zim-wiki team mailing list archive

[Svenn Are Bjerkem <svenn.bjerkem@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 31 March 2010 09:50, Jaap Karssenberg <jaap.karssenberg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 1:57 AM, Svenn Are Bjerkem

>
>> Tomfox is using dbus and I think that taking a look at
>> http://svn.gnome.org/viewvc/tomboy/trunk/extra/firefox-extension/content/tomfox.js?revision=2048&view=markup
>> could give an indication what dbus functionality Zim could start with.
>> A quick search and replace for tomfox with zimfox would give a quick
>> mockup to work with. With my lack of experience with both firefox
>> extensions and dbus in python I have to take small steps at a time and
>> having a receiving point in zim would help a lot.
>
> From a quick look at that example code I just realized we don't need
> to bother with DBUS at all to get this working. The code just triggers
> an external command, in this case dbus-send to call tomboy. In our
> case zim already has some inter process communication which we can
> use.

Well, nothing is better than not needing to reimiplement a wheel :-)

>
> Probably I can do a quick hack to allow you to call "zim
> --recieve-page TEXT" from the extension to get data into zim. I'm
> tempted to give that hack a try before the weekend, but given that I
> will be offline for a long weekend I can not really promise it before
> end of next wee..

I need to get to the point where the firefox extension give me an
error from zim that 'this feature has not been implemented yet'. That
implies a bit of work on my side and I don't move very fast. Take your
time. I pull from bzr and see if something has happened.

>
>> Enthusiasts can start thinking how they would like zim to receive and
>> store the clippings. My preference is something like google notes
>> extension which ended life with firefox 2, but for a first start a
>> fixed namespace with the URL as title would do.
>
> I'm not familiar with the google notes extension, so no idea how that worked.
>
> My guess is that you first want to dump data, without zim popping up,
> and later go over the dump namespace and sort out what should go
> where. Alternatively you could want a dialog to pop up asking where to
> store the content directly. (I assume this is the distinction made by
> the DisplayNote preference in tomfox.)

I won't elaborate a lot on google notes as it used javascript a lot to
present a user interface with several possibilities, and the extension
is not available anymore for reference, except on an old laptop of
mine still running firefox 2.0
I'll try to describe the intended functionality from firefox side
without considering if it is possible to implement or not. I need a
vision to work towards and then problems will be solved as I try to
get there:
* The user select a piece of text in the browser.
* Right click and select a menu item 'send to zim'
* A widget will pop up showing the selected text as it will be sent to zim
* A second, empty text area will be available to put user comments or
tags easy to find with search.
* A pulldown widget will make alternative zim notebooks available
(remember last one used)
* A second pulldown widget will make alternative namespaces avaliable
(remember last one used)
* By pressing the OK button stuff is sent off to zim.

I realize that there is some need for a configuration menu for the
extension. The zim notebooks and the namespaces are things that the
user should provide. I can only think for myself and I tend to also
save things that are unrelated to my actual work when I see it as I
seldom remember which google search or link brought me to that
particular information. If the current clipping is totally unrelated
it is seldom that the current zim notebook I work in is the target of
that current clipping. It must go somewhere else. In GTD syntax: Store
it somewhere where I am sure I will find it again and get it out of my
head to concentrate on my real task.

But first things first: Modify tomfox to get it running in my browser
and then move on from there.

-- 
Svenn