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Re: lynx-dev suggestions for new features


From: Jacob Poon
Subject: Re: lynx-dev suggestions for new features
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 00:14:00 -0400

On Fri, 24 Apr 1998, Matt Ackeret wrote:

> On Fri, 24 Apr 1998, David Combs wrote:
> >Of course, we COULD do like emacs and vi and have MULTLIPLE-CHARACTER
> >commands, which would open a wide door for future commands.
[snip]
> >Emacs uses ESC as the prefix char for multiple-char commands,
> >and vi uses ":".  Why not copy one of those?
> 
> good!

Except that there are too many ESC-based commands in addition to ^X-based
command in emacs.  Unless I can see further keystroke help after pressing
the previous one, the learning curve will be very deep.  BTW, that's why
'User mode' should be separated into two options:  one for showing URL of
current link, one for keystroke help, and scrap the misleading 'Novice,
intermediate, advanced' settings altogether. 

However, I can use ESC key to show a menu bar on top of the screen, then
fit arbitrary amount of commands into the bar without using more keys in
the already crowded keymap.  While this sounds more like a GUI browser
idea, text-based menu bars have been used in my school's library search
engines, and they are running perfectly with only a VT-320 compatible
terminal (VT-100 mode is used), and before Netscape had become the
dominant browser of choice.  After all, didn't Lynx already draw a menu
when handling <select> tag, and alredy using menu in Options screen?  It
seems adding a menu bar on top of Lynx display is not as improbable as
most may think. Furthermore, this menu bar will support GUI environment
(ie draws menu bar outside the text window when running in (X)Windows), as
emacs does.

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