Re: lynx-dev Anyone thought about a lynx keyboard macro facility?

[Lloyd G. Rasmussen]

On Mon, 21 Dec 1998 16:38:23 -0500 (EST), 
Larry W. Virden  <address@hidden > wrote:

>Hmm - vi map macros ... well, that might work.  In the past, I've tried
>just creating ascii files with commands in it and tried to redirect it
>into lynx, but that doesn't always work for reasons that I've
>not worked out yet.
>-- 

There may be other reasons, but I think that a macro facility will 
have to be event-driven.  There are certain times and areas of a web 
page where only certain keystrokes will work, at least in a standalone 
copy of Lynx.  It seems to me that if a program just dumped its output 
into Lynx, even at 1 key per second or some other slow rate, you 
couldn't predict whether Lynx would be ready to accept the key at the 
time it is piped into Lynx.  In other words, I think a macro program 
would have to be aware of the state of Lynx in order to function 
correctly, for all but the simplest cases.  I used to deal with this 
problem when working with a screen reading program for DOS that 
depended on keyboard macros for its operation.  The macro programs in 
that environment developed into rather cumbersome and powerful 
applications.  



-- Lloyd Rasmussen
Senior Staff Engineer, Engineering Section
National Library Service for the  Blind and Physically Handicapped
Library of Congress          202-707-0535
(work)       address@hidden    http://www.loc.gov/nls/
(home) address@hidden http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/lras/