B'maker
A Macro for Macro5 and EPOC

• What it Does
• What You Need
• What You Do
• Other Information

What it Does

B'maker offers you a way to rapidly navigate the folder hierarchy of your EPOC-32 machine, either using the stylus or the keyboard. It also lets you organize boilerplate text and images, which can be conveniently inserted at the current cursor location with just a few taps.

Once invoked, B'maker pops up a menu on the left side of your screen displaying the contents of a special folder, C:\B'maker\. You can then select an item from the folder. If the item is another folder, the first menu is replaced by another menu, showing the contents of that folder. If the item is a document that EPOC knows how to open, the file is opened.

In addition to folders and documents, B'maker supports special files denoted by these extensions:

.alias

Denotes an alias to another file or folder. The destination file or folder is opened.

.plate

Denotes a boilerplate file. The file is opened, the contents of the file are copied to the clipboard, and the file is closed. Then the clipboard is copied to the current cursor location.

.liter

Denotes a literal file. The filename itself, less the ".liter" extension, is copied to the current cursor location. Literal files process much faster, but the data is limited to 25 characters or so.

In addition to folder contents, there is a B'maker menu that contains four items:

• Back takes you back one level in your folder hierarchy.
• Open switches to the System and displays the directory you were viewing with B'Maker.
• Home takes you back to C:\B'maker\
• Alias creates an alias to the directory you are viewing. The alias is created in C:\B'maker\, but can be moved anywhere.

If the folder contains more items than can fit on a single menu, the last item of the menu changes to "More... " Chosing it will list the next few items in the folder.

What You Need

• An EPOC device.
• Macro5 by Pascal Nicolas.
• The B'maker package. It contains this documentation, the source (bmaker.opl) and object (bmaker.opo) files, and a sample C:\B'maker\ folder.
• Stuffit Expander to expand the package.

What You Do

• Place bmaker.opo in your macros directory.
• Assign a hotkey to it using Macro5. I usually set it to override the IrDA silkscreen button.
• Create the C:\B'maker\ folder and stock it with appropriate files and folders.

Other Information

As with many of my macros, B'maker has a few rough edges. My time is very limited, and I tend to reduce the priority of a project as soon as it works well enough to meet my immediate needs.

Note that B'maker cannot open any folder that has a file or folder named "x" in it.

If you have comments, problems, or suggestions, please feel free to email me. I'll answer as soon as I can.

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Date created: August 29, 1999
Last modified: August 29, 1999
Copyright © 1999 Ron Risley