Special Links

Home Overview Wiki Wiki Syntax Special Links

MoStacks support a number of "special" links: If you tap them, there is no jump to another card, but some other action. You could say that these are only "links" in a very broad sense, but then a completely new mechanism for the supported actions would probably be somewhat overkill (and of course also more work for the programmer to implement).

All special links have in common that their target text must start with a special string terminated by a colon ":". (You are however free to use a separate display text, with the help of the bar "|", like for normal links.)

tel: links

A tel: link is the Wiki equivalent of the Dial field command: If you tap on such a link, the telephone number given in the link target text after the colon is dialed. An example:

    In case of emergency, in Europe call [[tel:112|the 112 short number]].

sms: links

A sms: link allows you to quickly prepare the sending of an SMS. Tapping such a link switches to UIQ3's SMS application, opens the view for starting a new message there, with the phone number as given in the link after the colon, and with any alternative link text put into the clipboard, so in the SMS view you are one Paste command away from the SMS text.

With sms: links you can use cards with wiki fields as a kind of SMS templates, like in this example:

    [[sms:05551234|Honey, I will be late because ]].

url: links

A url: link is a true link in the WWW sense, because it starts the built-in UIQ3 web browser and goes to the link target given after the colon. An example:

    For search, best use [[url:http://www.google.com/|Google]].

Because of a weakness in the UIQ3 browser those links only work if the browser is not yet started. That's why MoStacks uses an ugly hack to make url: links work nevertheless and kills an already-running browser first if necessary.

As the built-in UIQ3 browser is pretty weak compared to alternatives, this of course cries out for a configurable browser to start after tapping such a link, but there is no support yet for this.

select: links

With select: links wiki texts can become "active" because when tapped such links send a select message to a field or control on the same page as the wiki field, therefore executing the script with the same name "listening" to the select message. You give the name of the field or control after the colon, as shown in this example:

    Tap [[select:RefreshDate|here]] to refresh the date.

file: links

With a file: link you can embedd a link to any file present on your smartphone in a wiki text: You give the full file name including path after the colon. If you tap on the link, the application that Symbian knows as the application responsible for that kind of file is started, and the file opened. An example:

    Tap [[file:C:\Media files\document\Test.doc|here]] to view the Word document.

Note that this depends on the cooperation of the application: Some applications simply do not follow Symbian programming conventions, and don't know what to do if Symbian starts them with a filename as argument. So this might not work or not work reliably, e.g. only if the application is not yet in memory at the moment of the tapping of the link, like the in-built UIQ3 WWW browser.