Although individual internet applications have their own address books, it is often more convenient to have a single source for all addresses. This function is provided by BookMaker. Currently, BookMaker supports the following applications:
You should be aware that editing address books with BookMaker and making changes with client applications at the same time can cause difficulties. These are discussed here.
Configuring BookMaker
BookMaker should initially be configured by running the !BMConfig
application. Thereafter, it can be reconfigured either using !BMConfig or
BookMaker itself.
Instructions as to configuration can be found here.
Getting started
To start BookMaker, simply double-click on the BookMaker application.
With most browsers, you can also start BookMaker by select-clicking on the "Show hotlist" toolbar button for the browser. Adjust-clicking on the browser's "Show Hotlist" button will have the normal effect for that browser. The select-click and adjust-click behaviour can be reversed; you can find out how by clicking here.
Much credit is due to Christina West both for the HotClickX module that makes the neat browser interface possible, and for putting up with two weeks of me saying "Hi Christina, I've thought of something else I'd like HotClick to do...".
Oregano is now designed to work with BookMaker, so BookMaker is automatically invoked when either the "Show Hotlist" or "Add to hotlist" buttons are invoked. If BookMaker has not been seen by the Filer, the hotlist is loaded into the browser window.
Once BookMaker is running it will either install itself on the iconbar, or immediately open a window showing a list of all the address books from all client applications; which happens depends on the way you have set up the preferences. If BookMaker installs itself on the iconbar, then the address window can be opened simply by clicking on the iconbar icon.
The address book window will look something like this:
In this example, one of the buttons is "greyed out" (or "faded"), and mouse-clicks on this button will be ignored. The icon at the extreme left of the toolbar (the disc) may be faded, depending on context. The meaning of the icons on the toolbar are described below. Below the toolbar is the main address book list, with an entry for every address book you have defined in the browser, Email (including distribution lists), Telnet & FTP. The icon at the extreme left of the list indicates what type of addresses are held in the book:
: Browser hotlist
: The main Email address book
: An Email distribution list
: Telnet hosts
: FTP hosts
You may also see one or more
icons inside the Telnet address book - these indicate that the entry is a FreeTerm script file.
To select a single book from the list, click once on the entry with the left mouse button. To add another book to the selection, or to deselect a currently-selected book, click once on the book with the right mouse button.
Double-clicking on a book will cause the book to open, looking something like this:
The icons used for browser folders now reflects the folder contents; if all entries in a folder are "mailto:" URLs, the folder will use an email address book icon, if all entries are "ftp://" URLs, the folder will use an FTP hosts file icon, and so on. The standard browser icon will be used both for all-"http://" folders and for mixed folders.
Once a book has been opened, addresses can be selected in the same way as books. However, you cannot have both a book and an address selected simultaneously.
Double-clicking on an address will activate that address in the appropriate application; for example, an "http://" URL will cause your browser to open a new window and fetch that page, an email address (or a "mailto:" in the browser hotlist) will normally open a window in your email client allowing you to compose and email, and so on.
If you double-click on an address with the mouse adjust button rather than the select button, or with the <CTRL> button held down, BookMaker window will either close after sending the URL to or will re-open in front of the window the client application has just opened (this is most useful for the browser hotlist, where several pages can easily be started off one after another). Which action is generated is controlled by the current setting of the Adjust Double-Click preference.
A number of keyboard accelerators (aka "hotkeys") are available to invoke key BookMaker functions. These functions are:
| Function | Default key |
|---|---|
| Show BookMaker Help | F1 |
| Show Preferences Help | ^F1 |
| Invoke Preferences dialog | F6 |
| Save changes | F3 |
| Delete | Backspace |
| Find | F4 |
| Find again | ^F4 |
| Quit | ^Q |
The table refers to ":Default key" as the keys used can be changed in the user Preferences.
If you hold the mouse button down after selecting a book or an address you can drag it (or them) to a new position. There are a number of rules associated with dragging that you need to be aware of:
If a file of appropriate type is dragged to the main window, BookMaker will scan the file in an attempt to recover any addresses stored in the file. The recovered addresses will be stored in a new folder named as the source file.
If the file is typed as Text (&fff), URL (&b28) or URI (&f91) only the addresses (no titles) will be found. If the file is typed as HTML (&faf), BookMaker will recover both names and URLs; it will also make a guess at imposing some structural logic on the imported file, by treating header tags (<Hn>Header text</Hn>) as if they were folders.
BookMaker will display FreeTerm scripts as entries in the Telnet address book;
such entries are marked with a
icon. BookMaker has a number of special features to support scripts:
The toolbar provides easy access to some of the more commonly-used functions in BookMaker. Click on an icon below to see a description of its function..
Note that you can click on the images at the left of the explanatory text to get back here, or you can click here to see a description of the Bookmaker menu structure.
NB Because the various address books must be stored in specific locations, there is no "Save As" dialog box to specify where the files should be saved - they are automatically written back to their original locations.
There is no menu equivalent for this function.
The button is normally used to create a new book. Clicking on this icon with "Select" will open the dialog box below:
To create a new address book, type the name of the new book into the dialog box, select "Browser" or (E-Mail) "Distribution list", and click "OK".
If you currently have a single book selected (ie highlighted), clicking on the bookshelf icon with the "Adjust" button will not create a new book, but will bring up the "Rename book" dialog box:
Simply type the new name of the book into the writable field, and click "OK".
This button duplicates the " New book" and " Rename" items on the Book menu.
This button is normally used to create a new address. Clicking "Select" on this icon will display one of the dialog boxes below, depending on the type of the current book and the configured client:
FTP addresses may use either anonymous login, or may be provided with a username and password.
In addition to the standard anonymous login vs username & password, FTPc allows a number of more advanced settings (e.g. commands to be executed automatically). See FTPc for details.
The Telnet host port can be a port number, or the name of a port from the Voyager Ports file. It can be left blank, in which case the default port will be assumed.
The host field accepts a fully-specified telnet URL to be given : [user[:pass]@]host[:port]. For example fred:123456@fleece.argonet.co.uk:23 is accepted. See Nettle for details of other fields.
In all cases, the "Distribution List" option is used to specify whether the new address is a normal named address, or a new distribution list. In the latter case, several Email addresses can be specified in the "Address" field (separated by spaces).
If a single address is selected (highlighted), then clicking on this icon with the "Adjust" button will allow the selected entry to be altered; if the currently-selected address is a FreeTerm script, it will be loaded into any OLE-aware text editor such as Zap or StrongEd (Edit will also work if the OLE Support module is available on your machine).
This duplicates the "New address" and "Alter address" items on the Address menu.
The "find" button is used to search the address books for any literal string. Clicking on the icon will open the dialog box below:
Enter the text to be found in the writeable field, and select whether titles or addresses (or both) should be searched. Clicking the "Find" button will search the address books for the next match; clicking it again will find the next match, and so on.
There is no menu equivalent of this function.
The "display" selector can be used to specify whether address entries in the open book are displayed with their names, or the address.
This tool duplicates the effect of the " Display" entry on the Address menu.
The "help" icon will open the BookMaker help file in a browser window.
There is no menu equivalent of this function.
The "trash" icon is used to delete the currently-selected book(s) or address(es). Depending on the way your preferences have been set, BookMaker may request confirmation before proceeding with the operation.
This duplicates the "Delete" entries in the Book and Address menus.
BookMaker has two quite distinct menu trees, depending on whether the current selection is a book or an address. Click on one of the menu items to see a description of the function.
Click on a menu entry to see a description of its function.
The Book menu is active if the currently-selected item is a book.
This entry is used to alter the name of the currently-selected book - moving the mouse right leads to a dialog box where the new name of the book can be specified. Only browser address books and Email distribution list files can be renamed.
This entry duplicates part of the function of the
icon on the toolbar.
If more than one book is selected, or the current book cannot be renamed, this menu item will be faded.
The entry is used to delete the selected book or books. If you have set the "Confirm delete book" preference, you will be asked for confirmation before the deletion proceeds.
This entry duplicates the effect of the
icon on the toolbar.
This entry is used to sort the list of books, or sort the addresses within a selected book. The submenu offers the choice of sorting by book name, by book type, or to sort the contents of a book. Sorting by type will ensure that all browser address books are at the top, then the Email address book and distribution lists, and so on. Within any one type of book, they will be sorted alphabetically. If no book is selected, the "Contents" option will be faded.
The order of books can also be altered by dragging the name of book with the mouse.
There is no toolbar equivalent of this menu entry.
When you delete a book, BookMaker remembers the book (and its contents) until
you save the books with the
icon on
the toolbar. Deleted books can be recovered with the
"Undelete" menu entry.
If no books have been deleted since BookMaker was run (or the last save), this option will be faded.
There is no toolbar equivalent of this function.
Following this entry to the right will lead to the Export submenu, which will allow you to save the selected book(s) and all their contents as HTML, text (both titles and addresses) or as text with the addresses only.
There is no toolbar equivalent of this function.
This entry is used to create a new browser address book, using the dialog box:
To create a new address book, type the name of the new book into the dialog box, select "Browser" or (E-Mail) "Distribution list", and click "OK".
This entry duplicates part of the function of the
icon on the toolbar.
This entry will display the standard BookMaker preferences dialog box. Details can be found here.
This entry duplicates the function of the
icon on the toolbar.
Click on a menu entry to see a description of its function.
The Book menu is active if the currently-selected item is a book.
The "display" menu item can be used to specify whether address entries in the open book are displayed with their names, or the address.
This tool duplicates the effect of the
selector on the toolbar.
The "Alter address" menu item is used to edit either the name or the URL of the currently selected address; if more than one address is highlighted, this option will be faded.
This duplicates part of the effect of the
icon on the toolbar.
"Move address" is used to move the URL to a different address book; moving the mouse pointer right will lead to a submenu containing a menu of all the address books, with illegal target address books faded. BookMaker will not allow you to move a URL to the book it is currently in; nor will it permit FTP host addresses to be copied to the Email address book, and so on. The current version of BookMaker does not check the validity of the target address book against each individual address selected, but just the type of the source address book.
Thus, browser addresses will allow the FTP hosts address book and the Email address books to be selected; if individual addresses are not legal for the target book, BookMaker will move those it can, and then warn you that some addresses have not been moved.
There is no toolbar equivalent of this menu function; however, addresses can be moved simply by dragging them with the mouse.
"Copy address" works exactly as "Move address", except that the address is not deleted from the source address book.
There is no toolbar equivalent of this menu function.
As its name suggests, this menu option selects all the addresses in the current book.
There is no toolbar equivalent of this menu function.
"Clear selection" deselects all the selected addresses.
There is no toolbar equivalent of this menu function.
This menu item is used to delete the selected address or addresses. If you have set the "Confirm delete address" preference, you will be asked for confirmation before the deletion proceeds.
Unlike deleting books, there is no "Undelete" option for addresses.
This entry duplicates the effect of the
icon on the toolbar.
The "Export" option allows you to export the selected address(es) in one of three ways:
There is no toolbar equivalent of this function.
This item can be used to set the foreground colour of addresses in the main email address book. The item will be faded unless the selected address is in a Messenger Pro or Posty address book, and the "As Address Book" colour preference is set.
Due to a constraint in !Posty, selecting colour 0 is interpreted as "Use the default foreground colour".
There is no toolbar equivalent of this function.
"Sort addresses" will sort the addresses in the open book alphabetically according to the title.
There is no toolbar equivalent of this function.
"New address" is used to create a new address entry in the currently open book via a dialog box. The dialog box shown will depend on the type of address being created, and the configured client - the different dialog boxes are shown in the "CREATE/ALTER ADDRESS" entry for the toolbar.
This entry duplicates part of the function of the
icon on the toolbar.
This entry duplicates the function of the
icon on the toolbar.
Thanks to Christina West's HotClickX module, it is possible to invoke BookMaker directly from the browser (Fresco or Browse), simply by select-clicking on the browser's "Show Hotlist" toolbar button. Adjust-clicking the same button will invoke the default action.
It is possible to alter this behaviour (eg so adjust-click loads BookMaker and select-click invokes the default action) by setting the system variable HotclickX$BookMaker appropriately:
| Value | Select | Adjust |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Default | Default |
| 1 | BookMaker | Default |
| 2 | Default | BookMaker |
| 3 | BookMaker | BookMaker |
Oregano is now designed to work with BookMaker, so BookMaker is automatically invoked by Oregano's "Show hotlist" button.
BookMaker interfaces with Fresco and Oregano quite neatly; however, the interface with other client applications (Browse, Webster XL, Email clients, etc) is less tidy.
This is because the other client applications are not written with the idea of a third party hotlist manager in mind. Therefore, they maintain their own internal state of their address books, which will get out of step with BookMaker's view if either application modifies the address book. There is nothing I can do about this - it's simply the way the client applications work.
It is therefore reccommended that address book changes are not made with BookMaker while the client application is running; instead, you should treat BookMaker as an address book manager for such applications, not a replacement.
Select "Choices" from the NetSurf iconbar menu, and then select the "Interface" group.
Click the "Set" button to confirm the changes.
You must then restart NetSurf; then BookMaker and NetSurf should be fully integrated.