This chapter covers user interaction with Hyperbole. Often a number of overlapping interaction methods are provided to support different work styles and hardware limitations. You need learn only one with which you can become comfortable, in such instances.
Remember that the `DEMO' file included in the Hyperbole distribution demonstrates many of Hyperbole's standard facilities, @xref{Top, Preface}, for more details.
Hyperbole must be installed at your site before you can use it. The `README' file that comes with the Hyperbole distribution explains how to install it and how to join the Hyperbole interest mail lists. See the Msg/ menu item in section Operating Menus, for a convenient means of joining and mailing to these lists.
If you are installing Hyperbole at your site, please read the `README' file before continuing in this document.
If you want to customize the basic Hyperbole initialization sequence for yourself rather than the users at your site, you should make a personal copy of the `hsite.el' file, modify it the way you want, and then load it. (If you are familiar with Emacs Lisp, see also section Hook Variables.)
When given a file name, Hyperbole will by default display the file for editing within an Emacs buffer. The hpath:display-alist variable can be used to specify file name patterns, such as matching suffixes, which will invoke a special Emacs Lisp function to display any matching files within Emacs. This can be used to format raw data files for convenient display.
Configure the hpath:display-alist variable in `hsite.el'. Its value is an association list whose elements are (<file-name-regular-expression> . <function-of-one-arg>) pairs. Any path whose name matches a <file-name-regular-expression> will be displayed by calling the associated <function-of-one-arg> with the file name as the argument.
See section External Viewers, for instructions on associating file names with external, window-system specific viewers.
If you will be using Hyperbole under a window system, you may want to configure the hpath:find-alist variable in `hsite.el' to support hyperlinks which open files using non-Emacs tools, e.g. a fax reader or a bitmap viewer.
The value of hpath:find-alist is determined when Hyperbole is
initialized based upon the current window system and the version of
Emacs in use. The value is an association list whose elements are
(<file-name-regular-expression> . <viewer-program>) pairs. Any path
whose name matches a <file-name-regular-expression> will be
displayed using the corresponding viewer-program. If a <viewer-program>
entry contains a %s string, the filename to display will be
substituted at that point within the string. Otherwise, the filename
will be appended to the <viewer-program> entry. See the "x-suffixes"
and "nextstep-suffixes" settings within the definition of
hpath:find-alist as examples.
Another variable to consider modifying in the `hsite.el' file is hpath:variables. This variable consists of a list of Emacs Lisp variable names, each of which may have a pathname or a list of pathnames as a value. Whenever a Hyperbole file or directory link button is created, its pathname is compared against the values in hpath:variables. The first match found, if any, is selected and its associated variable name is substituted into the link pathname, in place of its literal value. When the link is resolved (the button is activated), Hyperbole replaces each variable with the first matching value from this list. (Environment variables are also replaced whenever link paths are resolved.
This permits sharing of links over wide areas, where the variable values may differ between link creator and link activator. The entire process is wholly transparent to the user; it is explained here simply to help you in deciding whether or not to modify the value of hpath:variables.
When Hyperbole is run under a window system together with Emacs 19,
XEmacs or Epoch, it can automatically highlight any explicit buttons in
a buffer and make them flash when selected. The only configuration
necessary is selection of a color (or style) for button highlighting and
button flashing. See the `hui-*-b*.el' files for lists of
potential colors and the code which supports this behavior. A call to
(hproperty:cycle-but-color) within a Hyperbole initialization
sequence changes the color used to highlight and flash explicit buttons.
Additionally, under XEmacs, if hproperty:but-emphasize-p is set to
t in `hsite.el', then whenever the mouse pointer moves over
an explicit button, it will be emphasized in a different color or style.
This emphasis is in addition to any non-mouse-sensitive button
highlighting.
Each time you start a new Emacs session, the Hyperbole code must be loaded for you to use it. The easiest way to achieve this is to add two lines to your `~/.emacs' file, which Emacs reads automatically on startup. The lines should be:
(load "<HYP-DIR>/hversion")
(load "<HYP-DIR>/hyperbole")
where the local Hyperbole installation directory is substituted for
<HYP-DIR>. This establishes a few key bindings and sets up
Hyperbole to automatically load whenever you activate its menu. If you
would rather have the whole Hyperbole system loaded when you start up so
that you can always use the Smart Keys and other facilities, add a third
line after the above two lines.
(require 'hsite)
If you use mouse keys, be sure to add the above lines after any setup of mouse key bindings, to ensure that Hyperbole's mouse keys are initialized. See section Smart Keys, for further details. If you use any Hyperbole mail or news support, see section Buttons in Mail, be certain to perform all of your personal mail/news initializations before the point at which you load Hyperbole. Otherwise, the mail/news support may not be configured properly. For example, if you use the Emacs add-on Supercite package, its setup should come before Hyperbole initialization.
Hyperbole provides two special Smart Keys that perform context-sensitive operations, the Action Key and the Assist Key. By default, the Action Key is bound to your shift-middle mouse button (or shift-left on a 2-button mouse) and the Assist Key is bound to your shift-right mouse button, assuming Hyperbole is run under an external window system. (InfoDock users should use the middle mouse button as the Action Key, instead.)
Mouse configuration is automatic for XEmacs and Epoch under the X window system and for GNU Emacs versions 18 and 19 under X, OpenWindows, NEXTSTEP, SunView and Apollo's Display Manager, assuming your Emacs program has been built with support for any of these window systems.
By default (if hkey-init is left with a setting of t
in `hsite.el'), then {M-RET} may also be used as the
Action Key and {C-u M-RET} may be used as the
Assist Key. In many read-only modes like Dired and Rmail,
{RTN} also functions as the Action Key. These key bindings allow
context sensitive operation from any keyboard.
If you prefer other key bindings, simply bind the commands
action-key and assist-key to keyboard keys.
hkey-either may be used instead if you prefer a single
key binding for both commands; a prefix argument then invokes
assist-key.
You may also bind action-mouse-key and assist-mouse-key
to mouse keys, as you like.
The Action Key generally selects entities, creates links and activates buttons. The Assist Key generally provides help, such as reporting on a button's attributes, or serves a complementary function to whatever the Action Key does within a context.
You can get a summary of what the Smart Keys do in all of their different contexts by pressing the Assist Key in the right corner (within the rightmost 3 characters) of a window modeline or by using the Hyperbole Doc/SmartKy menu entry.
The following table is an example of this summary. Much of the browsing power of Hyperbole comes from use of the Smart Keys, so you should spend some time practicing how to use them. This table may appear daunting at first, but as you practice and notice that the Smart Keys do just a few context-sensitive things per editor mode, you will find it easy to just point and click and let Hyperbole do the rest.
For extensive reference documentation on the Smart Keys, see section Smart Key Reference.
Note how the last line in the table explains the default behavior of the Smart Keys. That is what they do when they cannot find a context match at your current location. See the documentation for the variables action-key-default-function and assist-key-default-function for information on how to customize the behavior of the Smart Keys within default contexts.
A prime design criterion of Hyperbole's user interface is that one should be able to see what an operation will do before using it. The Assist Key provides help for button and menu item actions. Hyperbole also shows the result of directly selecting an argument value, to provide feedback as to whether the right item has been selected.
When you use a mouse and you want to find out what either of the Smart Keys does within a context, depress the one you want to check on and hold it down, then press the other and release as you please. A help buffer will pop up explaining the actions that will be performed in that context, if any. A press of either Smart Key at the end of that help buffer will restore your display to its configuration prior to invoking help.
By default (if hkey-init is left set equal to t in
`hsite.el'), then {C-h A} will display this same
context-sensitive help for the Action Key while {C-u C-h
A} will display the help for the Assist Key. Note that
{C-h a} will perform a function unrelated to Hyperbole, so you
must press the shift key when you hit the A character.
When Hyperbole is installed, a key may be bound which allows you
to switch between the Smart Key mouse bindings and your prior ones.
C-h w hmouse-toggle-bindings RTN should show you any key
which performs this command. If no key binding has been established or
if you prefer one of your own, simply select a key and bind it
within your `~/.emacs' file. For example, (global-set-key
"\C-ct" 'hmouse-toggle-bindings).
Hyperbole includes the `wconfig.el' package which lets you save and restore window configurations, i.e. the window layout and buffers displayed within an Emacs frame. This is useful to save a particular working context and then to jump back to it at a later time during an Emacs session. It is also useful during demonstrations to pull up many informational artifacts all at once, e.g. all of the windows for a particular subsystem. None of this information is stored between Emacs sessions, so your window configurations will last only through a single session of use.
The wconfig library provides two distinct means of managing window configurations. The first means associates a name with each stored window configuration. The name can then be used to retrieve the window configuration later. The second means uses a ring structure to save window configurations and then allows browsing through the sequence of saved configurations.
The Win/ menu entry on the Hyperbole top-level menu displays a menu of window configuration commands:
WinConfig> AddName DeleteName RestoreName PopRing SaveRing YankRing
Menu Item Command Description ==================================================================== AddName wconfig-add-by-name Name current wconfig DeleteName wconfig-delete-by-name Delete wconfig with name RestoreName wconfig-restore-by-name Restore wconfig by name PopRing wconfig-delete-pop Restore and delete wconfig SaveRing wconfig-ring-save Store wconfig to ring YankRing wconfig-yank-pop Restore next wconfig ====================================================================
Saving and restoring window configurations by name is the easiest method, but it requires that you input the chosen name from the keyboard. The ring commands permit saving and restoring through mouse interaction only, if so desired. The prior section, see section Smart Keys, mentions how to save and restore window configurations with the Smart Keys. Since the ring commands are a bit more complex than their by-name counterparts, the following paragraphs explain them in more detail.
Wconfig creates a ring structure that operates just like the Emacs kill-ring, see section `Kill Ring' in The GNU Emacs Manual, but its elements are window configurations rather than text regions. One can add an element to the ring based upon the current window configuration. After several elements are in the ring, one can walk through all of them in sequence until the desired configuration is restored.
SaveRing executes the wconfig-ring-save command which
saves the current window configuration to the ring.
YankRing executes the wconfig-yank-pop command. It restores the
window configuration from the currently pointed to configuration in the
ring. It does not delete this configuration from the ring but it does
move the pointer to the prior ring element. Repeated calls to this
command thus restore successive window configurations until the ring
pointer wraps around. Simply stop when a desired configuration appears.
PopRing calls the wconfig-delete-pop command.
It is used to restore a previously saved configuration and at the same
time delete it from the ring.
The maximum number of elements the ring can hold is set by the wconfig-ring-max variable whose default is 10. Any saves beyond this value cause deletion of the oldest element in the ring before a new one is added.
Under InfoDock, XEmacs, and Emacs 19, pulldown and popup menus are available to invoke Hyperbole commands, including those from the rolodex and the outliner. These menus operate like any other X window menus. Use the Quit command on the Hyperbole menubar menu to get rid of the menu if you do not need it. Invoking Hyperbole again will add the menu back to the menubar.
This section discusses only the specialized Hyperbole menus that appear in the minibuffer and that work with all Emacs versions. Hyperbole menu items may be selected from either the keyboard or via mouse clicks. When used with the keyboard, they provide rapid command access similar to key bindings.
The top level menu is invoked from a key given in your `hsite.el' file (by default, {C-h h}) or via an Action Key press in a location with no other action defined. The menu will appear in the minibuffer and should look mostly like so:
Hy> Act Butfile/ Doc/ Ebut/ Gbut/ Hist Ibut/ Msg/ Otl/ Rolo/ Win/
The above menu items can be summarized as follows:
All menu items are selected via the first character of their names (letter case does not matter) or via a press of the Action Key. "/" at the end of an item name indicates that it brings up a sub-menu. A press of the Assist Key on an item displays help for the item, including the action that it performs.
While a menu is active, to re-activate the top-level Hyperbole menu, you must use {C-t}. This allows you to browse the submenus and then return to the top. You can quit without selecting an item by using {q}. {C-g} aborts whether you are at a menu prompt or any other Hyperbole prompt.
Many Hyperbole commands prompt you for arguments. The standard
Hyperbole user interface has an extensive core of argument types that it
recognizes. Whenever Hyperbole is prompting you for an argument, it
knows the type that it needs and provides some error checking to help
you get it right. More importantly, it allows you to press the Action
Key within an entity that you want to use as an argument and it will grab the
appropriate thing and show it to you at the input prompt within the
minibuffer. If you press the Action Key again at the same point (click
with a mouse) on the same thing again, it accepts the entity as the
argument and moves on. Thus, a double click registers a desired
argument. Double-quoted strings, pathnames, mail messages, Info nodes,
dired listings, buffers, numbers, completion items and so forth are all
recognized at appropriate times. All of the argument types mentioned in
the documentation for the Emacs Lisp (interactive) function are
recognized. Experiment a little and you will quickly get used to this
direct selection technique.
Wherever possible, standard Emacs completion is offered, see section `Completion' in the Gnu Emacs Manual. Remember to use {?} to see what your possibilities for an argument are. Once you have a list of possible completions on screen, you can double click the Action Key on any one to enter it as the argument.
Explicit buttons provide the building blocks for creating personal or organizational hypertext networks with Hyperbole. This section summarizes the user-level operations available for managing these buttons.
The most efficient way to create an explicit button interactively is to use the mouse Action Key to drag from a button source window to a window showing its link referent. More specifically, you should split your current Emacs frame into two windows: one which contains the point at which you want a button to be inserted and another which shows the point to which you want to link. Depress the mouse Action Key at the point at which the button should be inserted, drag to the other window and release it at the point of the link referent. The process becomes quite simple with a little practice. (See section via Hyperbole Menus, for a more detailed explanation of the explicit button creation process.)
Hyperbole uses the link referent context to determine the type of link to make. If there are a few different types of links which are applicable from the context, you will be prompted with a list of the types. Simply use the Action Key or the first letter of the link type to select one of the type names and to finish the link creation. Hyperbole will then insert explicit button delimiters around the button label and will display a message in the minibuffer indicating both the button name and its action/link type.
If you run Emacs under a window system, you can emulate an Action Key
drag from the keyboard by: hitting {M-o}, the
hkey-operate command, at the button source location, moving
to the link destination, e.g. with {C-x o}, and then hitting
{M-o} again. This simulates a depress and then release of the
Action Key. {C-u M-o} emulates drags of the Assist Key.
This will not work when Hyperbole is run from a dumb terminal Emacs
session since drag actions are not supported without a window system.
You can alternatively use the Hyperbole menus to create explicit buttons. First, mark a short region of text in any fashion allowed by GNU Emacs and then select the Hyperbole menu item sequence, Ebut/Create. You will be prompted for the button's label with the marked region as the default. If you accept the default and enter the rest of the information you are prompted for, the button will be created within the current buffer and Hyperbole will surround the marked region with explicit button delimiters to indicate success.
If you do not mark a region before invoking the button create command, you will be prompted for both a label and a target buffer for the button and the delimited label text will be inserted into the target buffer after a successful button creation.
After Hyperbole has the button label and its target buffer, it will prompt you for an action type for the button. Use the {?} completion help key to see the available types. The type selected determines any following values for which you will be prompted.
If a previous button with the same label exists in the same buffer, Hyperbole will add an instance number to the label when it adds the delimiters so that the name is unique. Thus, you don't have to worry about accidental button name conflicts. If you want the same button to appear in multiple places within the buffer, just enter the label again and delimit it yourself. Hyperbole will interpret all occurrences of the same delimited label within a buffer as the same button.
If you create link buttons using the Hyperbole menus, the best technique
is to place on screen both the source buffer for the button and the
buffer to which it will link. Mark the region of text to use for your
button label, invoke the button create command from the menu, choose an
action type which begins with link-to- and then use the direct
selection techniques mentioned in section Entering Arguments, to select
the link referent.
Once an explicit button has been created, its label text must be treated specially. Any inter-word spacing within the label may be freely changed, as may happen when a paragraph is refilled. But a special command must be invoked to rename it.
The rename command operates in two different ways. If point is within a button label when it is invoked, it will tell you to edit the button label and then invoke the rename command again. The second invocation will actually rename the button. If instead the command is originally invoked outside of any explicit button, it will prompt for the button label to replace and the label to replace it with and then will perform the rename. All occurrences of the same button in the buffer will be renamed, so you need locate only one occurrence of the button.
The rename command may be invoked from the Hyperbole menu via
Ebut/Rename. A faster method is to use a key bound to the
hui:ebut-rename command. Your site installation may include such
a key. C-h w hui:ebut-rename RTN should show you any key it
is on. If no key binding has been established or if you prefer one
of your own, simply bind it within your `~/.emacs' file. We
recommend the {C-c C-r} key, as in: (global-set-key
"\C-c\C-r" 'hui:ebut-rename).
Ebut/Delete works similarly to the Rename command but deletes the selected button. The button's delimiters are removed to confirm the delete. If the delete command is invoked with a prefix argument, then both the button label and the delimiters are removed as confirmation.
Presently there is no way to recover a deleted button; it must be recreated. Therefore, the hui:ebut-delete-confirm-p variable is true by default, causing Hyperbole to require confirmation before interactively deleting explicit buttons. Set it to nil if you prefer no confirmation.
Ebut/Modify prompts you with each of the elements from the button's data list and allows you to modify each in turn.
There is a quicker way to modify explicit link buttons. Simply drag with the mouse Action Key from within the button label to a link destination in a different window, just as you would when creating a new button with a mouse drag. Remember that drags may also be emulated from the keyboard. See section Creation.
The Ebut/Help menu can be used to summarize a single explicit button or all such buttons within a single buffer. The buttons summarized may then be activated directly from the summary.
Ebut/Help/BufferButs summarizes the explicit buttons in the order in which they appear in the buffer. Ebut/Help/CurrentBut summarizes only the button at point. Ebut/Help/OrderedButs summarizes the buttons in alphabetical order. All of these summary commands eliminate duplicate instances of buttons from their help displays.
Ebut/Search prompts for a search pattern and searches across all the locations in which you have previously created explicit buttons. It asks you whether to match to any part of a button label or only complete labels. It then displays a list of button matches with a single line of surrounding context from their sources. Any button in the match list may be activated as usual. An Action Key press on the surrounding context jumps to the associated source line or a press on the filename preceding the matches jumps to the file without selecting a particular line.
There are presently no user-level facilities for globally locating buttons created by others or for searching on particular button attributes.
It is often convenient to create lists of buttons that can be used as menus to provide centralized access to distributed information pools or for other purposes. These files can serve as useful roadmaps to help efficiently guide a user through both unfamiliar and highly familiar information spaces. Files that are created specifically for this purpose, we call button files.
The Hyperbole menu system provides quick access to two types of these button files: personal and directory-specific, through the ButFile menu. (The variable, hbmap:filename, contains the base name of these standard button files. Its standard value is `HYPB'.)
A personal button file may serve as a user's own roadmap to frequently used resources. Selection of the ButFile/PersonalFile menu item displays this file for editing. The default personal button file is stored within the directory given by the hbmap:dir-user variable whose standard value is `~/.hyperb'. The standard Hyperbole configuration also appends all global buttons to the end of this file, one per line, as they are created. So you can edit or annotate them within the file.
A directory-specific button file may exist for each file system directory. Such files are useful for explaining the contents of directories and pointing readers to particular highlights within the directories. Selection of the ButFile/DirFile menu item displays the button file for the current directory; this provides an easy means of updating this file when working on a file within the same directory. If you want to view some other directory-specific button file, simply use the normal Emacs file finding commands.
One might suggest that menu quick access be provided for group-specific and site-specific button files. Instead, link buttons to such things should be placed at the top of your personal button file. This provides a more flexible means of quick access.
Hyperbole allows the embedding of buttons within electronic mail
messages that are composed in Emacs with the standard (mail)
command, normally bound to {C-x m} or with other Emacs-based
mail composing functions. An enhanced mail reader can then be used
to activate the buttons within messages just like any other buttons.
Hyperbole automatically supports the Rmail, see section `Rmail' in the GNU Emacs Manual, VM, see section `Introduction' in the VM Manual, and MH-e mail readers. Button inclusion and activation within USENET news articles is also supported in the same fashion via the GNUS news reader, see section `Introduction' in the GNUS Manual, if available at your site. (The `hmail.el' file provides a generalized interface that can be used to hook in other mail or news readers if the necessary interface functions are written.)
All explicit buttons to be mailed must be created within the outgoing
message buffer. There is no present support for including text from
other buffers or files which contain explicit buttons, except for the
ability to yank the contents of a message being replied to, together
with all of its buttons, via the (mail-yank-original) command
bound to {C-c C-y}. From a user's perspective, buttons are
created in precisely the same way as in any other buffer. They also
appear just like any other buttons to both the message sender and the
reader who uses the Hyperbole enhanced readers. Button operation may be
tested any time before a message is sent. A person who does not use
Hyperbole enhanced mail readers can still send messages with embedded
buttons since mail composing is independent of any mail reader
choice.
Hyperbole buttons embedded within received mail messages act just like any other buttons. The mail does not contain any of the action type definitions used by the buttons, so the receiver must have these or she will receive an error when she activates the buttons. Buttons which appear in message Subject lines are copied to summary buffers whenever such summaries are generated. Thus, they may be activated from either the message or summary buffers.
Nothing bad will happen if a mail message with explicit buttons is sent to a non-Hyperbole user. The user will simply see the text of the message followed by a series of lines of button data at its end. Hyperbole mail users never see this data in its raw form.
In order to alert readers of your mail messages that you can utilize Hyperbole mail buttons, the system automatically inserts a comment into each mail message that you compose to announce this fact. The variable, smail:comment controls this behavior. See its documentation for technical details. By default, it produces a message of the form:
Comments: Hyperbole mail buttons accepted, vX.XX.
where the X's indicate your Hyperbole version number. You can cut this out of particular messages before you send them. If you don't want any message at all, add the following to your `~/.emacs' file before the point at which you load Hyperbole.
(setq smail:comment nil)
A final mail-related facility provided by Hyperbole is the ability to
save a pointer to a received mail message by creating an explicit button
with a link-to-mail action type. When prompted for the mail
message to link to, if you press the Action Key on an Rmail message, the
appropriate parameter will be copied to the argument prompt, as
described in section Entering Arguments.
Explicit buttons may be embedded within outgoing USENET news articles and may be activated from news articles that are being read. This support is available for the GNUS news reader. It is enabled by default within `hsite.el' by autoloading the `hgnus.el' file.
All Hyperbole support should work just as it does when reading or sending mail. See section Buttons in Mail. When reading news, buttons which appear in message Subject lines may be activated within the GNUS subject buffer as well as the article buffer. When posting news, the *post-news* buffer is used for outgoing news articles rather than the *mail* buffer.
Remember that the articles you post do not contain the action type definitions used by the buttons, so the receiver must have these or she will receive an error when he activates the buttons. You should also keep in mind that most USENET readers will not be using Hyperbole, so if they receive a news article containing explicit buttons, they will wonder what the button data at the end of the message is. You should therefore limit distribution of such messages. For example, if most people at your site read news with GNUS and use Hyperbole, it would be reasonable to embed buttons in postings to local newsgroups.
In order to alert readers of your postings that you can utilize Hyperbole mail buttons embedded within personal replies, the system automatically inserts the same comment that is included within mail messages to announce this fact. See section Buttons in Mail, for details and an explanation of how to turn this feature off.
The Hyperbole outliner produces structured, autonumbered documents composed of hierarchies of cells. Each cell has two identifiers, a relative autonumber indicating its present position within the outline and a permanent identifier suitable for use within hyperlink references to the cell.
The outliner only works under GNU Emacs version 19 or higher and XEmacs
version 19.9 or higher. You can tell whether you are running a version
of Emacs which supports the outliner by hitting {C-h h} to
display the Hyperbole menu. If you see an Otl/ entry in the
menu, then the outliner is available. Otherwise, the outliner does not
work with your version of Emacs, so this section of the manual will not
be of interest to you.
The outliner is not yet fully documented within this manual. Full documentation will be available with version 4 of Hyperbole, after the outliner has been through user testing.
In the mean time, a brief explanation of the outliner is offered within
the `EXAMPLE.kotl' file. This is an actual outline file that
explains basic operational details of the outliner. Use the
Otl/Example menu entry to display this file.
section Outliner Keys, for a full summary of the key bindings and commands available in the outliner.
You can create and experiment with outline files by editing a file with
the `.kotl' suffix. `.kot' will also work for
DOS/Windows-impaired users. The outliner menu, See section Outliner Menu,
also contains a Create item.
The Otl/ menu entry on the Hyperbole top-level menu provides access to a number of major outliner commands:
Menu Item Command Description ==================================================================== All kotl-mode:show-all Expand all cells Below kotl-mode:hide-sublevels Hide cells deeper than a level Create kfile:find Edit or create an outline Example <sample outliner file> Show self-descriptive example Hide kotl-mode:hide-tree Hide tree with root at point Info <outliner documentation> Show outliner manual section Kill kotl-mode:kill-tree Kill the current tree Link klink:create Create a link to another cell Overview kotl-mode:overview Show first line of each cell Show kotl-mode:show-tree Show tree with root at point Top kotl-mode:top-cells Collapse to top-level cells View kfile:view View an outline read-only ====================================================================
Much of the Hyperbole outliner design is based upon concepts pioneered in the NLS/AUGMENT system, [Eng84a]. AUGMENT treated buffers as a hierarchical set of nodes, called statements; for example, each paragraph in a document would be treated as a node, with its own address. The system could rapidly change the view of a buffer by collapsing, expanding, clipping, filtering or reordering these nodes. These facilities aided greatly in idea structuring and cross-referencing. Hyperbole version 4 will extend the outliner with AUGMENT-style flexible views. Links will be able to specify not only a referent but also the view style to use when displaying the referent. This view capability will allow fine control over the presentation of information displayed by Hyperbole buttons.
Hyperbole includes a complete, advanced rolodex system, Wrolo, for convenient management of hierarchical, record-oriented information.
Hyperbole buttons may be included within rolodex records and then manually activated whenever their records are retrieved.
See the description at the top of the `wrolo.el' file for details on programmatic interfacing to the rolodex. The following subsections explain use and basic customization of the rolodex.
The rolodex manages and searches rolodex files. A rolodex file consists of an optional header which starts and ends with a line of equal signs (at least three equal signs starting at the beginning of a line), followed by any non-negative number of rolodex records. You must manually add a header to any rolodex file if you want it to have one.
Here is an example of a simple rolodex file.
==================================================================
PERSONAL ROLODEX
<Last-Name>, <First> <Co/Categ> <Email> W<Work#> F<Fax#>
==================================================================
* Smith, John Motorola <js@mot.com> W2001 F1892
We call rolodex records, entries. Entries begin with a delimiter, some number of `*' characters at the beginning of a line. Entries may be arranged in a hierarchy, where child entries begin with one more `*' character than do their parents. Top level entries begin with a single `*'.
Beyond this initial delimiter, entries are completely free-form text. It is best to use a "lastname, firstname" format, however, when adding contact entries into a rolodex. Then the rolodex system will automatically keep your entries alphabetized.
Any search done on the rolodex scans the full text of each entry. During a search, the rolodex file header separator lines and anything in between are appended to the buffer of matched entries before any entries are retrieved from the file. Whenever an entry is matched, it and all of its descendant entries are retrieved. If your Emacs version supports textual highlighting, each search match is highlighted for quick, visual location.
For example, a search on "Company" could retrieve the following:
==================================================================
COMPANY ROLODEX
==================================================================
* Company
** Manager
*** Underlings
Thus, searching for Company retrieves all listed employees. Searching for Manager turns up all Underlings.
The Rolo/ menu entry on the Hyperbole top-level menu provides the user interface to the rolodex. The rolo menu provides access to the following commands:
Menu Item Command Description
====================================================================
Add rolo-add Adds a rolodex entry
Display rolo-display-matches Displays last matches again
Edit rolo-edit Edits an existing rolodex entry
Info Displays Rolodex manual entry
Kill rolo-kill Removes an entry from the rolodex
Order rolo-sort Sorts all levels in rolodex
RegexFind rolo-grep Finds all entries containing
a regular expression
StringFind rolo-fgrep Finds all entries containing
a string
WordFind rolo-word Finds all entries containing
a string of whole words
Yank rolo-yank Inserts first matching rolodex
entry at point
====================================================================
A prefix argument used with either of the find commands listed above limits the search to a maximum number of matches given by the argument. The search is terminated whenever that number of matches is found.
For any of the above commands that prompt for a name, you may use the form parent/child to locate a child entry below a parent entry. So for a rolodex which looked like so:
* Company ** Manager *** Underlings
You could edit the Underlings entry by identifying it as Company/Manager/Underlings. Do not use this hierarchical notation in search expressions since the whole rolodex will be searched anyway. Thus, "Underlings" as a search pattern will find an entry containing "Underlings" at any level in a hierarchy, like so:
*** Underlings
After a rolodex search is performed, point is left in the rolodex
match buffer, `*Rolodex*', which uses wrolo-mode to
simplify browsing many rolodex matches. Press {?} when in the
match buffer for a summary of available keys.
If your Emacs version supports textual highlighting, each search match is highlighted for quick, visual location. {TAB} moves point forward to successive spans of text which match the search expression. {M-TAB} or {r} moves point backward to earlier matches. These keys allow you to quickly find the matching entry of most interest to you if your search expression failed to narrow the matches sufficiently.
Single key outlining commands are also available for browsing matches. If your search matches a large number of entries, use {t} to get a top-level overview of all the entries. Each entry is collapsed so that only its first line shows. Press {s} to show (expand) the entry at point. Use {h} to hide (collapse) the entry again. Press {a} to expand all entries in the buffer.
Many other keys are defined to help you move through matching entries.
Once you have found an entry of interest and you want to remove the rolodex match buffer, use {q} to quit. This will restore your current frame to its state prior to the rolodex search.
If textual highlighting is available in your Emacs on your current display type, the rolodex uses the value of rolo-highlight-face as the face to use to highlight search matches.
The buffers containing the rolodex files are not killed after a search
on the assumption that another search is likely to follow within this
Emacs session. You may wish to change this behavior with the following
setting: (setq rolo-kill-buffers-after-use t).
After an entry is killed, the modified rolodex file is automatically
saved. If you would rather always save files yourself, use this
setting: (setq rolo-save-buffers-after-use nil).
When adding an entry from within a buffer containing a mail message, the rolodex add function will extract the sender's name and e-mail address and prompt you with the name as a default. If you accept it, it will enter the name and the email address using the format given by the rolo-email-format variable. See its documentation if you want to change its value.
The files used in any rolodex search are given by the
rolo-file-list variable, whose default value is
("~/.rolodex.otl"), so that searches initially scan only your
personal rolodex. Any entries added to this list should be file
pathnames. If a file in the list does not exist or is not readable, it
is skipped. Files are searched in the order in which they appear in the
list. In general, you should leave your personal rolodex file as the
first entry in the list, since this is the only file to which the rolo
menu Add command adds entries.
The rolodex entry start delimiter is given by the regular expression variable, rolo-entry-regexp, whose default value is "^\*+".
A rolodex file may begin with an optional header section which is copied to the match display buffer whenever any matches are found during a search. The start and end lines of this header are controlled by the regular expression variable, rolo-hdr-regexp, whose default value is "^===". This allows lines of all equal signs to visually separate matching entries from multiple files retrieved from a single search.