WEBVTT captioned by sachac
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Hi everyone! I'm Mats Liddell.
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In this talk, I will show
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how you can link to personal data
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using Hyperbole's support for implicit button types.
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Before starting, a few words about me.
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I work as a software engineer,
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and in my spare time
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I'm co-maintaining the Hyperbole package
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together with the package author Bob Weiner.
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Hyperbole dates back to 1993,
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and have had some inactive years in the past,
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but work is now active again.
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The package is available
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through the GNU ELPA package archive.
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The talk will focus on
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creation of implicit button types.
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For more info on Hyperbole,
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listen to other presentations
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and check out the package documentation.
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What I want you to take with you from this talk is
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that the implicit button types
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can make patterns in your files into buttons;
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and that new implicit button types
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can quickly be created by using
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the `defil' and the `defal' macros.
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So what is an implicit button type?
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I think of it as a text pattern
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that has some extended meaning.
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When you see the pattern in the text,
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you can think of it as a button type.
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When you press the button,
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something related to that meaning happens.
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It can be jumping to some place,
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opening an external tool, doing some computation.
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So there can be some action
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associated with the pattern.
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To make it clear, let's look at some examples.
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Let's start with something that is maybe so obvious
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that you don't even think of it as a pattern: a file name.
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When you see such a string in text,
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you will naturally associate it with a file on disk,
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and if you would click on it,
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you would probably expect that file to open.
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In the first sentence on the slide,
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you might recognize the file name
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for the bash initialization file, ~/.bashrc.
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Hyperbole comes with built-in support
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for recognizing files and directory path names
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as implicit button types in text.
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For Hyperbole to take action on the button type,
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you move the cursor within the button
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and press M-RET or use a mouse click.
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So let's try that.
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Similar for the path, /usr/local in the next sentence.
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That will open the corresponding
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directory using dired-mode.
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Other examples of built-in implicit button types
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that Hyperbole recognizes are email addresses,
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web addresses, requests for comment documents
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in the form of RFC followed by a number,
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GNU debbugs issues, plus many more.
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These are some examples
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of implicit button types with built-in support.
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I list them here to give you an idea
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how the text pattern in itself is enough
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for the system to recognize it
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as something actionable.
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So as shown, Hyperbole has built-in support
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for implicit buttons.
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There's only one problem here.
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The behavior is predefined.
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There is of course a trade off.
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It is convenient to get
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many button types out of the box
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with likely good standard behavior
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and that works in many places.
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But what if you would want to create
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your own completely new mapping,
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possibly to your own data?
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It is here that Hyperbole's support for creating
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new implicit button types comes in.
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For the full pattern matching button type,
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like for the filename and examples we just looked at,
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you need to define the implicit button
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using the macro, `defib'.
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The downside of that is
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you need to code at the elisp level.
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However, if you are creating a new pattern
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that has well-defined delimiters,
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there is support for that in an easier way.
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These support functions, or rather macros,
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are `defil' and `defal'.
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We will look at those macros soon,
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but first, my definition of personal data.
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I think of personal data as something
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that you would like to link to,
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but it's not necessarily in a form
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supported by any known tool.
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It might be stored on a web server, local storage,
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or could even be some computation
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rather than a link.
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What all these cases have in common is that
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you want to be able to reference it
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in a short, and for you, descriptive way.
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So when you write text, you can use
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a new implicit type to create the connection.
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This might be a bit abstract,
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so let's look at an example.
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Suppose you have a flat file structure
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with some notes in each file.
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It can look like this.
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In the data folder, we have two files
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that represents the notes we have taken.
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We now want to be able to link to these notes
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from outside of the data folder.
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Let's make an implicit button type
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that opens a file in this structure.
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To make the pattern stand out in text,
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we use double braces as start and stop delimiters.
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An implicit button instance
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would then look like this.
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We can create that using the `defil' macro like this.
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This invocation of the field
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creates a button type "demo-link-to-file"
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with the start delimiter of "{{"
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and then delimiters of "}}",
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the regular expression ".*" pattern
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to match everything between the delimiters,
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and finally, the action defined by the link expression.
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Pattern substitution is performed
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on the link expression before evaluation
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so that the text that is in between the delimiters
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is inserted where the "\\&" is in the link expression.
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So all in all, implicit type instance will result in
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the link expression of "~/data/FileA",
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which we recognize as a file path.
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With a single-line expression,
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we have created our own hyperbutton syntax
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that we can use in any Emacs buffer
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to link to this custom set of data.
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So let's evaluate the defil and use it.
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I have prepared the files so that they already
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contain some text and implicit links.
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So from the presentation, we can go to FileA,
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and from there to fileB.
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Since the Hyperbole path expression
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supports outline structures, we can,
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as an extra bonus, reference directly
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the headers in the files,
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so we can, for example, link directly
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to "More Notes" in FileB.
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We have now created a simple info system.
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Looking deeper at the link expression,
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it can be of four different types:
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A file path expression,
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as we have already looked at;
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a brace-delimited key series,
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that is, a series of command keys
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for performing some action,
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much like a keyboard macro;
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An URL; or a function that takes one argument,
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which will be given the button text as input.
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The URL link expression allows you
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to link to web pages.
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So if the data you want to link to
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is accessible through the Web
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and the URL can be constructed
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from the button text in a meaningful way,
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it is possible to do that.
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Let's create the button type
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that links to GNU software.
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The URL to the GNU software catalog
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is www.gnu.org/software,
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and with what we know about the field,
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it is easy to create the button type for that.
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It can look like this.
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And here are two possible buttons
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linking to Emacs and Hyperbole.
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So let's again evaluate the defil and use it.
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Please note that not all GNU software
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is under that URL,
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so this simple definition will not work
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to link to everything.
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To highlight the fact that the button action
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does not have to be a link,
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but can be any action,
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let's look at a math example.
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Here is the button type that does some math
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and writes the result in the message area.
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Let's evaluate and use it.
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Before ending, I would like to mention
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the defal macro.
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It is similar to the defil macro,
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but simpler, since it uses a form
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of the implicit button type with no delimiters.
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It is simply <TYPE LINK-EXPR>.
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So the implicit button type contains the link type
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in clear text.
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Our recent FSF software button
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would be created like this.
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And it would be instantiated in text like this.
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I have shown how you,
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with the help of the defil macro in Hyperbole,
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quickly can create implicit buttons.
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With those buttons, you can link
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to your personal information
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in the form it may have.
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By the nature of the implicit buttons,
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those can be used from any file in Emacs.
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The button types can be
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created to be used long term,
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but even short term use within the session is possible,
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since the creation is simple and quick.
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Inspired by this, I hope you will find ways
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to create implicit buttons
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that will support you getting to your information.
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For the simplest cases,
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the field and the file macros might be enough.
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For more complicated cases,
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using a tailor-made function can be an option.
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If you know Elisp, use the defib macro
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which gives you full control over the button type.
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Thank you.
