Monday, May 17th, 2004

Last night I added some code to VoodooPad to link up names from the AddressBook. It doesn't do anything particularly, useful right now- it just opens up that particular name in the AddressBook application.

However, the more interesting part came tonight, when I moved that code into a vpplugin. I added a method to the plugin manager that takes a key (the person's name from the address book for this example) and a corresponding url (addressbook://some-unique-id), which then gets added to a new global list of "linkables". So now whenever you type "Michael McCracken" on my computer and click on it, VP will open up his name in the AddressBook.

What else would be neat to do this way? What about a plugin that listed smb shares, or resources that are discovered via rendezvous? What about a plugin that read all the bookmarks for your web browser, and whenever you typed a title from the list it would link to the website? Something else I'll have to look into is a callback mechanism- so when a link from a plugin is clicked, VP will tell the plugin about the event and it will decide what to do about it.

Of course, the best part of this is- I don't have to think of all the ideas right now. Someone else can, and they can do it after Snoh ships. Hooray for that.

(Historical note: I think Michael was the first person to ask me about AddressBook integration way back when. He even put up some sample code that took names out of the AddressBook for wiki style linking. So I made sure it was his name that received the very first "AB link" in VoodooPad, and I recorded it as well :)

Ok, maybe I have too much fun with this stuff sometimes.)

-- posted 11:06 pm