A common use of X-links is for reference citations. If you collect art, you may want to provide reference citations to books which discuss and document the art works in your collection. Rather than clutter the Item Details with the full reference citation (author, title, publisher, date, etc.), you can provide a short visible identification of the reference work, and turn that short text into an X-link which, when clicked on, shows the full bibliographical reference information in the footnote window at the bottom of the Item Details tab.

Though you may have references to the same book in many records in your collection, you only have to enter the full bibliographical information once, and associate it with a key. You can then reference the same key each time you want to create a footnote-style hyperlink to this particular bibliographical citation.

The following image shows the use of the Special Link Editor to set up an X-link. In this case the visible text ("Burden") is similar to the key ("BURDEN") of the desired footnote text. If you follow this style (visible text matches, case-independent, the key or the initial part of the key), Recollector automatically starts you out in the Special Link Editor with X-link selected and the matching key chosen. Just click OK and creation of the X-link is done.

To create a new footnote text (rather than reusing a footnote that you previously created), click the Add a new extended key + value button. This brings up the X-link definition dialog:

Specify a key and enter the footnote text. Keys are case-independent, and the program will usually show the key in an all-uppercase format. Note that you can use the options menu to apply styling to parts of the footnote text. Here is an example of a completed X-link definition:

This is what the bottom of the Item Details display will look like when the user clicks on the "Fitzgerald" hyperlink:

To create a W-link, select the text that you want to be the visible text of the hyperlink, and then bring up the Special Link Editor by right-button-clicking (or <Ctrl>-clicking) and choosing Create/Edit Special Hyperlink from the options menu. Click the W-type link: Full web URL radiobutton:

Type in the full URL (normally beginning with "http://"), that is the web page address for the target of the link:

As an example, suppose that you collect ancient coins, and you often want to include links to a page on the David R. Sear web site that documents ancient coins. The pages at this site have web addresses such as this:

     http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear/s0484.html

Only a small part of the URL (the "s0484" in this example) varies page-to-page at the web site, so we can create a pattern for the web site that allows us to just provide the small changing part for each new link that we create.

To create a P-link, select the text in the data-entry/editing window that you want to be the visible text of the hyperlink, and then bring up the Special Link Editor by right-button-clicking (or <Ctrl>-clicking) and choosing Create/Edit Special Hyperlink from the options menu. Click the P-type link: Patterned URL radiobutton:

If you have never created a P-link before, the dialog will look like it does above, with a blank Pattern key drop-down list. If you have already created other P-link patterns, the drop-down list will include the keys of those existing patterns. Each pattern has a key and a value (the actual pattern). Continuing with the ancient coin example, if this is the first time you are creating a P-link for a link to the David R. Sear web site, you need to create a new pattern. Click on the New pattern definition button. This brings up the P-link definition dialog:

Enter a key for this pattern. It is a good idea to use a key that matches the beginning of the visible text that you will usually use for these links. In our example, our visible texts begin with "Sear", so it makes sense to use the name "Sear" for the pattern. If you do this, the program will usually guess correctly, each time you invoke the Special Link Editor, that you want to create a P-link using the "Sear" pattern, and will initialize the editor for this case. (Key names are case-independent, and the program will often display the key as all uppercase: "SEAR", but it will still guess correctly that this is the key you want to use even if your visible text is not all uppercase.)

The URL pattern should be the full URL for the web site, but with the changeable parts replaced by dollar-sign parameters: $1, $2 and $3. (Up to three parameters are allowed.) For our example, we just have one part of the URL that will be parameterized, so we will only supply one parameter ($1):

Click OK and the new pattern will be added to your collection's pattern library. Back in the Special Link Editor window you can now see the new pattern ("SEAR") from the drop-down list. When this pattern key is selected, there is also a place to enter the substitutable parameter (Parameter #1). To continue with our example, we will enter the one changeable part of the URL ("s0484"):

Click OK and the P-link will be created. This is what it will look like in the Item Details tab, where, if you click on it, you will be taken, in your web browser, to the corresponding web page (http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear/s0484.html) at the Sear site:

Note: To take advantage of R-links, you must use the ID # field of your collection to assign a unique value to each record in your collection (or, at least, to each record that you want to be the target of a jump-to link). Every collection has an ID # field (though you can rename this field, if you prefer to use a different name), and its primary purpose is to provide a way to refer to a record in a jump-to link (either a simple jump-to link or an R-type special hyperlink).

To create an R-link, select the text in the data-entry/editing window that you want to be the visible text of the hyperlink, and then bring up the Special Link Editor by right-button-clicking (or <Ctrl>-clicking) and choosing Create/Edit Special Hyperlink from the options menu. Click the R-type link: Record jump radiobutton:

Type in the ID # value of the target record for the hyperlink, and click OK. The appearance of this hyperlink in the Item Details is shown here:

When you click on the hyperlink, the Item Details tab will jump to whatever record is identified by the R-link.

Note: The Special Link Editor does not validate that the ID # value you typed in is, in fact, an existing ID # value in your collection. This allows you to set up R-links to records that you are planning to add to your collection but have not yet added. However, if the underlying ID # value does not exist, the Item Details will not display the visible text as a hyperlink; it will simply be displayed as normal text.

You can also create a hyperlink that jumps to a record in a different collection. To do this, the target collection file must be in the same folder as the current collection. If you have such a "sibling" collection to the current collection, then the special-link editor window will show additional controls that let you specify that the target of the jump-to link is a different collection, and which collection that is. The ID # you specify should be the ID # of the target record in that other collection.

To create an M-link, select the text in the data-entry/editing window that you want to be the visible text of the hyperlink, and then bring up the Special Link Editor by right-button-clicking (or <Ctrl>-clicking) and choosing Create/Edit Special Hyperlink from the options menu. Click the M-type link: Media (audio/video) link radiobutton:

Click the Browse button to navigate to and select an audio or video file. The media file can be of any type that the Mac QuickTime capability supports, and includes all common audio and video file formats.

Click the Test button to play the audio or video file with the QuickTime viewer. This lets you verify that you have selected a playable file for your M-type link.

To create an F-link, select the text in the data-entry/editing window that you want to be the visible text of the hyperlink, and then bring up the Special Link Editor by right-button-clicking (or <Ctrl>-clicking) and choosing Create/Edit Special Hyperlink from the options menu. Click the F-type link: Associated file radiobutton:

Click the Browse button to navigate to and select a file. The type of the file is determined by the filename extension, and this is used to determine which program will be invoked to open the file when the hyperlink is clicked.

Click the Test button to open the associated file with the file's appropriate program. This lets you verify that you have selected a file that will open as expected with your F-type link.

Because the hyperlink is displayed in its raw form in the data-entry/editing window, you can make changes to the coded hyperlink directly, without invoking the Special Hyperlink Editor. This is not recommended, since it is always safer to use the Special Hyperlink Editor. But if you understand how the special hyperlinks are coded, carefully making small edits to them directly in the data-entry/editing window is possible. The following notes document the format for the special hyperlinks, so you can understand how they are coded.

Special hyperlinks have the following format:

    %<code-letter>%<link-info>;<visible text>%%

where:
    <code-letter> is the one-letter code indicating the link type (X, W, P, R, M or F).
    <link-info> is the hidden link information, whose internal format varies by link type.
    <visible text> is the text that will be visible, as a blue, underlined hyperlink, in the Item Details display.

Note that a semi-colon separates the <link-info> from the <visible text>. However, in the case or R-type links, if the <link-info> happens to be identical to the <visible text>, there is only a single text, with no semi-colon, and that text is interpreted as both the ID # target for the jump-to link and as the visible text of the hyperlink.

The format for the <link-info> depends upon the link-type. It is interpreted as follows:

• X-links: The <link-info> is the key for the extended text.
• W-links: The <link-info> is the full URL of the target.
• P-links: The <link-info> is the key for the pattern, followed by a colon and then the parameter values, separated by vertical bar (|) characters. As an example, the <link-info> for a P-link with two parameters might be the following:
          LOC:h234|x22
  Note: It is legal for a P-link pattern to have no parameters, in which case <link-info> is just the key for the pattern, with no colon and no parameter information.
• R-links: The <link-info> is the ID # value of the target record.
• M-links: The <link-info> is the filename of the media file. It can either be a full pathname or a simple filename. Simple filenames are taken to refer to files in the Image Directory.
• F-links: The <link-info> is the filename of the associated file. It can either be a full pathname or a simple filename. Simple filenames are taken to refer to files in the Image Directory.

Simply select any part of the special hyperlink in the text-entry/editing window and bring up the Special Link Editor by right-button-clicking (or <Ctrl>-clicking) and choosing Create/Edit Special Hyperlink from the options menu. This will open the Special Link Editor initialized to the current values of the special link. Make any changes you want (which can include changing the type of the hyperlink, or changing the visible text), and click OK.

You can also remove an existing special hyperlink by opening the Special Link Editor (as described in the previous paragraph), and click the Remove link: revert to simple visible text button.