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BBDB User Manual

1. 05 13 16 D Deleting fields ir eret ERE pas RR 13 Dialling phone numbers 14 Display of addresses 005 25 Displaying changed records 16 E Editing fields cer rer RR pale aoe Red 13 Plectric displays testo dre tee E eR Re Rea 25 Blided display 4 22 rrr t RR ee 12 European addresses 0 00 ce eee esee 25 European phone numbers 13 24 48 F Pinger interface puii BR I PRER M ue PR ET DU 15 Fixing 1nistakes elec RE REA OL xU 14 Format of completed address 18 Formatting addresses 0 004 25 GNUS Subject buffer ress eb erem eme eere 22 I Initial Configuration sr ir ecpy rre eere S 5 Inserting new fields 00 13 Installation 2 2sexteser eee ees cies rud duis il Invalid zip COdeS ocre i run de dense dias Rea 24 L List of valid zip codes 000eeeeeeee 24 M Mail address completion 18 27 Mail AliaSesS 2 229 aie RebeR eee Erari pela 18 Mailing liste 222steted RR UR E ERN 18 Makefile errer iieeLbileeese9 6epER eee as ie en 1 mark CHAR eoim decche sina omes qe ete dem 22 Merging r 6cords le rer4e RR ICERPPRERE E 14 N Name completion ssseeues 18 27 Normal User Installation 0 2 North American phone numbers 13 24 Not a valid zip code llsseuluseeuuee 24 One line display 522 0
2. bbdb user mail names A regular expression identifying the addresses that belong to you If a message from an address matching this is seen the BBDB record for the To line will be shown instead of the one for the From line If this is nil it will default to the value of user 1ogin name bbdb always add addresses If this is t then whenever the Insidious Big Brother Database notices a new email address corresponding to a person who is in the database it will add it to the database If this is nil the default then whenever a new network address is noticed for a person in the database you will be asked whether to add the address If this is the symbol never really if it is not t and not nil then new network addresses will never be automatically added bbdb new nets always primary If this is t then when the Insidious Big Brother Database adds a new address to a record it will always add it to the front of the list of addresses making it the primary address If this is nil the default then you will be asked If Chapter 1 BBDB 28 this is the symbol never really if it is not t and not nil then new network addresses will always be added to the end of the list bbdb canonicalize redundant nets p If this is non nil redundant network addresses will be ignored If a record has an address of the form foo baz com setting this to t will cause subsequently noticed addresses like foo bar baz com to be ignored since
3. 1 1 4 8 Initializing BBDB support for Supercite To allow the BBDB to assist in the storage of Supercite citations add the following form to your Emacs initialization file bbdb insinuate sc bbdb insinuate sc adds BBDB functions to two Supercite hooks sc post hook and Sc attribs postselect hook See Section 1 6 3 Using Supercite page 23 for more de tails on the operation of Supercite citation management using the BBDB Three other Supercite variables must be set modified to allow the BBDB to work with it These variables are not automatically set as it would be impossible to reliably set them without interfering with other user customizations The modifications are Sc preferred attribution list sc consult should be added to the list An example configuration is setq sc preferred attribution list sc lastchoice x attribution sc consult initials firstname lastname Sc attrib selection list The following form should be added to sc attrib selection list gt sc from address x bbdb sc consult attr sc mail field sc from address Chapter 1 BBDB 9 sc mail glom frame The following form should be added to sc mail glom frame to allow the re trieval of the name of a person who is a in the BBDB and b has only included their net address in the message in question progn bbdb sc default list abort step 0 An example configuration is as follows setq sc mail glom frame g
4. 1 3 2 Other database manipulation functions bbdb kill older If called interactively or with a single argument a date in yyyy mm dd format it will kill all records that were last modified before the given date Chapter 1 BBDB 17 as determined by the timestamp field See Section 1 7 3 Predefined Hooks page 30 If called non interactively with a date in yyyy mm dd format a comparison function and an action function the comparison function is applied to the timestamp field of all records and the action function applied to those for whom the comparison function returns true If nil is supplied as the comparison function string lessp is used 1 4 Interfaces The BBDB interfaces itself with several message handling packages but certain parameters control its behavior depending on whether it is being used from within a mail reader or a news reader In all of these packages two new keybindings will be added bbdb package show sender Displays the BBDB entry corresponding to the author of the current message If there is none you will be asked whether to create one The function called is bbdb package show sender where package is either gnus mh rmail or vm depending on the mail or news program being used when the command is invoked bbdb package annotate sender Lets you edit the notes field of the BBDB record corresponding to the sender of the current message If there is no record for the cu
5. Kimball Collins Dirk Grun wald Philippe Queinnec Boris Putanec Dave Disser Francois Felix Ingrand Sean Owens Guido Bosch Lance Brown Tom Emerson George Hartzell Luis Miguel Silveira Kimmo Suominen Derek Upham David Zuhn Rod Whitby Richard Mlynarik Chapter 1 BBDB Last but not least thanks to Jamie Zawinski for writing BBDB in the first place 47 Chapter 1 Concept Index Concept Index po 22 MUB MEE 22 BBDB buffer sca aneanden ddd oe ane ARE SE Gus 13 A Adding new fields 0c eee eee 13 Adding new records 000s sees eee ee 13 Address completion sssss sess 18 27 Address display 2o spreta RoorE RR EE ru 25 AKA oh char wh vine hb Nene idR IT UE 26 Alternate names ossi roc Pave see PP aed 26 Annotating the sender of the current message 17 Auto save flle8 sese ser o RR rn 26 Automatic display of the corresponding record a high tab anti mete a du ee 2 8 e008 yd ead end eat Rd RR RE 26 Automatically adding text to records 31 Automatically creating records 25 30 B BBDB Mode sis eme LRERREP TP RpDLBMRRIUBS 13 Browsing the Web page for the current record 16 Builtin field types see nme 9 Changing fields beadacts oobi eves noe 13 Changing windows 00000 16 Checking zip codes sse s 24 Completion siressa Pagans e Er eCE RP 27 Continental addresses 000000000 25 Creating new records
6. The configure script also comes with a number of options that lets you customize the compilation process These options are described below where appropriate Byte Compiling the Lisp files First you need to byte compile the appropriate BBDB Lisp files While this is in theory an optional step it is virtually required in practice due to speed reasons In order to byte compile the lisp files an Emacs of some sort must be used By default at configure time emacs and xemacs will be tried in that order If you want to use a special Emacs flavor or if you want to use xemacs at the first place you should pass the with emacs PROG option to configure In order to successfully compile the BBDB the build process also needs to know the location of the various optional packages If the directories containing these optional pack ages are in the default Emacs search path the load path variable no other changes need be made for the build process to complete successfully If the optional packages are not in the default search path the build process will not find them unless explicitly told of their location s To tell the build process where to find Gnus MH E and or VM use the configure options with gnus dir DIR with mhe dir DIR and or with vm dir DIR variables respectively To tell the build process where to find any other package s pass the directories containing the lisp files for the package s to the configure option with ot
7. bbdb complete name allow cycling 27 bbdb complete name full completion 27 bbdb completion display record 18 bbdb completion type 2 2 9 aiiis 21 bbdb continental zip regexp 25 bbdb create hook ien c dr hr Res 28 bbdb default area code sess 24 bbdb dial local prefix 2 sense 15 bbdb dial local prefix alist 2 s c 15 bbdb dial long distance prefix 15 bbdb dwim net address allow redundancy 18 bbdb electrit p nt bose case o v ere Re RE 25 bbdb expand mail aliases 27 bbdb fi ler eR ee RIDERE 24 bbdb finger host field ois 11 15 bbdb get addresses from headers 19 bbdb get addresses headers 19 bbdb get addresses to headers 19 bbdb get only first address p 19 bbdb ignore most messages alist 30 bbdb ignore some messages alist 31 bbdb 1nfO0 f11l06 22 eee RISE 16 bbdb initialize hOoOk cies canis tac adans 29 bbdb legal zip codes 00 eee 24 bbdb list hook b I b Re eet RE Rv 28 bbdb load hOok ket R9 RERO RP 29 bbdb message caching enabled 28 bbdb mode hook 2 mc see a meh te ban 29 bbdb new nets always primary 24 50 bbdb north american phone numbers p 24 bbdb notice auto save file 26 bbdb notice hook 5 ree ees 29 31 bbdb offer save i prelcledg ed eeDreRs 28 bb
8. e easy or automatic display of the record corresponding to the sender of the current message e automatic creation of records based on the contents of the current message e automatic addition of data to arbitrary fields of the record corresponding to the sender of the current message e Listing all records which match a regular expression e Listing all records which match a regular expression in a particular field company or notes for example 1 1 Installation This program consists of several groups of files organized by directory lisp the main program code for the BBDB tex TEX support files for bbdb print the BBDB printing utility texinfo the documentation files for the BBDB utils miscellaneous external utility programs bits things that have been written as add ons for BBDB but have not yet been merged with the main codebase 1 1 1 General Prerequisites Various parts of the BBDB require extra packages to be available that are not part of the BBDB distribution Please note that with one exception no extra packages beyond those which ship with both GNU Emacs and XEmacs are required for the use of BBDB core functionality This one exception applies to XEmacs 20 5 users the xemacs base package must be installed for the correct operation of the core BBDB functionality The table below lists the requirements of the various portions of the BBDB Please note that the absence of any of the below optional packages
9. Gnus 3 15 or newer add hook gnus startup hook bbdb insinuate gnus bbdb insinuate gnus adds bindings for the default keys to Gnus and configures Gnus to notify the BBDB when new messages are loaded This notification is required if the BBDB is to be able to display BBDB entries for messages displayed in Gnus 1 1 4 2 Initializing BBDB support for MH E To take advantage of the MH E features of the BBDB add the following form to your Emacs configuration file add hook mh folder mode hook bbdb insinuate mh bbdb insinuate mh adds bindings for the default keys to MH E and configures MH E to notify the BBDB when new messages are loaded This notification is required if the BBDB is to be able to display BBDB entries for messages displayed in MH E 1 1 4 3 Initializing BBDB support for RMAIL To take advantage of the RMAIL features of the BBDB add the following form to your Emacs configuration file add hook rmail mode hook bbdb insinuate rmail bbdb insinuate rmail adds bindings for the default keys to RMAIL and configures RMAIL to notify the BBDB when new messages are loaded This notification is required if the BBDB is to be able to display BBDB entries for messages displayed in RMAIL 1 1 4 4 Initializing BBDB support for Sendmail To take advantage of send mail mode the one invoked with M x mail features of the BBDB add the following form to your Emacs configuration file add hook mail setup hook bbdb insinuat
10. If migration is declined the file will kept in the older format in the bbdb buffer but will be stored internally in the new format When changes need to be made to the bbdb buffer changed records will be reverse migrated from their internal version to that of the disk file 1 11 2 Other Changes TeX Output By default ec fonts are used for TeX output instead of cm fonts With the ps fonts option set in bbdb print alist TimesNewRoman and Courier fonts are used 1 12 The Latest Version Released versions of the BBDB can be found at the following site e WWW http bbdb sourceforge net e FTP ftp ftp sourceforge net pub bbdb Development versions of the BBDB can be obtained in the following ways e WWW http bbdb sourceforge net e Anonymous CVS See http bbdb sourceforge net for instructions Users of development versions of the BBDB should subscribe to the bbdb info mailing list See Section 1 10 Mailing Lists page 42 1 13 The Future The future consists of Bugs and Features 1 13 1 Known Bugs 1 M TAB conflicts with ispell Workaround The binding installed by the BBDB for address completion expansion conflicts with that used by ispell The suggested workarounds are to rebind the ispell key the BBDB binding is not configurable at this time to manually invoke ispell via M x or to not use ispell completion functionality in BBDB enabled message composition buffers The following is an example of such a rebinding s
11. a value in bbdb vm auto add label list then a VM label will be added to the message This works great when bbdb user mail names is set As a result mail that you send to people and copy yourself on is labeled as well 1 6 Using the BBDB with other packages The BBDB adds functionality to several packages The following sections detail these augmentations 1 6 1 Using the BBDB with Message Mode At this time the only feature the BBDB adds to Message mode is the binding to M TAB which allows for BBDB record completion 1 6 2 Using the BBDB with Reportmail The BBDB can modify the reportmail el package to use information from BBDB records when identifying the senders or recipients of e mail messages In normal operation Reportmail displays the name and net address sender and recipient of incoming messages The BBDB can be configured to intercept and rewrite this infor mation before it appears in the Emacs mode line It first attempts to rewrite the sender and or recipient information by substituting those addresses with information from the BBDB Replacement information is first sought from the mail name field in the respective BBDB records If no such field is found the name field is returned If no BBDB record is found no rewriting is performed The BBDB Reportmail augmentation is accomplished through the advising of the Re portmail display time get field function in order to do a posteriori modification of the returned val
12. arguments to decide whether an entry should be automatically created You can use this to for example create or not create messages which have a particular subject See the variable bbdb auto notes alist See Section 1 7 3 Predefined Hooks page 30 Chapter 1 BBDB 26 If you want to autocreate messages based on the current newsgroup it s prob ably a better idea to set this variable to t or nil from your gnus select group hook instead To automatically remember users in certain groups you can do something like setq gnus select group hook lambda setq bbdb news auto create p or string some news group gnus newsgroup name string other news group gnus newsgroup name bbdb quiet about name mismatches If this is false the default then BBDB will prompt you when it notices a name change that is when the real name in a message doesn t correspond to a record already in the database with the same network address As in John Smith lt jqs frob com gt versus John Q Smith lt jqs frob com gt If this is true then you will not be asked if you want to change it and it will not be changed If a number then it is the number of seconds to sit for while displaying the name mismatch bbdb use alternate names If this is false then the BBDB will not use the AKA field Otherwise the default then the mail and news interfaces will ask you if you want to add an alternate name when a name change is no
13. bbdb insinuate mh RMAIL add hook rmail mode hook bbdb insinuate rmail sendmail add hook mail setup hook bbdb insinuate sendmail VM bbdb insinuate vm Add to vm file The above forms should be added to your Emacs initialization file except where otherwise noted You can control what real name is inserted with the mail alias field if a record has a mail alias field then that is used instead of their name field If the variable bbdb completion display record is true the default then when you successfully complete an address with M TAB the corresponding record will be appended to the BBDB buffer The buffer will not be displayed if it is not already visible but the record will be displayed there When sending mail you can use the command bbdb yank addresses to CC the current message to the people currently displayed in the BBDB buffer This is useful if you are in the midst of sending or replying to a message and you decide to add some recipients You can use one of the M x bbdb commands to display the set of people that you want to CC the message to and then execute this command to add them to the list If you are using Jamie Zawinski s mail abbrevs el package which uses the word abbrev mechanism for mail aliases then you can store your mail aliases in the BBDB instead of duplicating the information elsewhere Chapter 1 BBDB 19 If you want a mail alias to be defined for a person s
14. database s layout and a discussion of the basic BBDB manipulation commands The database itself lives in a file which is named by the variable bbdb file If this variable is not set the database is assumed to be in bbdb 1 2 1 Database Fields The database is organized as a set of records where each record corresponds to one person or organization Each record has several fields and each field is of one of several types Below the built in types are listed followed by a description of how and why some types can be used more than once in a single record Chapter 1 BBDB 10 Type Description Notes name The name of this person or none if the Single value single instance record corresponds to an organization company The name of this person s organization or Single value single instance none AKA A list of other names for this person Multiple values through commas net A list of this person s network addresses Multiple values through commas address A list of postal physical addresses for this Multiple values through multiple person occurences phone A list of telephone numbers for this person Multiple values through multiple occurences notes Random commentary Multiple values through multiple occurences The field types listed above can be classified into four categories as indicated by the comments in the Notes column Field types marked as Single value single occurrence may only occur onc
15. default area code Chapter 1 BBDB 45 Make format self describing in comment ISO 8859 x characters in records for printing Prefix for W bbdb www command to allow selection of different addresses Generalized buttons via extents for fields Example a b means create button that calls b for each entry in the a field Remove support for GNUS Start with lisp Makefile remove nntp and gnus loads More flexible auto addition Conditionalizing of addition conditions or supplied func tion Prompt if multiple records that meet criteria exist Different output formats See Toby Speight s lt s8iurdodvm fsf plato ansa co uk gt and Bin Mu s lt 199801221605 KAA23663 DerivaTech Com gt Generalized area code split program that could split for example based on input copied or straight fetch of page from the Bellcore NANP page Print multivalue comma separated fields with one value per line Easier BBDB extension See lt xcdyb30f3hb fsf ra cs uchicago edu gt from Soren Dayton Take birthdays from the BBDB add them to calendar From Boris Goldowsky Make mail aliases file for other mailers From Boris Goldowsky Various patches from Boris Goldowsky in bbdb ext Various other patches bbdb filters 0 2 bbdb frame el bbdb letter 1 0 bbdb plz bbdb query country country info Note that these files have not been investigated They may or may not be incorporated Ability
16. it is t data from the BBDB will be used if available If it is nil data from the BBDB will not be used In the following examples assume the following 1 Message From Jamie lt jwz netscape com gt BBDB No record 2 Message From Matt lt simmonmt acm org gt BBDB Name Matthew Net simnonmtOpurdue edu bbdb gnus summary prefer bbdb data t t nil bbdb gnus summary prefer real names t bbdb t Printed in Summary buffer for Case 1 Jamie jwz netscape com Jamie Case 2 Matthew Matthew Matt 1 5 1 3 GNUS Summary Buffer Enhancements This section is remarkably terse as I don t have a copy of GNUS If anybody can provide more descriptive information please let me know autoload bbdb gnus lines and from bbdb gnus setq gnus optional headers bbdb gnus lines and from Chapter 1 BBDB 22 bbdb gnus mark known posters If t the default then the GNUS subject list will contain an indication of those messages posted by people who have entries in the Insidious Big Brother Database they will be marked with an asterisk You can change the character used to mark records on a record by record basis by adding a mark char property to the record whose value is be the string to display preferably one character bbdb gnus header prefer real names Default nil if t then the GNUS subject list will display real names instead of network addresses bbdb gnus header show bbdb names Default t If both this variab
17. opposite state of the record under point bbdb display record completely Show all the fields of the current record The display layout full multi line is used for this bbdb omit record Removes the current record from the display but does not delete it from the database it merely makes it seem as if the most recent search had not matched this record With a numeric argument omit the next N records With a negative argument go backwards bbdb send mail Begin composing mail to the person represented by the cur rent record The first email address is used Normally the mail sending package which is used is determined by which mail reading package is loaded that is if MH E is loaded then mh send will be used if VM is loaded then vm mail is used if message is loaded then it is used otherwise mail is used You can override this by setting the variable bbdb send mail style to one of the symbols vm mh message or mail If m is used instead of simply m then mail will be sent to all of the folks listed in the BBDB buffer instead of just the person under point This function does not at present use the facility provided by compose mail and mail user agent In a future version of the BBDB it will bbdb save db Saves the BBDB file to disk bbdb refile record Merge the current record into some other record that is delete the record under point after copying all of the data within it into some other record th
18. parts the marking of known posters and the rewriting of posters names The first the marking of posters occurs only when bbdb gnus summary mark known posters is t the default and the posters have entries in the BBDB When this variable is true the marking occurs as described in the previous section Marking Posters above The poster name rewriting is done for all posters not just for those with records in the BBDB That said rewriting rules for posters in the BBDB are more flexible than for those not listed The rewriting is governed by two variables as described below bbdb gnus summary prefer real names can have one of three values t bbdb or nil In general this variable governs the preference between net addresses and names If it is t the name if any will be used If nil the net address will be used The third value bbdb can be used as a method for distinguishing between authors with records in the BBDB and those without If the variable is set to bbdb the name from the BBDB record will be used if the author has a record in the BBDB If the author is not in the BBDB the net address from the message will be printed This variable makes little sense if bbdb gnus summary prefer bbdb data is nil as no names will be printed in the Summary buffer in this case only net addresses bbdb gnus summary prefer bbdb data is used to dis allow use of the BBDB for au thor data retrieval If
19. records from outside of Emacs This allows external programs to cause the BBDB record for a given person to appear in the running Emacs when for example mail is recieved from that person One specific application described below is the integration of Netscape and the BBDB allowing the display of BBDB records corresponding to Mail and or News messages displayed in Netscape bbdb srv is composed of two parts an external Perl script utils bbdb srv p1 and an Emacs Lisp file 1isp bbdb srv el The external portion is used to send commands to the internal portion NOTE bbdb srv requires gnuserv and itimer both included with XEmacs gnuserv must be started with the gnuserv start command before bbdb srv can be used In it s most basic form mail or news headers are passed to the Perl script The Perl script then causes the BBDB record if any corresponding to the passed headers to be displayed in the running Emacs While bbdb srv will operate with just a From field it works better when passed both From and To headers When bbdb srv notices that the logged in user is named in the From header it will attempt to display the record if any for the person named in the To header If no To header is passed it falls back on the record if any for the logged in user the person named in the From header An example manual invocation of bbdb srv is as follows cat bbdb srv pl From J
20. to remove all properties from copied strings Not So Near Future Fix Gnus scoring so it rebuilds when gnus score disappears Multiline note fields Change key to be some kind of unique number There should be better support for non American addresses and phone numbers This might be Near Future if somebody volunteers to send me patches Should reimplement electric mode to not be so broken The C o keystroke should add a field to all displayed records Perhaps should append some text to an arbitrary field of all displayed records Multiple bbdb files with precedence relationships See Wes Hardaker s sdu3awz7b5ba fsfOoakdale ucdavis edu Chapter 1 BBDB 46 e Automatically grab information about a person from their sig See Graham Clark s info bbdb post lt 6282 199706161624 havra dcs ed ac uk gt and Adrian Aichner s info bbdb post lt rxsiuzebpgp fsf midnight ecf teradyne com gt Would like to have bbdb snarf attack the sig then compare the snarfed data with the header data Thoughts e Are there enough hooks e The interfaces should share more code e The bbdb create internal function should be more forgiving e More commands in general including d 1 13 3 End of Life EOL Statements The items in the following list describe items for which support will be removed in coming versions of the BBDB The items listed are guaranteed to be supported and present only until the EOL date They may be removed with
21. uer RR ete er PER 33 1 9 9 Dbdbssnabf 3 eae Ede E foes a edits ood 36 1 821 BIDS SIY usua aco E a aa aoda a a Aa EAA ated 37 K9 Mierna S eeren ei a e enc I E coe 39 1 9 1 BBDB data file format lesse 39 1 9 1 1 Record Vectors lessen 39 1 9 1 2 Phone Vectors mk Rer SEI R Sp beatae dds 40 1 9 1 3 Address VectoOrs 0 0 00 c ccc ccc ccc ene e nes 40 1 9 1 4 Cache Vector 00 0 ccc cece cece cece eee nn 41 1 9 1 5 Notes String or Alist 00 00 eiie 42 1 9 1 6 Example BBDB record 000004 42 LI0 Mailing Lists um snag rct eee dead e ED n edes 42 1 11 Changes in this Version sssseeessee ee 42 1 11 1 Major Changes 0 cece eem II 42 1 11 2 Other Changes 22x aene rhet and d ead Aena 43 1 12 The Latest Version eeeseeeee RR Ie 43 LIS Ehe BULUIG noo pene RD OV e deaths a a a 43 1 18 1 Known B gs 2e RereL PE RA EUR ERR 43 1 13 2 TODO LIS ita t tore Rin ten etn b eate epos enn 44 1 13 3 End of Lite EOL Statements vereri re hr rat 46 lad UP ATU S oid se Bak e 4e mee es eon tau Orto ed une dd etate taie es 46 Concent Indlesea iso o oe Son RR ACER ORE De a 48 Variable Index 2222 oe CREER TERR RU RUE RR 50 ii
22. 6 RI I RRARSS S REPPRSRSG RR kas 1 Lll Installation 2 hee La Ere a ie PUR ee Ed A eae 1 1 1 1 General Prerequisites 0 0 0 cece esses eere 1 1 1 2 Normal User Installation ssse eese 2 1 1 3 XEmacs Package Installation 00020004 4 1 1 4 Initial Configuration siss rresia isara raakana eh 5 1 1 4 1 Initializing BBDB support for Gnus 1 1 4 2 Initializing BBDB support for MH E 7 1 1 4 3 Initializing BBDB support for RMAIL T 1 1 4 4 Initializing BBDB support for Sendmail 7 1 1 4 5 Initializing BBDB support for VM 8 1 1 4 6 Initializing BBDB support for Message mode 8 1 1 4 7 Initializing BBDB support for Reportmail 8 1 1 4 8 Initializing BBDB support for Supercite 8 1 1 4 9 Initializing BBDB support for Web Browsers 9 L2 The BBDB 324 i2 eR mienia ta e RUD Ere o Eta 9 1 2 1 Database Fields 000 ccc ete ese 9 1 2 2 Basic searching commands 0 0000s eee eee eee 11 1 2 8 Advanced searching commands s leues 12 1 2 4 Manual record addition 0 cece ee eee ee 12 L3 BBDB Modez acne foes giva iapa aait anata alii g a npe Rd ele aie RR 13 1 8 4 Functions bound to keys in BBDB Mode 13 1 8 2 Other database manipulation functions 16 l4 JIntettaeesuu ue ea oda aidan eia or et dat tc sa he ote a Barden I 1 4 1
23. BBDB User Manual A phone number and address database program for Emacs Edition Revision 1 51 Date 2003 08 05 12 11 05 by Jamie Zawinski Matt Simmons and the BBDB Development Team Copyright 1991 1994 Jamie Zawinski lt jwz netscape com gt Copyright 1997 1999 Matt Simmons lt simmonmt acm org gt Copyright c 2000 2002 The BBDB Development Team This is edition Revision 1 51 of the BBDB User Manual for BBDB version 2 34 Date 2003 08 05 12 11 05 Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on fnord all copies Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the con ditions for verbatim copying provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another lan guage under the above conditions for modified versions except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the author Chapter 1 BBDB 1 1 BBDB BBDB is a rolodex like database program for GNU Emacs BBDB stands for Insidious Big Brother Database and is not repeat not an obscure reference to the Buck Rogers TV series It provides the following features e Integration with mail and news readers with little or no interaction by the user
24. LUE OPTION VALUE Chapter 1 BBDB 35 Separate settings can be configured using bbdb print brief alist and bbdb print full alist Settings in these variables will override the ones in bbdb print alist The possible options and legal settings are columns 1 2 3 4 quad 4 little 2 column pages per sheet or grid 12 credit card sized pages per sheet separator 0 7 the style of heading for each letter O none 1 line 2 boxed letters 3 large boxed letters 4 large letters 5 letters with lines 6 letters with suits 7 boxed letters with suits omit area code A regular expression matching area codes to omit phone on first line If t the first phone number will be put on the same line as the name If nil the name will be the only text on the line If set to a string the field of type phone whose name matches the string will be used The string should be a valid regular expression n phones Maximum number of phone numbers to include n addresses Maximum number of addresses to include include files List of TeX files to Ninput If the filenames are not absolute the files must be located somewhere in the TeX input path ps fonts Postscript fonts TimesNewRoman and Courier will be used if the value is non nil Standard TeX fonts ec fonts will be used oth erwise font size The integer point size of the font to be used hsize The horizontal dimension of the pages The value must be a string and must be a v
25. Mail Reading Interfaces llssieeeeeese ee ee eee br 1 4 28 News Reading Interfaces ss esses esses essen 17 1 4 8 Mail Sending Interfaces 0 0 00 cece eee eee ee 18 1 5 Reader specific Features 00 00sec tenet s 19 1 5 1 Gnus specific Features 0 0000 cece cece eee eee es 19 1 5311 SCOPING oats sei ee creto a E Ded e 19 1 5 1 2 Gnus Summary Buffer Enhancements 20 1 5 1 3 GNUS Summary Buffer Enhancements 21 1 5 2 VM specific features 0 0 cece eee eee eee 22 1 5 2 1 VM Message Summary Enhancements 22 1 5 2 3 VM configuration of what records the BBDB buffer SHOWS PED 22 1 5 2 3 VM automatic setup of vm set auto folder alist E 22 1 5 2 4 VM automatic adding of labels 22 1 6 Using the BBDB with other packages 0 23 1 6 1 Using the BBDB with Message Mode 23 1 6 2 Using the BBDB with Reportmail 23 1 6 3 Using the BBDB with Supercite 23 1 6 4 Using the BBDB with Web Browsers 24 ET OPUONS i edu quee ote dad v e d Eel EE RUE d dad 24 1 4 1 Customization Parameters llli else 24 1 4 2 Customization Hooks 0 0 00 ce ccc ccc cnc eens 28 17 3 Predefined HOOKS 4 03 4 00642 ERR 30 WS WG PTEE EE ones ood dad ata ores uch x et Ra alec 33 L 8 b Dbdb ftp i2 eR iiaa REUS Re ea ed 33 1 8 2 bbdb pEint
26. RING is neither a string or an integer it should be a function which is called with the contents of the field and the result of the function call is used If the REPLACE P flag is true then the string replaces the old contents instead of being appended to it If multiple clauses match the message all of the corresponding strings will be added If the string is being appended REPLACE P is false or not provided then the new string is appended to the end of the existing field value with an intervening newline So each piece of text automatically added to this field will go on its own line You can control what the separator is by putting a field separator property on the symbol naming the field For example to make text automatically added to a field named newsgroups be separated by commas you could do put newsgroups field separator P group p This variable works for news as well You might want to arrange for this to have a different value when in mail as when in news There may be only one entry per header in this alist that is Subject bfoo b Foo bar Bar will work but C Subject bfoo b Foo Subject bar Bar will not Here s a more complicated example some people include bitmaps of themselves in their mail messages in an X Face header field You can capture this field into the BBDB with the following setq bbdb auto notes alist appen
27. The functions listed below will return the value of their cache fields if set but will also build and set the correct field values if the fields are unset Chapter 1 BBDB 42 bbdb record name Return the name in the Name Cache field of the cache if set If the name has not been built yet if the field is nil the name is built stored in the Name Cache field and returned bbdb record sortkey Return the name it the Sort Key field of the cache if set If the Sort Key field has not yet been set if the field is nil the Sort Key is built stored in the Sort Key field and returned 1 9 1 5 Notes String or Alist If there is only a single note for a given record the notes field for that record will be a string If there is more than one note the notes field will be an association list alist with elements of the form NAME VALUE where NAME is the symbol for the name of the note and VALUE is the value of the note 1 9 1 6 Example BBDB record 1 10 Mailing Lists If you are looking for a way to create mailing lists with BBDB you should be looking at the section on See Section 1 4 3 Mail Sending Interfaces page 18 There are three mailing lists for the BBDB bbdb info lists sourceforge net gets moderate traffic and is intended for the discussion and distribution of development versions of the BBDB Users of development versions of the BBDB should be subscribed to this list It is also to this list that bugs should b
28. alid TeX dimension Alternatively the TeX default will be used if the value is nil vsize The vertical dimension of the pages The value must be a string and must be a valid TeX dimension Alternatively the TeX default will be used if the value is nil hoffset The TeX output will be offset to the right by the value of this option The value must be either a string containing a valid TeX dimension or nil or 0 to use the default TeX horizontal offset voffset The TeX output will be offset downward by the value of this option The value must be either a string containing a valid TeX dimension or nil or 0 to use the default TeX vertical offset Chapter 1 BBDB 36 quad hsize Horizontal size to be used for the individual pages in the quad for mat l he value must be a string containing a valid TeX dimension quad vsize Vertical size to be used for the individual pages in the quad format The value must be a string containing a valid TeX dimension The default value is Comit area code AREA CODE phone on first line t ps fonts nil font size 6 quad hsize 3 15in quad vsize 4 5in Where AREA CODE is the value of bbdb default area code or 000 if there is no default area code bbdb print brief alist Extra options for the bbdb print brief format The value s of this variable can either supplement or override the values in bbdb print alist The format and possible values of this variable a
29. amie Zawinski lt jwz netscape com gt To Matt Simmons lt simmonmt acm org gt 6 bbdb snarf is actually a wrapper for bbdb snarf region that determines the relevant region and passes it on Chapter 1 BBDB 38 If the invoking user is Jamie Zawinski the record for Matt Simmons if any will be displayed If the invoking user is not Jamie Zawinski the record for Jamie Zawinski if any will be displayed As mentioned above bbdb srv can be used with Netscape Mail and Netscape News Please note that it can only be used with the UNIX versions 3 0b2 and greater of these applications To allow Netscape to use bbdb srv set the NS_MSG_DISPLAY_HOOK variable to bbdb srv pl as follows Bourne Shell bin sh and variants NS M8G DISPLAY HOOK bbdb srv pl export NS M8G DISPLAY HOOK C Shell bin csh and variants setenv NS MSG DISPLAY HOOK bbdb srv pl The following variables can be used to customize the behavior of bbdb srv bbdb srv auto create p This variable is similar to bbdb news auto create p and bbdb mail auto create p That is when headers are passed in to bbdb srv a new BBDB record can be created if none exists depending on the value of this variable Possible values are t Automatically create new BBDB records if the headers passed in do not correspond to an already existing record nil Do not automatically create new BBDB records FUNCTION FUNCTION is called If it returns t a record wil
30. at of this alist is C HEADER NAME REGEXP STRING for example To vm VM mailing list Subject sprocket mail about sprockets you bonehead called me a bonehead will cause the text VM mailing list to be added to the notes field of the record cor responding to anyone you get mail from via one of the VM mailing lists If that is bbdb mail auto create p is set such that the record would have been created or if the record already existed The format of elements of this list may also be REGEXP FIELD NAME STRING OT REGEXP FIELD NAME STRING REPLACE P meaning add the given string to the named field The field name may not be name aka address phone or net builtin fields but must be either notes company or the name of a user defined note field pattern string to add is equivalent to pattern notes string to add Chapter 1 BBDB 32 STRING can contain amp or NN escapes like in the function replace match For example to automatically add the contents of the organization field of a message to the company field of a BBDB record you can use this Organization company amp Note you need two to get a single into a lisp string literal If STRING is an integer N the Nth matching subexpression is used so the above example could be written more efficiently as Organization company 0 If ST
31. aximegalon edu Subject time travel will cause BBDB entries to be made only for messages sent by people at Maximegalon U or that s or people posting about time travel There may be only one entry per header in this alist that is Chapter 1 BBDB 31 From addri addr2 is legal but From addri From addr2 is not If the variable bbdb mail auto create p is set to the symbol bbdb ignore some messages hook then the variable bbdb ignore some messages alist will determine which messages should have records automatically created for them This is the exact inverse of the semantics of the bbdb ignore most messages alist the alist specifies which messages should not have records automatically created for them instead of which should For example From mailer daemon To mailing list 1 mailing list 2 CC mailing list 1 mailing list 2 will cause BBDB entries to not be made for messages from any mailer daemon or messages sent to or CCed to either of two mailing lists The variable bbdb news auto create p may be set to either of the above mentioned functions as well to get this behavior for netnews messages instead of mail messages If the variable bbdb notice hook is set to the symbol bbdb auto notes hook then the variable bbdb auto notes alist may be used to automatically add text to the notes fields of the records corresponding to certain messages The form
32. bbdb notes These commands limit their searches to the name company email address and notes fields respectively If these commands are given a prefix argument the listing displayed will be one line per entry otherwise the full database entry will be shown on multiple lines The functions described above are predefined to certain keys in the BBDB buffer See Section 1 3 BBDB Model page 13 for more details The bbdb notes command will prompt for the notes field to search RET for all In this way you can limit your searches to the contents of one particular user defined notes field You can add user defined fields with the bbdb insert new field command See Section 1 3 BBDB Model page 13 1 2 3 Advanced searching commands The following functions can be used to search for records based on creation and or modifica tion dates These functions will match records that have timestamp and or creation date fields as appropriate See Section 1 7 3 Predefined Hooks page 30 for more information on these fields which are created by default bbdb timestamp older Display all records modified before a given date If this function is called in teractively it will prompt for a date If it is being called non interactively the date should be provided as a string in yyyy mm dd format bbdb timestamp newer Display all records modified after a given date If this function is called interac tively it will prompt for a date If it is be
33. cord Configurable completion Should allow user to specify complete on names first then nets etc More variables for upgrading Specifically a variable that lets users specify extra fields for upgrading an alist a b that says field a should be upgraded the same way as field b Change all functions that switch on MUAs to use compose mail ex bbdb send mail internal Soren Dayton s method for generically extending the BBDB with special purpose fields Sorting records on alternate keys bbdb sort by from Boris Goldowsky Sorting individual types of fields Sam Steingold s method Button 3 menus Mark Moll and Soren Dayton Conditionalized erasure of properties when text is pasted into the BBDB Should notice when there are Reply To addresses Should have a command for merging together two divergent copies of a bbdb file in case you read mail on one machine and news on another for instance The BBDB buffer should be resized to exactly fit what it s displaying even when not in electric mode It should be possible to do completion on last names as well as first names The BBDB buffer is left at the top of the stack when GNUS is exited because GNUS runs its exit hooks too early This should be fixed String area codes German area codes can begin with zeroes patch from Michael Sperber lt sperber informatik uni tuebingen de gt Default country variable similar to bbdb
34. ction describes BBDB functionality that does not fit neatly into other sections 1 8 1 bbdb ftp The bbdb ftp utility enables the storage of FTP sites as BBDB records The bbdb create ftp site function is used to create a BBDB record for an FTP site The command will prompt for information needed to create the record The FTP site for a given record can be accessed with the bbdb ftp command 1 8 2 bbdb print bbdb print is a utility for pretty printing entries from the BBDB using TeX It is invoked by pressing P in the BBDB buffer this will cause all records in the BBDB to be printed as governed by the variables described below If P is prefixed by a only the currently displayed records will be printed Once invoked bbdb print will generate the TeX output in a buffer named bbdb tex controlled by bbdb print file name The generated output will be shown and must be manually saved For each record printed bbdb print will look for the presence of the tex name field If this field is found its value will be printed instead of the name field for the record in question This field is intended to allow the storage of names with accents or other characters that would be illegal in the address portion of a message While other fields have special characters quoted by bbdb print as described below the contents of the tex name field if present are used verbatim Chapter 1 BBDB 34 The following variables govern the printing of rec
35. d bbdb auto notes alist list x face list concat t n C 7 t n ACE N82 4 C0 t n NON 2 ACE N82 NNCE NEN NON 2 ANNCE NeXBa tC Nen TONO face UNVENTED Chapter 1 BBDB 33 The calls to list and concat are just for readability it could easily be a constant The tricky bit here is that it strips out the newlines and whitespace used for header continuation which are not actually a part of the face data So though the mail message may have the face data on multiple lines the entry in the BBDB will be just one line bbdb auto notes ignore is an alist of headers and regexps to ignore in bbdb auto notes hook Each element looks like HEADER REGEXP for example Organization Gatewayed fromNV Source only would exclude the phony Organization headers in GNU mailing lists gatewayed to the gnu newsgroups Note that this exclusion applies only to a single field not to the entire message For that use the variable bbdb auto notes ignore all bbdb auto notes ignore all is an alist of headers and regexps which cause the entire message to be ignored in bbdb auto notes hook Each element looks like HEADER REGEXP for example From BLATNN COM would exclude any notes recording for message coming from BLAT COM Note that this is different from bbdb auto notes ignore which applies only to a particular header field rather than the entire message 1 8 Utilities This se
36. db pop up target Jines aes 27 bbdb print alist 4 ce Ree Sees 34 bbdb print brief alist vmm 36 bbdb print elide 22 oodd eae bbere orien 34 bbdb print 6pilog bo ok ed eds 36 bbdb print file name 1 e us 34 bbdb print full alist e ve 36 bbdb print prolog s e RR wee oes 36 bbdb print require so n cess 34 bbdb quiet about name mismatches 26 bbdb readonly p oe Rie b REIR ces 26 bbdb send mail style ssesss 14 bbdb use alternate names 26 bbdb se pop p cocr priere ER TERES 26 bbdb user mail names eese 27 bbdb gnus header prefer real names 22 bbdb gnus header show bbdb names 22 bbdb gnus lines and from length 22 bbdb gnus mark known posters 22 bbdb gnus score default 19 bbdb gnus score field 11 19 bbdb mail auto create p 25 31 bbdb news auto create p 25 31 bbdb sc attribution field 11 bbdb srv auto create p lesus 38 bbdb srv display delay 38 bbdb vm auto add label field 22 bbdb vm auto add label list 22 bbdb vm set auto folder alist field 22 G gnus score find score files function 19 y viu summary fort at i22 283o 20 6 Er 22 vm summary uninteresting senders 22 Table of Contents L BBDB 6 26565606
37. db pop up target lines lines of the window display the BBDB buffer With the default configurations of VM MH RMAIL and GNUS this means that the bbdb list buffer will be just below the message body buffer If this is the symbol horiz then the BBDB window will be stacked horizontally instead of vertically if there is room to do that tastefully bbdb pop up target lines Desired number of lines in VM MH RMAIL GNUS pop up BBDB window default 5 bbdb completion type Controls the behavior of the bbdb complete name command If nil the de fault completion is done across the set of all full names and user ids in the database if the symbol name completion is done on real names only if the symbol net completion is done on network addresses only if it is primary then completion is done only across the set of primary network addresses the first address in the list of addresses for a given user If it is primary or name completion is done across primaries and real names bbdb expand mail aliases If non nil expand mail aliases in bbdb complete name bbdb complete name allow cycling Whether to allow cycling of email addresses when calling bbdb complete name on a completed address in a composition buffer bbdb complete name full completion Show full expanded completion rather than partial matches If t then do it always if a number then just is the number of completions for a specific match is below that number
38. der alist automatically by calling bbdb vm set auto folder alist This adds for each BBDB record containing a bbdb vm set auto folder alist field an entry to vm set auto folder alist The record field can contain a string which is used as folder name or if it starts with a it is treated as lisp expression returning a folder name 1 5 2 4 VM automatic adding of labels bbdb vm auto add label list is a List used by bbdb vm auto add label to automati cally label messages Each element in the list is either a string or a list of two strings If Chapter 1 BBDB 23 a single string then it is used as both the field value to check for and the label to apply to the message If a list of two strings the first is the field value to search for and the second is the label to apply bbdb vm auto add label field bbdb define all aliases field is the field used by bbdb vm auto add label to automatically label messages Value is either a single symbol or a list of symbols of bbdb fields that bbdb vm auto add label uses to check for labels to apply to messages Defaults to bbdb define all aliases field which is typically mail alias bbdb vm auto add label automatically adds labels to messages based on the bbdb vm auto add label field bbdb define all aliases field field Add this to bbdb notice hook and if using VM each message that bbdb notices will be checked If the sender has a value in the bbdb vm auto add label field in their BBDB record that matches
39. directory contains the documentation for the BBDB This file should either be linked or copied to a directory on the default path for the info program or listed in the INFOPATH environment variable 1 1 3 XEmacs Package Installation NOTE XEmacs packages are currently supported only under XEmacs versions after and including 20 5 If you are not running such a version of XEmacs you should install the BBDB according to the instructions in Section 1 1 2 Normal User page 2 Configuring Byte Compiling The configuration and byte compilation procedures are the same as in the Normal User installation See Section 1 1 2 Normal User page 2 Moving the files to their final destination Support is provided for the automatic installation of the BBDB in an XEmacs package directory The following configure options are available for you Chapter 1 BBDB 5 with package dir DIR This option sets the root of the XEmacs package directory By default usr local lib xemacs site packages is used with symlinks If this option is used the installation will be done by making symbolic links to the sources instead of copying the files with linkpath PATH Without this option the installation process uses the output of pwd to de termine the current directory If something else should be used you should provide an alternate name for the BBDB toplevel directory by using with linkpath If for example pwd returns p local elisp bbdb b
40. e by providing a prefix argument to the bbdb insert new field command bbdb check zip codes p Whether syntax checking of zip codes should be enforced Default t If this is true you can t enter invalid zip codes A zip code is valid if it matches one of the regular expressions in the variable bbdb legal zip codes Chapter 1 BBDB 25 bbdb address formatting alist Controls the display of addresses in the buffer Each entry in this list consists of an identifying function and a formatting function The identifying function must accept an address and return t if the associated formatting function is to be used T he formatting function must insert the formatted address in the current buffer Identifying functions usually base their decision on the zip code format or on the country name The default entries will format an address using continental style if the zip code matches bbdb continental zip regexp If the zip code does not match addresses are formatted in US style bbdb continental zip regexp Decides whether an address should be formatted using US or European style If the zip code of an address matches the regular expression the European style is used T his works only if the expression bbdb address is continental bbdb format address continental is part of bbdb address formatting alist bbdb electric p Whether bbdb mode should be electric like electric buffer list Default t What this means is that the BBDB buffer which p
41. e per record Each occurrence can only have a single value For example there will be only one field of type name in a record It will be named name and will contain a single value the person s name The types marked as Multiple values through commas are essentially the same as the single value single occurrence field types but with one crucial difference they can contain multiple values in the form of a comma separated list So for example while a name field with a value of foo bar would be treated as if it contained the single value foo bar a net field with the same data would be thought of as having two separate values foo and bar As in the single occurrence single value field types there will be only one occurrence of each Multiple values through commas field type and the occurrence will have the same name as the type The Multiple values through multiple occurrences field type is the most flexible of the four listed here There can be multiple occurrences of each type This type necessarily does not have the name restriction imposed by the previous two types For example there can be multiple fields of the address type none of which have to be named address One could be named home and the other could be named work Special properties of the notes field type All user defined fields that don t fit into the other predefined field types name company AKA net address and phone will be created as a notes t
42. e reported See Section 1 13 1 Known Bugs page 43 for instructions on submitting bug reports The second mailing list bbdb announce lists sourceforge net has very low volume Any user of the BBDB should consider subscribing to this list as new releases and security issues will be posted here A third mailing list bbdb cvs lists sourceforge net is intended for developers to follow the changes made to the BBDB development version Developers of the BBDB should consider to subscribe to this list 1 11 Changes in this Version 1 11 1 Major Changes Database File Version Change the following version migration text will move in a future version It is in this section currently because new users will likely not experience it There has been a version change in the BBDB database file The new version supports non US zip codes and an additional Country field in addresses An automatic version migration mechanism has been implemented that allows older ver sion bbdb files to either be migrated to the new version or used as is without migrating Chapter 1 BBDB 43 When the BBDB detects a database file with an old version it will display the features that have been introduced in the database file from the time of the older version s imple mentation It will offer the choice of migration or use of the BBDB with the older version file If migration is chosen the database file will be automatically changed to the new format
43. e sendmail bbdb insinuate sendmail enables auto completion in send mail mode Chapter 1 BBDB 8 1 1 4 5 Initializing BBDB support for VM To take advantage of the VM features of the BBDB either add vm to the parameters of the bbdb initialize form or add the following form to your vm file bbdb insinuate vm bbdb insinuate vm adds bindings for the default keys to VM and configures VM to notify the BBDB when new messages are loaded This notification is required if the BBDB is to be able to display BBDB entries for messages displayed in VM 1 1 4 6 Initializing BBDB support for Message mode To allow the BBDB to be used in Message mode add the following form to your Emacs initialization file bbdb insinuate message bbdb insinuate message adds a binding for M TAB to Message mode This will enable completion of addressees based on BBDB records See Section 1 6 1 Using Message Mode page 23 for more details on the operation of Message mode BBDB record completion 1 1 4 7 Initializing BBDB support for Reportmail To allow the Reportmail package to report information from BBDB records for new mail add the following form to your Emacs initialization file bbdb insinuate reportmail bbdb insinuate reportmail adds to the display time get field function to allow access to BBDB records during new mail information display See Section 1 6 2 Using Reportmail page 23 for more details on the operation of Reportmail with the BBDB
44. e used instead of name for completion See Section 1 4 3 Mail Sending Interfaces page 18 mail name Available only when the Reportmail specific BBDB functions have been en abled Used for the storage of non default names to be used in the reporting of new mail by Reportmail For initialization details see Section 1 1 4 7 Re portmail Prep page 8 For usage details see Section 1 6 2 Using Reportmail page 23 mark char The field containing the character to be used for marking a given poster in the Gnus Summary Buffer For usage details see Section 1 5 1 2 Gnus Summary Buffer page 20 tex name The value of this field is used in place of the name field when printing the database using bbdb print See Section 1 8 2 bbdb print page 33 WWW This field contains the URL associated with the BBDB record Common uses are with bbdb snarf see Section 1 8 3 bbdb snarf page 36 and the BBDB Web Browser functionality for initialization details see Section 1 1 4 9 Web Browser Prep page 9 For usage details see Section 1 6 4 Using Web Browsers page 24 Chapter 1 BBDB 12 1 2 2 Basic searching commands You can list the contents of the database with the command M x bbdb You will be prompted for a regular expression and all records which match that regexp in the name company network address or any notes fields will be displayed A narrower search may be made by using the commands bbdb name bbdb company bbdb net or
45. each of which will be funcalled in turn Almost all hooks in Emacs work this way But notice that some of the hooks described below are called with arguments bbdb list hook Hook or hooks invoked after the bbdb list buffer is filled in Invoked with no arguments bbdb create hook Hook or hooks invoked each time a new bbdb record is created Invoked with one argument the new record This is called before the record is added to the database Note that bbdb change hook will be called as well bbdb change hook Hook or hooks invoked each time a bbdb record is altered Invoked with one argument the record This is called before the database buffer is modified Note that if a new bbdb record is created both this hook and bbdb create hook will be called Chapter 1 BBDB 29 bbdb mode hook Hook or hooks invoked when the BBDB buffer is created bbdb notice hook Hook or hooks invoked each time a bbdb record is noticed that is each time it is displayed by the news or mail interfaces Invoked with one argument the new record The record need not have been modified for this to be called use bbdb change hook for that You can use this to for example add something to the notes field based on the subject of the current message It is up to your hook to determine whether it is running in GNUS VM MH or RMAIL and to act appropriately Also note that bbdb change hook will not be called as a result of any modifi cations you may
46. efault value of this variable use a form similar to the following setq gnus score find score files function gt gnus score find bnews bbdb gnus score Note The default value in Gnus 5 5 is gnus score find bnews Check your configu ration before using the above code as your values may be different 1 5 1 2 Gnus Summary Buffer Enhancements Gnus can use the BBDB to do one of two things e Mark authors in the Summary Buffer who have records in the BBDB with a user defined mark character See Marking Posters below e lor authors in the Summary Buffer who also have records in the BBDB replace their name as listed in the Summary Buffer with their name as stored in the BBDB See Using Names from the BBDB below Marking Posters Authors with records in the BBDB can be marked either with a user defined mark character or with a default one The marking is enabled by the use of a Gnus user format code as de termined by bbdb gnus summary in bbdb format letter This variable which defaults to b is used to create a format code which is intended for use in gnus summary line format The format code is created by concatenating Zu with the value of bbdb gnus summary in bbdb format letter In the default case this results in the creation of the format code Zub Posts are marked as follows If the record for the poster has the field indicated in bbdb message marker field the default is nark char the value of that field i
47. gers the network address of the record which is at point otherwise it prompts in the minibuffer with completion for a user to finger With a numeric prefix argument it fingers the Nth network address of the current record with a prefix argument of U it fingers all of them The finger buffer is filled asynchronously meaning that you don t have to wait around for it to finish but fingering another user before the first finger has finished could have unpredictable results If this command is executed from the BBDB buffer it may be prefixed with as in f instead of simply f meaning to finger all of the users currently listed instead of just the one under point T he numeric prefix argument has the same interpretation Chapter 1 BBDB 16 9 8 19 6 9 You can define a special network address to finger by defining a field finger host The name of the field to be fingered can be changed by setting bbdb finger host field bbdb bury buffer Hides the BBDB buffer Note This command does not kill the BBDB buffer bbdb help This displays a one line help message in the minibuffer showing some of the most common bbdb mode commands bbdb info This documentation is displayed Please note that either bbdb or bbdb info must be installed in one of the info directories known to Emacs for this command to work bbdb info file If this documentation is not installed in the standard Info direc t
48. he database this buffer is changed as well ensuring that if it is auto saved it will be saved in its most current state 1 9 1 BBDB data file format The data file is arranged in a hierarchical fashion At the top level are vectors with one vector per database record It is very important that each vector be on its own line as the BBDB builds and stores markers based on this layout The markers are then used to increase the speed of database modifications more on this later The record vectors contain the individual fields of the record These fields can be of any type but are currently integers strings lists of strings alists vectors or lists of vectors In the case of fields that contain one or more vectors they can be further broken down in terms of the fields of their component vectors In an effort to provide a more concrete example to illustrate the above and to provide a reference for database accessor and modifier functions we describe the database format below This description starts with the fields of the individual record vectors and drills down through the vectors used by some of the fields 1 9 1 1 Record Vectors Name Type Accessor and Modifier Description First name String bbdb record firstname Entity s first name bbdb record set firstname Last name String bbdb record lastname Entity s last name bbdb record set lastname AKAs List of Strings bbdb record aka Alternate names for entity bbdb record set aka Compa
49. her dirs DIRS If multiple directories are to be added they should be separated by spaces or colons and should not be quoted For example to add the p local elisp footnote and p local elisp sc directories call the configure script as follows configure with other dirs p local elisp footnote p local elisp sc After configuring run one of the following commands make bbdb Build the core mailer independent components make gnus Core components plus Gnus support make mhe Core components plus MH E support make rmail Core components plus RMAIL support make vm Build the core components with VM support make all Core components plus support for all mailers listed above You can also combine the above make commands For example to build the BBDB with support for Gnus and VM you can do so by typing make gnus vm Moving the files to their final destination Chapter 1 BBDB 4 Lisp files As stated above the lisp subdirectory contains the Emacs Lisp source files for the BBDB Therefore these files must be in the Emacs load path There are several ways of doing this three of which are described below e Add the lisp directory from the source distribution to the load path This will allow you to run the BBDB in place This method is recommended for normal users or BBDB developers especially if disk usage is an issue It is not recommended for site wide installations e Link the lisp directory into
50. imply add a mail alias field to their record You may have multiple aliases for the same person simply separate them with commas For convenience there is the function bbdb add or remove mail alias bound to a which adds an alias to one or multiple records when prefixed by a Called with a prefix argument C u it will remove the given alias If more than one person has the same mail alias then that alias expands to the addresses of all of those people in this way you can maintain mailing lists within the BBDB When you want to group aliases as in mailrc you may just retained the group aliases in your mailrc To actually define the aliases which are stored in the BBDB call the function bbdb define all aliases from your mail setup hook or message setup hook if you use Message mode coming with Gnus This will search the database and call define mail alias to define each of the resulting aliases 1 5 Reader specific Features There are features of the BBDB that are available only for specific mail and news readers These features are described below The headers which are parsed for email addresses and what records are displayed can be controlled by the following variables bbdb get addresses from headers controls which headers are parsed for sender addresses when calling the show sender function of your MUA bbdb get addresses to headers controls which headers are parsed for recipients addresses when calling the show all recipient
51. ing called non interactively the date should be provided as a string in yyyy mm dd format bbdb creation older Display all records created before a given date If this function is called inter actively it will prompt for a date If it is being called non interactively the date should be provided as a string in yyyy mm dd format bbdb creation newer Display all records created after a given date If this function is called interac tively it will prompt for a date If it is being called non interactively the date should be provided as a string in yyyy mm dd format bbdb creation no change Display all records that have not been changed since creation 1 2 4 Manual record addition There are several ways to add new entries to the Insidious Big Brother Database the most straightforward is to use M x bbdb create which will prompt you for all relevant Chapter 1 BBDB 13 information However the easiest way is to allow them to be added automatically by one of the mail or news reading interfaces See Section 1 4 Interfaces page 17 1 3 BBDB Mode 1 3 1 Functions bound to keys in BBDB Mode When the BBDB buffer is active either summoned by one of the commands in the previous section See Section 1 2 The BBDB page 9 or by your mail or news program a variety of commands become available for database manipulation Some of the commands listed below take numeric arguments l hese arguments can be generated b
52. is is useful if you realize that somehow a redundant record has gotten into the database and you want to merge it with another If both records have names and or companies you are asked which to use Phone numbers addresses and network addresses are simply concatenated The first record is the record under the point the second is prompted for Completion behavior is as dictated by the variable bbdb completion type bbdb dial This command will attempt to dial the phone number currently at point or if point is at the start of a record the first phone number in the record An extension if present is disregarded The method of dialling is controlled by bbdb modem dial If this variable is nil the BBDB will play touchtones corresponding to the number to be dialled Otherwise this variable is treated as a modem command string to be prepended to the number prior to feeding it to bbdb modem device Chapter 1 BBDB 15 The BBDB plays touchtones using bbdb sound player to play the sounds and the elements of bbdb sound files as the audio to be played The first ten elements of bbdb sound files correspond to the touchtones for the digits 0 to 9 while the eleventh and twelfth elements correspond to and respec tively The default configuration assumes a Solaris tm installation with the demonstration sound files in usr demo SOUND sounds The actual number dialled depends on the following variables bbdb dial loca
53. l be created for the person named in the From header If it returns nil no record will be created A suggested function for use is bbdb srv auto create mail news dispatcher This function will attempt to determine the source of the passed headers whether they were part of a mail message or of a news article The action if any dictated by the value of either bbdb mail auto create p or bbdb news auto create p based on the determined source of the passed headers bbdb srv display delay bbdb srv pauses between displaying the records corresponding to each passed set of headers This variable controls the length of time in seconds of the delay between the display of different records Note when setting this variable that only one set of headers can be queued at a time If three sets of headers are passed to bbdb srv in less than the delay time only the first and last will be displayed T Use the full path to bbdb srv p1l if it is not in the default path Chapter 1 BBDB 39 1 9 Internals This section is currently a dumping ground for things that should eventually go here but were found elsewhere in the file INFORMATION IN THIS SECTION IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY IT SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN AS DOCUMENTATION OF AN EXTERNAL API EV ERYTHING LISTED BELOW IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE The first time you use one of the BBDB commands this file is read into an emacs buffer and remains there As you make changes to t
54. l prefix alist This is a list of SEXPR REPLACEMENT pairs SEXPR is eval uated to produce a regular expression which is then applied to the number If it matches whatever it matches is replaced by RE PLACEMENT The match and replace is performed using each item in the list that matches in sequence so that the output from one item may become input to another The default value for this variable is to remove bbdb default area code ie the value of that variable in parenthesis from the start of the number to be dialled Note If this procedure produces a transformed number then no further modifications such as prefix additions below will be made to the number before dialling Using a prefix argument to bbdb dial disables the processing of this variable The other modifiers below are not affected by this bbdb dial local prefix If the number to be dialled starts with a zero it is deemed to be a local number and bbdb dial local prefix is prepended to it see note above concerning bbdb dial local prefix alist processing however bbdb dial long distance prefix If the number to be dialled starts with a plus sign it is deemed to be a long distance number and bbdb dial long distance prefix is prepended to it see note above concerning bbdb dial local prefix alist processing however f bbdb finger This command fingers the network address of a BBDB record If this command is executed from the BBDB buffer it fin
55. le and the bbdb gnus header prefer real names variable are true then for news messages from people who are in your database the name displayed will be the primary name from the database rather than the one from the From line of the message This doesn t affect the names of people who aren t in the database of course bbdb gnus lines and from length Default 18 The number of characters used to display From info in GNUS if you have set gnus optional headers to bbdb gnus lines and from 1 5 2 VM specific features The BBDB can be used to integrate database information into the message summary 1 5 2 1 VM Message Summary Enhancements VM users can cause their summary buffer to display the name of the message sender accord ing to BBDB data instead of according to the contents of the current message s headers In VM 5 40 or later use the summary format control WUB instead of AF and the cur rent record name will be shown there if available If no entry is found it behaves like ZF See the documentation for vn summary format for more details Warning this may significantly slow down summary generation for large folders 1 5 2 2 VM configuration of what records the BBDB buffer shows Email addresses which match vm summary uninteresting senders are ignored The records in the BBDB buffer are listed in the same order as found 1 5 2 3 VM automatic setup of vm set auto folder alist VM users can setup the vm set auto fol
56. make to the record inside this hook Beware that if the variable bbdb message caching enabled is true a good idea then when you are using VM MH or RMAIL this hook will be called only the first time that message is selected The GNUS interface does not use caching When debugging the value of this hook it is a good idea to set caching enabled to nil bbdb after read db hook Hook or hooks invoked with no arguments just after the Insidious Big Brother Database is read in Note that this can be called more than once if the BBDB is reverted One possible use for this is to rename the bbdb buffer for example setq bbdb after read db hook lambda rename buffer bbdb will cause the buffer visiting the bbdb file to be called bbdb The leading space in its name will prevent it from showing up in the buffer list bbdb load hook Hook or hooks invoked with no arguments when the Insidious Big Brother Database code is first loaded WARNING Slow functions should not be put on this hook as the BBDB code will if not loaded before be loaded during the first use of BBDB related Customization functions Slow functions should be put on bbdb initialize hook bbdb initialize hook Hook or hooks invoked with no arguments when the bbdb initialize func tion is called bbdb canonicalize net hook If this is non nil it should be a function of one argument a network ad dress string Note that unlike the other hook variable
57. n the Core Func tionality referred to in the Prerequisites section It will not enable any of the mailreader newsreader or other package specific BBDB features To enable some or all of these fea tures the bbdb initialize form can be enable as shown below Alternatively the features can be enabled manually as described in the following sections Modifying bbdb initialize The bbdb initialize function can be used to enable the various package specific BBDB functions This feature activation is accomplished through the passing of symbols which tell the function which features to activate These symbols are outlined below and in the Emacs documentation for the bbdb initialize Initialization symbols for mail and news readers gnus Initialize support for Gnus If you pass the gnus symbol you should probably also pass the message symbol mh e Initialize support for the MH E mail reader rmail Initialize support for the RMAIL mail reader sendmail Initialize support for sendmail M x mail vm Initialize support for the VM mail reader Initialization symbols for other packages message Initialize support for Message mode the mail composition program included with Gnus reportmail Initialize support for the Reportmail mail notification package sc Initialize support for the Supercite message citation package Additional ini tialization is required for Supercite to work with the BBDB See Section 1 1 4 8 Supercite Prep
58. n bbdb delete redundant nets can be used as a value of bbdb change hook to cause network addresses which appear to be redundant to be deleted each time a modification is made to a record This works as follows suppose one gets mail from user foo bar com and then later gets mail from user bar com At this point one can generally delete the user foo bar com address since the user bar com address is more general See also the variable bbdb canonicalize redundant nets p which has the effect of ignoring subsequent addresses from user quux bar com if the address user bar com is already known 1 7 3 Predefined Hooks If the variable bbdb change hook is set to the symbol bbdb timestamp hook the default then every record in the database will have a field named timestamp which will always contain the date and time at which this record was created or last modified If the variable bbdb create hook is set to the symbol bbdb creation date hook the default then every record in the database will have a field named creation date which will contain the date and time at which this record was added to the database If the variable bbdb mail auto create p is set to the symbol bbdb ignore most messages hook then the variable bbdb ignore most messages alist will determine which messages should have records automatically created for them The format of this alist is C HEADER NAME REGEXP for example From m
59. n the internal database representation It is not written out to the database file because it contains information aggregated from the rest of the record that is reconstructed when the database is read To write the cache information to the database file would increase the risk of database inconsistency and would violate the principles of normalization To access the cache fields using the functions listed below that begin with bbdb cache you must first get the cache vector using the bbdb record cache function The functions that begin with bbdb record get the cache vector internally Note that if you alter the cache field in the high level record with the bbdb record set cache function you are altering the entire cache vector for the given record Use the modifier functions below for modifications to individual cache fields Name Type Accessor and Modifier Description Name Cache String bbdb cache namecache Preconcatenated name of bbdb cache set namecache entity Sort Key String bbdb cache sortkey Preconcatenated sort key bbdb cache set sortkey for record Marker Marker bbdb cache marker Marker in bbdb for start bbdb record marker of record bbdb cache set marker bbdb record set marker Deleted Boolean bbdb cache deleted p Set to t if record has been bbdb record deleted p deleted nil if not bbdb cache set deleted p bbdb record set deleted p The functions listed above will return nil if their respective cache fields are not set
60. ny String bbdb record company Company with which en bbdb record set company tity is associated Phones List of Vectors bbdb record phones List of phone number vec bbdb record set phones tors Addresses List of Vectors bbdb record addresses List of address vectors bbdb record set addresses Net address List of Strings bbdb record net List of network addresses bbdb record set net Chapter 1 BBDB 40 Notes String or Alist bbdb record raw notes String or Association list bbdb record set raw notes of note fields strings Record cache Internal version only Cache Vector bbdb record cache bbdb record set cache The phone address and cache vector fields are described below Please note that as indicated in the table above the cache is present only in the internal version of the database it is not written out as part of the bbdb file In addition the accessor and modifier functions for the notes alist are described 1 9 1 2 Phone Vectors To access the fields in the below table you must first get the list of phone vectors using the bbdb record phones function Note that if you alter the phones field with the bbdb record set phones function you are altering the entire phones list for the given record Use the modifier functions below for modifications to individual phone vectors Name Type Accessor and Modifier Description Location String bbdb phone location Phone number identifier bbdb phone set location Area Intege
61. ops up when you use it can be disposed of by pressing the space bar at which point your window configuration will be restored to what it was before you invoked the db list The bbdb mode commands still work as well There are some problems with electric modes for example keyboard macros and incremental search don t work This is not a bug in BBDB but in electric el bbdb case fold search Default the same as case fold search case fold search is bound to this by M x bbdb and related commands This variable lets the case sensitivity of S and of the bbdb searching commands be different bbdb mail auto create p If this is t the default then VM MH and RMAIL will automatically cre ate new bbdb records for people you receive mail from If this variable is a function name or lambda expression then it is called with no arguments to decide whether an entry should be automatically created You can use this to for example not create records for messages which have reached you through a particular mailing list or to only create records automatically if the mail has a particular subject See the variables bbdb ignore most messages alist and bbdb ignore some messages alist See Section 1 7 3 Predefined Hooks page 30 bbdb news auto create p If this is t default nil then GNUS will automatically create new BBDB records for people you read messages by If this is a function name or lambda expression then it is called with no
62. ords and of the printing of the fields therein bbdb print elide This variable should be set to a list of the fields that are not to be printed by bbdb print It defaults to tex name aka mail alias bbdb print file name The name of the file where generated TeX output is to be stored The default is bbdb tex bbdb print require The fields required for printing a record This allows for example only records with phone numbers to be printed The value of the value of the variable will be evaluated once for each record and the record will be printed only if the evaluation returns a non nil value The symbols name company net phone address and notes will be set to the appropriate values during evaluation they will be nil if the field does not exist or is elided The value of this variable can be any lisp expression but typically it will be used for a boolean combination of the field variables as in the following simple examples e Print only people whose phone numbers are known setq bbdb print require phone e Print people whose names AND companies are known setq bbdb print require and name company e Print people whose names and either addresses OR phone numbers are known setq bbdb print require and name or address phone The default value is or address phone bbdb print alist Formatting options for all formats of bbdb print The value is an alist of the form COPTION VA
63. orth american phone numbers p C x C t bbdb transpose fields This is like the transpose lines command but it is for BBDB fields If the cursor is on a field of a BBDB record that field and the previous field will be transposed With non zero numeric argument ARG the previous field is moved past ARG fields With argument 0 the field indicated by point is interchanged with the one indicated by mark Both fields must be in the same record and must be of the same basic type that is you can use this command to change the order in which phone number fields are listed but you can t use it to make an address appear before a phone number the order of field types is fixed n p bbdb next record bbdb prev record Move to the next and previous dis played record respectively Chapter 1 sS C x C s BBDB 14 bbdb toggle records display layout Toggles the display layout of a record With a numeric argument of 0 the current record will be made displayed in one line layout with any other argument the current record will be shown in multi line layout If t is used instead of simply t then the state of all records will be changed instead of just the one at point In this case a numeric argument of 0 means that all records will unconditionally be made one line layout any other numeric argument means that all of the records will unconditionally be shown expanded and no numeric argument means that the records are made to be in the
64. ory then you should set this variable to the name of the texinfo formatted version of this file the bbdb info command will use this file instead bbdb www Displays the Web page listed in the www field of the current record See Section 1 6 4 Using Web Browsers page 24 bbdb print Creates a TeX file that contains a pretty printed version of BBDB records If prefixed by only the records currently displayed will print See Section 1 8 2 bbdb print page 33 Moves point to another window via the other window function bbdb create Create a new database record from information supplied by the user bbdb changed Display all records that have been changed since the last time the database was saved bbdb Begin a new database search The results of the new search will be displayed in place of the results of the old search o Sn bbdb net bbdb company bbdb notes bbdb name Begin a new database search This search will be limited to the net address company notes or name fields respectively of database records See Sec tion 1 2 2 Basic Searching page 11 for more details bbdb append records will make the next display search command to append its results to the BBDB buffer instead of replacing its content With an prefix arg C u toggle between always append and no append With an prefix arg that is a positive number append will be enabled for that many times With any other argument append will be enabled once
65. out warning at any time thereafter 1 advertized bbdb delete current field or record Support for this function will be removed for version 2 2 It is recommended that all code depending on this variable be switched to use bbdb delete current field or record The two functions have the same calling conventions and effects This EOL statement was added for version 2 1 2 Support for the GNUS not Gnus newsreader The GNUS specific parts of the BBDB will be actively removed for the 2 2 release No further maintenance and or bugfixes are planned for GNUS code at this time This EOL statement was added for version 2 1 1 14 Thanks Thanks to everyone on the info bbdb mailing list for many useful suggestions This hack would be far less insidious without their input Thanks list for versions after 2 00 06 Thanks to Alex Schroeder Ronan Waide Thomas DeWeese Robert Fenk Didier Verna Bill Carpenter Thanks list for versions after 1 51 prior to and including 2 00 06 Thanks to Adrian Aichner Kees de Bruin David Carlton Soren Dayton Brian Edmonds Boris Goldowsky Seth Golub John Heidemann Christopher Kline Carsten Leonhardt Hrvoje Niksic Jens Ulrik Hoger Petersen Colin Rafferty Matt Simmons Sam Steingold Marco Walther Christoph Wedler Thanks list for versions prior to and including 1 51 And special thanks to Sebastian Kremer Joe Wells Todd Kaufmann Andy Norman Ivan Vazquez Stewart Clamen Roland McGrath Dave Brennan
66. p dois adele doled as poreda 12 P Phone n mb rs 2 263 Weise ee Se eds 13 24 Printing records in the database Iit 16 323 R Removing fields 02 0 0esdeto94 pia ys 13 Reordering fields 0 222 eee eee 13 Chapter 1 Concept Index S Saving your changes 0000005 14 Searching the database 12 16 Sending mail evepIRRIAPRR M UD ERERIN 14 18 Showing the sender of the current message 17 Special Field Names 0 00000005 10 Storing FTP sites in the BBDB 33 T Timestamping records 30 Transposing fields 004 13 49 U User defined fields 0 2 000 12 13 V Valid zip codes 3i om e EL eR ARE RA 24 X XEmacs Package Installation 4 Z Zip code checkimg secet lI bp ead Rer 9n 24 Chapter 1 Variable Index Variable Index B bbdb address formatting alist 25 bbdb after read db hook 29 bbdb always add addresses 27 bbdb auto notes alist 2 ded ee 3l bbdb auto notes ignore 33 bbdb auto notes ignore all 33 bbdb auto revert p c b Ure 26 bbdb canonicalize net hook 29 bbdb canonicalize redundant nets p 28 bbdb case fold search etus 25 bbdb change hook 5 er dedi nh pvES 28 30 bbdb check zip codes p ssessss 24
67. page 8 w3 Initialize support for Web browsers Initialization example To initialize support for Gnus 5 5 Message mode Supercite and Web browsers the follow ing forms would be used require bbdb bbdb initialize gnus message sc w3 This documentation can be accessed by typing C h f bbdb initialize RET 3 If you are using GNUS not Gnus and if your GNUS version is 3 14 or older use the Gnus note the capitalization symbol For the VM initialization to work properly you must either call bbdb initialize with the vm symbol from within your VM initialization file vm or you must call bbdb insinuate vm manually from within your VM initialization file Chapter 1 BBDB T Manual initialization If your initialization needs exceed those provided by bbdb initialize refer to the following sections for a description of the procedures necessary for enabling BBDB support for the packages listed above The procedures described are the same as those carried out by the bbdb initialize function when passed the appropriate symbols That is the procedure listed in the RMAIL Prep section below is the same as than executed by bbdb initialize when the rmail symbol is passed 1 1 4 1 Initializing BBDB support for Gnus To take advantage of the Gnus features of the BBDB add one of the following forms to your Emacs configuration file For Gnus 3 14 or older add hook gnus Startup hook bbdb insinuate gnus For
68. r bbdb phone area Area code for phone num bbdb phone set area ber Exchange Integer bbdb phone exchange Exchange aka prefix for bbdb phone set exchange phone number Suffix Integer bbdb phone suffix Suffix for phone number bbdb phone set suffix Extension Integer bbdb phone extension Phone number extension bbdb phone set extension 0 if none 1 9 1 3 Address Vectors To access the fields in the below table you must first get the list of address vectors using the bbdb record addresses function Note that if you alter the addresses field with the bbdb record set addresses function you are altering the entire addresses list for the given record Use the modifier functions below for modifications to individual address vectors Name Type Accessor and Modifier Description Location String bbdb address location Address identifier bbdb address set location Streets List bbdb address streets List of street address lines bbdb address set streets nil if none Chapter 1 BBDB 41 Street3 String bbdb address street3 Third line of street ad bbdb address set street3 dress if none City String bbdb address city City name bbdb address set city State String bbdb address state State abbreviation bbdb address set state Zip Integer bbdb address zip Zip code american bbdb address set zip List non american Country String bbdb address country Country bbdb address set country 1 9 1 4 Cache Vector This vector is present only i
69. rd with a www field will cause the first URL in the field to be loaded in a Web Browser This functionality uses browse url to display URLs see the documentation for browse url for information on selecting the browser to be used If W3 is used and if the BBDB W3 functionality has been enabled as described in Section 1 1 4 9 Web Browser Prep page 9 pressing the key will add the URL currently being displayed in W3 to a user specified BBDB record 1 7 Options There are many variables which control the behavior of the Insidious Big Brother Database and there are many hook variables which can be used to modify its behavior in more complex ways Several pieces of functionality are included which use the hooks in this way 1 7 1 Customization Parameters bbdb file The name of the file which contains your personal database Default bbdb bbdb default area code The default area code to use when prompting for a new phone number Default 415 This must be a number not a string bbdb north american phone numbers p Whether syntax checking of phone numbers should be enforced Default t This only works for Bell system phone numbers If this is true then you can t enter invalid phone numbers and all phone numbers are pretty printed in the same way European phone numbers don t have as strict a syntax however so this is a harder problem for them on which I am punting You can have both styles of phone number in your databas
70. re as in bbdb print alist described above The default value is columns 1 separator 1 n phones 2 n addresses 1 include files bbdb print brief bbdb cols bbdb print full alist Extra options for the bbdb print non brief format The value s of this variable can either supplement or override the values in bbdb print alist The format and possible values of this variable are as in bbdb print alist described above The default value is Ccolumns 3 separator 2 include files bbdb print bbdb cols bbdb print prolog TeX statements to include at the beginning of the bbdb print output file bbdb print epilog TeX statements to include at the end of the bbdb print output file Chapter 1 BBDB 37 1 8 3 bbdb snarf bbdb snarf provides the ability to generate BBDB records from raw text If invoked as bbdb snarf it attempts to generate the record from the information around point the cursor If invoked as bbdb snarf region the active region is used to generate the record Restrictions 1 bbdb snarf currently recognizes only US style phone numbers 2 bbdb snarf works best with things that look like mailing addresses Example of an address that bbdb snarf will recognize another test person 1234 Gridley St Los Angeles CA 91342 555 1212 test person net http www foo bar other stuff about this person 1 8 4 bbdb srv bbdb srv provides the ability to initiate the display of BBDB
71. rrent author you will be asked whether to create one The function called is bbdb package annotate sender where package is either gnus mh rmail or vm depending on the mail or news program being used when the command is invoked These keybindings and several other features will not be available unless you call the appropriate insinuation function See Section 1 1 Installation page 1 It is possible to configure BBDB so that it automatically creates a record when it sees a message from a person who is not in the database It is also possible to have text automatically added to the notes field of the corresponding record depending on the contents of the message headers See Section 1 7 2 Customization Hooks page 28 1 4 1 Mail Reading Interfaces There are BBDB interfaces for the following mail readers e Gnus a news and email reader written by Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen based on GNUS by Mansanobu Umeda e MH E the Emacs interface to Mail Handler MH from the standard emacs library but packaged separately from X Emacs since version 20 4 e RMAIL from the standard emacs library packaged separately for XEmacs users as of 20 4 e View Mail by Kyle Jones version 5 31 or newer 1 4 2 News Reading Interfaces There are BBDB interfaces for the following news readers e GNUS a newsreader written by Masanobu Umeda Chapter 1 BBDB 18 e Gnus the modern news and email reading incarnation of GNUS Gnus is wri
72. s described above this may not be a list of functions Whenever the Insidious Big Brother Data base notices a message the corresponding network address will be passed to this function first as a kind of filter to do whatever transformations upon it you like before it is compared against or added to the database For ex ample it is the case that CS CMU EDU is a valid return address for all mail originating at a machine in the CS CMU EDU domain So if you wanted all such addresses to be canonically hashed as user CS CMU EDU instead of as user somehost CS CMU EDU you might set this variable to a function like this Chapter 1 BBDB 30 setq bbdb canonicalize net hook lambda addr cond string match MWA SAV ETE F NN NN CCSNN CHUNN EDU VY addr concat substring addr match beginning 1 match end 1 substring addr match beginning 2 match end 2 t addr You could also use this function to rewrite UUCP style addresses into domain style addresses or any number of other things This function will be called repeatedly until it returns a value EQ to the value passed in So multiple rewrite rules might apply to a single address There is an example of the use of this variable in the file bbdb hooks el the function sample bbdb canonicalize net hook The bbdb canonicalize net hook is powerful in that it allows arbitrary rewriting of addresses however in many cases that is overkill The functio
73. s function of your MUA When using the pop up feature it will search for the addresses in bbdb get addresses headers and display them By default it will list only the first address but by setting bbdb get only first address p to nil one will will get records for all addresses If there is no MUA specific variable for ignoring certain addresses then those addresses matching bbdb user mail names will be ignored BBDB adds the bindings for showing all senders and for editing the notes of the sender 1 5 1 Gnus specific Features The BBDB can be used to provide score information or to integrate database information into the Gnus Summary buffer or the GNUS Subject List 1 5 1 1 Scoring The BBDB can provide scoring information to Gnus in one of two ways 1 Articles whose authors appear in the BBDB and who have gnus score fields will have their scores adjusted by the value contained in that field 2 Articles whose authors appear in the BBDB but who do not have gnus score fields will have their scores adjusted by bbdb gnus score default If bbdb gnus score default is nil no score adjustment will be made The BBDB by default searches the field contained in bbdb gnus score field for score values To have the BBDB use a different field change the value of this variable Chapter 1 BBDB 20 To enable BBDB assisted scoring add the bbdb gnus score function to gnus score find score files function Assuming that you want to preserve the d
74. s used as the mark character If no such field is present the value of bbdb gnus summary known poster mark will be used instead If the author is not in the BBDB a space will be used as the mark character Using Names from the BBDB The names reported for authors of posts in the Summary buffer can be altered to conform to the values present in their respective BBDB records if any This rewriting is enabled by the use of a Gnus user format code as determined by bbdb gnus summary user format letter This variable which defaults to B is used to create a format code which is intended for use in gnus summary line format The format code is created by concatenating Zu with the value of bbdb gnus summary user format letter In the default case this results in the creation of the format code uB This format code is intended to replace the format code previously used in the Summary buffer format line to indicate the author and or net address usually Za 4n and or N 5 While it is possible to put a multi character mark in bbdb message marker field and or in bbdb gnus summary known poster mark the resulting summary buffer will be misaligned as a result This misalign ment will result from fact that at this time the character used to indicate posts whose authors are not in the BBDB is always a single character and cannot be changed Chapter 1 BBDB 21 The effects of this format code are in two independent
75. t begin setq sc mail headers start point x attribution t sc mail fetch field t nil t NNS sc mail fetch field nil t progn bbdb sc default list abort step 0 t sc mail append field sc mail warn if non rfc822 p sc mail error in mail field end setq sc mail headers end point The above is also documented in bbdb sc el The bbdb sc setup variables func tion has been provided as an example for Supercite variable initialization Please note that while bbdb sc setup variables makes every attempt to safely configure the Supercite variables it will not always work Specifically the variables sc attrib selection list and sc mail glom frame will not be overridden if they have already been defined 1 1 4 9 Initializing BBDB support for Web Browsers To allow URLs to be added to BBDB records add the following form to your Emacs initialization file bbdb insinuate w3 bbdb insinuate w3 adds the definition of to the W3 keymap The other bbdb w3 functions specifically the passing of URLs from BBDB records to Web browsers do not require initialization within the BBDB They do however require the configuration of the browse url package so it knows to which Web browser URLs are to be passed For more details on the operation of bbdb w3 see Section 1 6 4 Using Web Browsers page 24 1 2 The BBDB This section discusses the basics of the BBDB an overview of the
76. ticed and will ask you whether the new name should be made the primary one Note that if bbdb quiet about name mismatches is true you will not be asked any questions about alternate names bbdb readonly p If this is true default nil then nothing will attempt to change the database implicitly and you will be prevented from doing it explicitly If you have more than one emacs running at the same time you might want to arrange for this to be set to t in all but one of them bbdb auto revert p If this variable is true default nil and the BBDB file is noticed to have changed on disk it will be automatically reverted without prompting you first Otherwise you will be asked But if the file has changed and you have made changes in memory as well you will always be asked bbdb notice auto save file If this is true default nil then the BBDB will notice when its auto save file is newer than the file is was read from and will offer to revert bbdb use pop up If true the default display a continuously updating BBDB window while in VM MH RMAIL or GNUS Each time a new message is selected the record corresponding to that message s sender will be displayed in another window The buffer in this other window will be in bbdb mode and all corresponding commands will be available Chapter 1 BBDB 27 This buffer will be positioned on the screen by finding the tallest of the windows present and splitting it such that the bottom bb
77. tten by Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen 1 4 3 Mail Sending Interfaces When sending mail the keystroke M TAB is bound to the function bbdb complete name This will take the string that you have typed from point back to the preceding colon comma or the beginning of the line and will complete that against the contents of the database What you have typed may be an initial subsequence of a person s full name or network address if it completes ambiguously then what you have typed will be replaced with the common portion of the matches Typing M TAB again will show a list of possible completions If it completes unambiguously then an address will be inserted The variable bbdb completion type controls whether completion is done on real names or network ad dresses or both The address inserted is normally of the form User Name lt email address gt however if User Name has an address of the form lt user name somedomain gt only the lt email address gt portion is inserted This can be overridden by setting bbdb dwim net address allow redundancy to t This binding is automatically set by the various insinuation functions documented earlier in this manual See Section 1 1 4 Initial Configuration page 5 Briefly the forms for these functions are Gnus add hook gnus Startup hook bbdb insinuate gnus for Gnus 3 14 or older add hook gnus startup hook bbdb insinuate gnus for Gnus 3 15 or newer MH E add hook mh folder mode hook
78. ue The augmentation uses the bbdb reportmail alternate full name function to retrieve data from the BBDB for use in rewriting 1 6 3 Using the BBDB with Supercite The BBDB can be used with Supercite to store attributions with BBDB records Normally when a non default attribution is entered for a given message the entered attribution is used for that message and is then discarded When the BBDB Supercite augmentation is enabled the non default attribution will be added to the record if any for the entity being Chapter 1 BBDB 24 cited This poor explanation sounds complicated but it s not If a message from Jamie Zawinski lt jwz netscape com gt is being replied to Supercite will by default suggest the citation Jamie If the non default citation jwz is entered Supercite can save it with the BBDB record for Jamie Zawinski in the attribution field The field used can be changed by changing the value of bbdb sc attribution field 1 6 4 Using the BBDB with Web Browsers The BBDB Web Browser integration is in two parts one which is automatically enabled and one which must be manually enabled see Section 1 1 4 9 Web Browser Prep page 9 The first feature added is the ability to display the URL associated with a given record in a Web Browser The second is the ability to add URLs to BBDB records from within W3 the Emacs Web Browser Pressing W in the BBDB buffer while the cursor is positioned over a reco
79. upplied by Kai Grojohan defun my message mode keys define key message mode map kbd M TAB bbdb complete name add hook message mode hook my message mode keys 2 BBDB and abbrev expansion is inconsistent Workaround Currently M TAB must be used to expand complete against BBDB names and net addresses and TAB must be used to expand abbrevs the values in the mail alias field Unification is planned for a future version Chapter 1 BBDB 44 3 The BBDB buffer does not always come up when the first article in a Gnus Summary Buffer is selected Workaround Pressing g to reload the article This will cause the BBDB buffer to be displayed Expansion will fail when the name to be expanded is a subset of the name for another record For example if you have entries for John and Johnathan you will not be able to expand the name for John Workaround Use the net address for the subset name John in this example It is commonly known that there are no bugs in the BBDB Bugs found in defiance of this rule should be submitted to the bbdb info mailing list see Section 1 10 Mailing Lists page 42 To assist the developers please include the version numbers of the various programs used when the bug occurred An example report follows BBDB Version Emacs XEmacs Version Mail News reader Gnus VM etc used Bug Description 1 13 2 TODO List The Near Future Add bbdb MUA delete sender re
80. ut you prefer to use usr local elisp bbdb for the links usr this configure with linkpath usr local elisp bbdb This option is ignored if with symlinks is not used To perform the un installation use the command make un install pkg This will compile the lisp auto autoloads el file and will install the appropriate files to the appropriate places The final installation tree will take the following form PACKAGEDIR lisp bbdb BBDB lisp source files This directory contains a copy of all e1 and elc files from the isp source direc tory or is a symbolic link to it info bbdb info BBDB documentation files These are either copies of the info files from the texinfo source directory or are symbolic links to them etc bbdb tex BBDB support files for bbdb print This directory contains a copy of the appropriate files from the tex source directory or is a symbolic link to it utils BBDB miscellaneous utilities This direc tory contains a copy of the appropriate files from the utils source directory or is a symbolic link to it 1 1 4 Initial Configuration The simplest way to configure the BBDB is to include the following forms in your Emacs configuration file Chapter 1 BBDB 6 require bbdb bbdb initialize Note The forms above replace the autoloads needed for previous versions of the BBDB This will set up the BBDB for basic querying and record manipulatio
81. we already have a more general form of that address This is similar in function to one of the pos sible uses of the variable bbdb canonicalize net hook but is somewhat more automatic This can t quite be implemented in terms of the canonicalize net hook because it needs access to the database to determine whether an address is redundant and the canonicalize net hook is purely a textual manipulation which is performed before any database access bbdb message caching enabled Whether caching of the message gt bbdb record association should be used for the interfaces which support it VM MH and RMAIL This can speed things up a lot One implication of this variable being true the default is that the bbdb notice hook will not be called each time a message is selected but only the first time Likewise if selecting a message would generate a question whether to add an address change the name etc you will only be asked that question the very first time the message is selected bbdb offer save If t the default then certain actions will cause the BBDB to ask you whether you wish to save the database If nil then the offer to save will never be made If not t and not nil then any time it would ask you it will just save it without asking 1 7 2 Customization Hooks All of the hooks variables described below may be set to a symbol or lambda expression which will be funcalled or may be set to a list of symbols or lambda expressions
82. will not affect core BBDB functionality XEmacs XEmacs BBDB file Package needed GNU 19 34 GNU 20 2 gt 20 4 20 5 1 Core Functionality is defined as the parts of the BBDB used to implement basic record creation M x bbdb create and searching M x bbdb Chapter 1 BBDB 2 bbdb ftp EFS or Ange FTP B B B P bbdb gnus Gnus 1 B B B E bbdb mhe MH E B B B P bbdb Reportmail reportmail B P 2 bbdb sc Supercite B B P bbdb srv gnuserv and itimer B B bbdb vm VM B P bbdb w3 browse url B B B P 3 NOTES 1 The old GNUS mail newsreader should still work Please keep in mind that you have a relatively recent Emacs GNU 19 34 or later XEmacs 19 15 or later you are probably using Gnus 2 As of this writing Reportmail is available as part of the edit utils package 3 As of this writing browse url is available as part of the mail lib package 4 The source release of VM is currently required due to the use of macros from the VM codebase in BBDB s VM integration Please also note that the XEmacs package locations are as of this writing As the XEmacs 20 5 package system is still in development the locations may change without warning 1 1 2 Normal User Installation Chapter 1 BBDB 3 Configuring the compilation process First of all you should run the configure script at the toplevel of the distribution This script will perform a number of checks on your system and generate the Makefile s ac cordingly
83. y entering the number before pressing the key s corresponding to the desired command The output if any of the listed commands will be displayed in the BBDB buffer and can be navigated through using the usual cursor motion commands e bbdb edit current field Edit the field on the current line If the cursor is in the middle of a multi line field such as an address or comments section then the entire field is edited not just the current line bbdb edit notes A shortcut for editing the notes field d C k bbdb delete current field or record Delete the field on the current line If the current line is the first line of a record the BBDB will after prompting the user delete the entire record from the database This may also be applied to multiple records at once by C o bbdb insert new field Inserts a new field into the current record You are prompted with completion for the type of field to insert phone address notes etc if the string you type is not a known field type you will be asked whether to add a new field with the entered name of type notes If you are inserting a new phone number field you can control whether it is a North American or European phone number by providing a prefix argument A prefix arg of U means it s to be a euronumber and any other prefix arg means it s to be a a structured North American number If no prefix argument is supplied the style used is controlled by the variable bbdb n
84. your site lisp directory This is for a site wide in stallation but it is subject to the following caveat If you link the lisp directory into site lisp you will make life more difficult for yourself down the road as you will not be able to make changes to the source directory new versions patches etc without having an effect on other users who now depend on it This directory will automatically be added to the load path when Emacs starts e Make a directory whose sole purpose in life is containing the production copies of the BBDB source and byte compiled source files Either put this directory under site lisp or put it somewhere else and link it into site lisp This directory will automatically be added to the load path when Emacs starts This is the best of the three listed here as it allows for a degree of separation between the possibly changing source tree and the production code TeX files The tex subdirectory contains the TEXsupport files for bbdb print the BBDB printing utility See Section 1 8 2 bbdb print page 33 The three support files bbdb cols tex bbdb print tex and bbdb print brief tex must be placed in a directory that is either on the default T Xsearch path or is listed in the TEXINPUTS environment variable If neither of these two options is taken TEXwill not be able to process the file output by bbdb print texinfo files The bbdb info file in this
85. ype field In addition several of the user defined field names are special That is the BBDB treats the values of these special fields differently than it does other user defined fields The special fields are Chapter 1 BBDB 11 attribution Available only when the Supercite specific BBDB functions have been enabled Used for the storage of Supercite attributions For initialization details see Section 1 1 4 8 Supercite Prep page 8 For usage details see Section 1 6 3 Using Supercite page 23 The field used can be changed by changing the value of bbdb sc attribution field aka Used to store non primary names associated with a given record face XEmacs only Used for the storage of image data This data is to be in the format output by compface and commonly found in X Face headers in messages If face support has been compiled into XEmacs the image contained in the face header will be displayed when the record is viewed finger host Address used in place of the listed net address for fingering the entity indicated by the record See Section 1 3 BBDB Mode page 13 The field used can be changed by changing the value of bbdb finger host field gnus score Gnus scoring adjustment for this person For initialization details see Sec tion 1 1 4 1 Gnus Prep page 7 For usage details see Section 1 5 1 Gnus Features page 19 The field used can be changed by changing the value of bbdb gnus score field mail alias Valu

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