On Jun 26, 2011, at 3:06 PM, Daniel wrote: > Well, ultimately a fully general system would be nice. I don't expect > this to be implemented any time soon, but what about: > > 1. A new "types" tab, allowing users to define regular expressions to > match a piece of text that give it a "type" the way email addresses, > URLs, and calculator strings have now.
We’ve talked about allowing plug-ins to add “string sniffing” abilities. The user-provided regular expression idea is interesting, but regex support in Objective-C leaves a lot to be desired. For instance: https://github.com/quicksilver/RemoteHosts-qsplugin/blob/master/RemoteHostsSource.m#L89 Awful. There actually is a type for phone numbers already (QSCOntactPhoneType), but there are two reasons why this isn’t helping you. 1. That type is assigned to phone numbers that are scanned in from Address Book entries, but it will never be assigned to things you type, paste, grab from another application, etc. 2. Actions provided by plug-ins can target specific types, but actions that exist as services can’t. I think the Services plug-in gives Quicksilver some basic understanding of what data a service applies to, but the operating system doesn’t know about Quicksilver’s type for phone numbers, so there’s no good way to line those up. I guess I’m saying that I think a plug-in is the right way to solve this, but that might not be completely fair since I know how to make plug-ins. :) A plug-in would also solve the problem for a lot of people instead or requiring everyone to duplicate the more common/useful associations. -- Rob McBroom <http://www.skurfer.com/>
