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Appendix

Application Icon   Plugins and scanners

The Plugins & Scanners panel, available via Window > Plugins & Scanners, lists all installed plugins and scanners and shows additional information about them, e.g., their type, version and purpose. In addition, it allows you to create new plugins for your favorite websites and search engines.

Plugins & scanners

Also, you can enable or disable plugins or whole groups of plugins by checking or unchecking them. Use this to simplify the magnifying glass pop-up menu in the search window or the plugin list in the Search Sets window.

Plugins & Scanners

All plugins and scanners are arranged in groups. Click the grey triangle in front of a group to expand it; click it again to close it. Select a plugin or scanner to show additional information:

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    Name: Plugin name.
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    Info: Additional information, e.g., copyright.
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    Identifier: Internal and identification string.
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    Keywords: Shortcuts for the plugin. Read more...
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    Description: Textual description of the plugin.
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    Operators: List of supported operators. For plugins that you created yourself, you can check and uncheck them to adjust which operators are supported by the search engine.

Name, info, identifier, description, and keywords of self-made XML plugins can be edited. User-defined plugins, as well as the groups Browser, DEVONsphere, and Scanner are shown in bold.

Note: The group hierarchy is predefined and cannot be manually altered. If you have installed your own plugins, they appear in the top level of the hierarchy or are mirrored-in following the folder structure in '~/Library/Application Support/DEVONagent/Plugins/'.

Keywords

Keywords are shortcuts that you can use to query the search engines defined by the plugin from the address bar of a web browser window.

Example:

The Bing plugin comes with the predefined keyword 'bing'. To send a query to Bing, type e.g., 'bing devonthink' into the address bar of a DEVONagent Pro web browser window and press ↩ or Enter.

This effectively replaces the search engine field that is found in other web browsers, such as Safari, with a far more flexible approach. You can add your own keyword(s) to most plugins, separated by spaces, to make them quickly accessable from any open DEVONagent Pro browser window.

In addition, the plugin's name is automatically used as a keyword.

Creating & testing

Using DEVONagent Pro's built-in plugin assistant, you can easily create your own XML-based search plugin for your favorite search engine. To create your own plugin, choose File > New Plugin or use the New toolbar icon.

In the sheet enter:

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    Name for the plugin
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    Short description
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    Website or search engine URL

To get the URL for your search engine, run a search in your web browser, copy the URL, and paste it into the URL field of the to-be-created plugin. Then look for the URL parameter that transports the query, e.g., something like '&query=xxx'. Replace 'xxx' with '_agentQuery_'. This tells DEVONagent Pro where to enter the search term. The '_agentNumber_' and '_agentOffset_' placeholders are automatically inserted if necessary and possible. Read more...

Alternatively, if you want to create a plugin that simply searches a website, enter just the URL of the website. DEVONagent Pro will use standard search engines such as Bing to run a site-specific search when you use this plugin.

DEVONagent Pro selects the Website or Search Engine radio buttons automatically, depending on the entered URL.

To test a build-in or self-created plugin use the Test toolbar icon. DEVONagent Pro will send 'Test' as the standard search term to the plugin and present you with the list of returned pages. Double-click results to view them in a new web browser window. Only XML and JSON plugins using 'EngineUrl' can be tested since testing XML and JSON plugins using 'EngineSite' is unnecessary.

To edit an existing XML- or JSON-based plugin, double-click it or use the Edit toolbar icon. DEVONagent Pro shows an XML text editor with error checking that allows you directly edit the source code of the plugin. Switch between XML and JSON format using the button at the bottom of the editing sheet. Read more...

Toolbar

The toolbar of the Plugins & Scanners windows lets you easily create new plugins, edit, test, and delete them.

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    New: Opens a sheet for creating a new XML-based plugin.
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    Edit: Opens a sheet for editing the XML code of the selected plugin.
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    Test: Runs a test on the selected plugin and displays the results.
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    Delete: Deletes the selected plugins. Built-in plugins cannot be deleted.
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    Show In Finder: Opens a new Finder window for the folder containing the selected plugin.

Context menu

The context menu, which appears when you click something with the right mouse button or when you click while holding the ⌃ Control key down, offers a range of commands tailored for what you can do with the clicked object, forexample a text passage.

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    New: Opens a sheet for creating a new XML-based plugin.
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    Edit: Opens a sheet for editing the XML code of the selected plugin.
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    Duplicate: Duplicates the selected plugins.
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    Show In Finder: Opens a new Finder window for the folder containing the selected plugin.
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    Test: Runs a test on the selected plugin and displays the results.
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    Delete: Deletes the selected plugins. Built-in plugins cannot be deleted.

The test sheet also presents the following options in the context menu:

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    Open: Opens the selected URLs in DEVONagent Pro's built-in web browser.
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    Open In Tabs: Opens the selected URLs in separate tabs in DEVONagent Pro's built-in web browser.
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    Launch URL: Opens the selected URLs in the default application for their types.
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    Exclude URL: Adds the selected URLs to the plugin's internal exclude list. Use Retry to re-run the test after exluding a URL.
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    Exclude Domain: Adds the domains of the selected URLs to the plugin's internal exclude list. Use Retry to re-run the test after exluding a domain.
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    Include URL: Adds the URL to the "LinksMatching" key.
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    Include Domain: Adds the domain to the "LinksMatching" key.
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    Copy: Copies the selected URLs to the clipboard.