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contents/articles/redbook-020-released.html

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-----
title: "Announcement: RedBook v0.2.0 released"
content-type: article
timestamp: 1191812700
tags: "redbook|ruby|productivity|opensource"
-----
<blockquote>
<p><em>&#8220;Release Early, Release Often&#8221;</em></p>
<p>&#8212; Eric S. Raymond, <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html">The Cathedral and the Bazaar</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In other words, time for another (early) release of <a href="http://www.assembla.com/space/redbook">RedBook</a>. There are quite a few new features which are worth examining, in particular:</p>
<h3>Regexp search for messages</h3>
<p>This was actually already available before, just if you inputted a search string which was not a regexp, you&#8217;d get an unhandled exception (more or less). This exception is now handled propertly so you get a pretty message instead, if an error occurs when parsing the search string.</p>
<h3>Log Backup</h3>
<p>A new <strong>&#58;backup</strong> keyword is available to quickly backup your log file. Here&#8217;s what it does:</p>
<ul>
	<li>Loads all messages silently</li>
	<li>Writes them to a file in the same directory as the original log file named &lt;log-alias&gt;.bkp.yml.</li>
</ul>
<p>Handy, especially if there was a similar keyword to restore the last backup, which is planned for <a href="http://www.assembla.com/spaces/milestones/index/bWE7NkzCqr3k25abIlDkbG?spaces_tool_id=ceS8UazCqr3k25abIlDkbG">later on</a>.</p>
<h3>Support for multiple log files</h3>
<p>This is perhaps the most important feature introduced by this release. It is now possible to configure more than one log file by adding any number of <strong>&#58;data_&lt;alias&gt;&#58;</strong> settings inside your config.yml file, where alias is the name of your log file. So, for example, if your config.yml file contains the following:</p>
<p><strong>&#58;data_test&#58; &#8220;testlog.yml&#8221;</strong></p>
<p>You can load the &#8220;test&#8221; log by typing</p>
<p><strong>&#58;use test</strong></p>
<p>(&#58;use is a shorthand for &#58;load_log). Similarly, another new keyword <strong>&#58;dest</strong> has been introduced to be able to log a message to a different log file without loading it into memory, like this:</p>
<p><strong>&#58;log This message will be saved to testlog.yml &#58;dest test</strong></p>
<p>Finally, a <strong>&#58;refresh</strong> keyword has been introduced as an alias to reloading the current log.</p>
<h3>(Almost) automatic log of completed activities</h3>
<p>Right when I was coding the <strong>&#58;timecalc</strong> operation, I thought it would be nice to be able to log the start and end of a task without having to type it twice. Now this is possible using the <strong>&#58;complete</strong> keyword:</p>
<p>&#58;log Testing feature X in product Y</p>
<p>&#58;complete</p>
<p><strong>&#58;complete</strong> will re-log the last message prepended with [<span class="caps">COMPLETED</span>]:</p>
4 Mon Oct 08 2007 &#8211; 10:47:45 AM Testing feature X in product Y
5 Mon Oct 08 2007 &#8211; 10:54:31 AM [<span class="caps">COMPLETED</span>] Testing feature X in product Y
<p>What if I start another task before completing the first one? No problem, it is sufficient to load the last activities using a <strong>&#58;load</strong> command and then issuing <strong>&#58;complete &lt;number&gt;</strong> where &lt;number&gt; is the index of the loaded activity. <br />
This nifty little feature will become more and more important when (starting from release 0.4) I&#8217;ll implement more time tracking functions, and it will be possible to track completed tasks in a specific timeframe and/or marked with a specific tag.</p>
<h3>Easy integration with launchers like Launchy and QuickSilver</h3>
<p>To conclude, as someone pointed out that it would be cool to use RedBook from launchers like Launchy or Quicksilver, I made another standalone script (redbooklet.rb or redbooklet.exe) which is just able to parse a log command and write a message to the specified log file.<br />
To use it with Launchy, for example, all you have to do is the following:</p>
<ol>
	<li>Create a shortcut to redbooklet.exe (or to a way to execute the corresponding ruby script) named &#8220;log&#8221;.</li>
	<li>Copy the &#8220;log&#8221; shortcut anywhere in your start menu</li>
	<li>Bring up launchy (ALT+SPACE) and type in &#8220;log&#8221;</li>
	<li>Hit tab</li>
	<li>Type in your log message, optionally with the any &#58;tags or &#58;dest keywords.</li>
	<li>The message will be logged to your default log file or to the log you specified using the &#58;dest keyword. If an error occurs, it will appear in a command line window for 15 seconds before the program is closed.</li>
</ol>
<p>That&#8217;s all folks! As usual, if you have any comment or suggestion feel free to reply to this post or email me. For a list of the planned features and releases, check out the <a href="http://www.assembla.com/spaces/milestones/index/bWE7NkzCqr3k25abIlDkbG?spaces_tool_id=ceS8UazCqr3k25abIlDkbG">Milestones</a> page.</p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="http://www.assembla.com/spaces/files/bWE7NkzCqr3k25abIlDkbG"><span class="caps">DOWNLOAD</span> <span class="caps">HERE</span></a></strong></p>