DEVELOPMENT

Here are some ideas I have for future development. I'd appreciate feedback
on them before working on implementation. Something to keep in mind. Ernestine
is not meant to be the destination but the guide to it. Its more meant to
be an automated switchboard operator (this is where the name comes from).
Some people may be tempted to use it for destination type applications such
as turning it into a voicemail box system or whatever. This isn't the goal
of the program.


1. RouteDefinitions that can take arguments.

 RouteDefinition  EXT   GOTO(internal,\1,1)  # ie EXT(202)
                                                Easy extension routes.

 RouteDefinition  APLAY PLAY(asterisk-sound/\1)  # So you don't have
                                                    to specify a dir every time.




2. Matching rule that allows you to match a value in a file.

  I imagine that there are other things that people would like to quickly match
against. For instance, the temperature for a zipcode.  This is the type of
thing where probably the information in the file should be cached so its not
read a bunch of times. The syntax for the match rule would have to be fairly
simple too.

 One way I thought this could be done is to define the file in the
ernestine.conf file and give it a "key" name that can then be referenced in a
matching rule. Liek this:

   ValueFile  temp /path/to/file/with/one/temperature.txt

   Then in a ruleset file check it with the keyname and an expression like a
simple value expression:

*  *   FileNumVal(temp,\1<32)  *  PLAY(check-your-pipes),GOTO(internal,100,1)

  So then if the value in the file myvalue.txt (referenced by \1) is less than
32, it will match.  When the ValueFile line is read in from the ernestine.conf
file, it will read the file data at the same time and cache it so it doesn't
have to read the file again for each rule line.

  One issue is, should we have a match rule for each different type of value?
For instance, numbers vs. strings.


3. Also, I'm wondering what other asterisk commands would be useful as target
 routes. I'm hesitant to just start including all of them because that may
 present complex issues and behavior, plus will slow ernestine down.


4. Holidays are often complex, but it would be handy to include them. 
I already wrote a separate program for handling a few holiday calculations 
and playing various warnings based on that. I may just release that other
program as something separate.

 Since there are so many holidays around the world, I think a better way to
 do this may be to let people define their own. For instance, in the
 ernestine.conf file you could have the following command for defining
 the date of U.S. Thanksgiving.

   Holiday USThanksgiving  NOVEMBER-THURSDAY4

  And then ernestine would have a way of processing what that means. There
 is already some standardized syntax for dealing with these things that we
 could look at using.


5. RANDOM route. It might be useful for people to play a random audio file or
 go to a random extension or the like.


6. Wildcarding. it would be nice to use wildcards and more complex regular
expressions for matching numbers or even dates, they are tricky to implement
in a way that is safe and fast. I think what I will end up doing is offering
limited regular expressions like the following

            304*  Matches anything that starts with 304
            8[167]8 # Matches 818 868 and 878
            3[01]7* # Matches 307 or 317 followed by anything.