5]

I think it makes sense to start with a very basic textfile search capability first and then expand it if and when demand occurs.
Two rather non-complex systems could be:

1. comma separated data. Example:

tag1 data1 data2 data3
tag2 data4 data5 data6

2. blank line separated data. Example:

tag1
data1
data2
data3

tag2
data4
data5
data6


When the user inputs "info tag1" FARR would output "data1 data2 data3" (or "data1 \n data2 \n data3")

Mousers example ("info phone hospital") in comparison adds one level of complexity. But how often is that needed? I suspect that it for much lookup usage is enough to output all the info related to a "first level tag" i.e. "info hospital" would display adress, phone number, email etc in FARR. Two drawbacks with the more complex example is that the user must memorize all the second level categorizes and must create all his/her new data in a very well formed and consistent way. I definitely prefer something less complex and less (human) memory hungry.

[nitrix-ud]

I think it makes sense to start with a very basic textfile search capability first and then expand it if and when demand occurs.

i agree

When the user inputs "info tag1" FARR would output "data1 data2 data3" (or "data1 \n data2 \n data3")

i think it would be better to have the whole line i.e. : tag1 data1 data2 data3 (or "tag1\n data1 \n data2 \n data3")

Moreover, i think one should be able to search the full line
not just tag1, tag2 but the full line...

[s.newave]

I think it makes sense to start with a very basic textfile search capability first and then expand it if and when demand occurs.
Two rather non-complex systems could be:

1. comma separated data. Example:

tag1 data1 data2 data3
tag2 data4 data5 data6


When the user inputs "info tag1" FARR would output "data1 data2 data3" (or "data1 \n data2 \n data3")

Mousers example ("info phone hospital") in comparison adds one level of complexity. But how often is that needed? I suspect that it for much lookup usage is enough to output all the info related to a "first level tag" i.e. "info hospital" would display adress, phone number, email etc in FARR. Two drawbacks with the more complex example is that the user must memorize all the second level categorizes and must create all his/her new data in a very well formed and consistent way. I definitely prefer something less complex and less (human) memory hungry.

Also like this idea of getting a simple yet scalable info retrieval plugin out now and improving it as time allows instead of trying to create the ultimate plugin right from the get go and never getting it off the ground. The only thing i would add to the idea above would be to include some kind of optional meta data or options that farr could interpret for display/functional purposes that would be listed at the beginning of each file. Using the example above:

@type: csv
@displaymode: grid
@defaultsort: asc
@headers:name, number, address, phone
tag1,data1,data2,data3
tag2,data4,data5,data6
....

A great example for this functionality could be an address book feature which allowed you to search for a name and have it display all the relevant info (name, address, etc) in the upcoming grid mode. You could also then extend the features down the road to include files that are formatted differently (xml etc) as well as different display modes and support for additional meta data/options. I think as a first step support for csv files should be a primary goal as most info from popular apps (ms office) can be exported into this format. 

Either way cant wait to see what you come up with. Hopefully sooner rather than later 

[czb]

I have an idea of this program in my mind and will start coding it immediately when new version of FARR is out.