Fork me on GitHub
#View Source

Announcement: RedBook v0.5.0 released

Table of Contents

    This new beta release of RedBook introduces quite a few changes when it comes to configuration and setup. Here’s some highlights…h3. Regexp changes

    It is now necessary to enter “proper” regular expressions for :select. Proper means between slashes, like the following:

    • /Work Day/
    • /mail/i

    I changed this in order to support case-insensitive searches using the i switch. This makes queries much more powerful.

    Variables

    A new, interesting feature I decided to introduce in this release is variables. For now you define them inside your rbconfig.yml file, like this:

    :var_monday_morning: "monday at 8 am"

:var_friday_evening: "friday at 8 pm"

:var_week_report: ":select :duration :from :%monday_morning :to :%friday_evening"

    In this way, every time you type in :%week_report in RedBook, it will expand to: :select :duration :from monday at 8 am :to friday at 8 pm. By the way, completion is supported, so you’ll only have to type in something like :%we and hit .

    It is possible to define variables as :var_<something> in the rbconfig.yml file and then used them inside RedBook as :%<something>.

    New Operations

    Five new operations have been added:

    :blank

    This will blank your current log after asking you if you really want to do so.

    :restore

    This operation will overwrite your current log with the last saved backup. Like with the :blank operation, you’re asked if you really want to proceed or not.

    :archive

    By typing :archive, the current log file will be archived to your :archives_folder: directory specified in the rbconfig.yml file (similarly, it is now possible to specify a :backups_folder: for your logs’ backup files).

    :dataset

    A simple operation to display the messages inthe current dataset.

    :dump

    This operation will dump the output of the last :select operation to a text file. Useful for saving the average, total time and duration of a set of activities.

    Portable edition

    Some Windows users will definitely love this. I finally found an easy way to run RedBook confined within the current directory, by using a simple start.bat batch file to set the INPUTRC and HOME variables temporarily to the path to the .inputrc file and the directory of RedBook executable. This makes RedBook 100% portable and suitable to be used on USB sticks &similar.

    Get RedBook Portable

    New Development Page

    I decided to move the primary RedBook repository from Assembla to Google Code. Why? Well, nothing wrong with Assembla per se, I still think it’s an excellent free service to host your public and private projects, but Google Code is faster and offers only the features I need:

    • Public SVN repository access
    • Simple-to-use issue tracker
    • Very nicely developed downloads section, with download counts, and “normal” filenames.

    So here’s the new RedBook Development Home:

    http://code.google.com/p/redbook/

    Additionally I also setup a RedBook Support Google Group, so if you have any question concerning the program, you know where to go!