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lynx-dev thoughts on adding new commands
From: |
davidh |
Subject: |
lynx-dev thoughts on adding new commands |
Date: |
Sun, 31 Jan 1999 11:43:35 -0600 (CST) |
After looking through the archives for the past couple weeks, I noticed
that Philip Webb said:
> we shouldn't use up too many scarce keys on this feature, [...]
This got me to thinking... since we're running out of keyspace, I think
it's important that some sort of long-command-entry thing be added, so
that this restriction will no longer apply.
Note that I am not volunteering to actually add this, as I do not (any
more) have the Lynx code familiarity to do so. I'm just suggesting one
possible idea on how this could work, to provoke thought.
Every command has a text string associated with it... VLINKS, TOOLBAR,
ADD_BOOKMARK, NEXT, and so on. There is apparently a two-way mapping,
since ^K shows what each key does, and lynx.cfg contains the text command
names as configuration.
Suppose that a ":" command were added, which would add a command line on
the last line (or the third-to-last line, for "beginner" mode). When you
press : (or ^V: or ^V^V: as required), the status line would change to:
Enter command name: _
(or something similar), and you could type in the name of a command to
execute it. This way, you could add new commands that are accessible at
any time, without worrying about running out of keys.
Random add-on ideas, for after the above is implemented to some degree:
One problem I foresee is trying to remember all of these new commands.
So perhaps along with a : command, a COMMAND_LIST (CMD_LIST?) that will
act like KEYMAP (capital K), except it will list *all* commands.
Alternately, KEYMAP could be changed to list all commands be default,
leaving the first column blank if no key is mapped to that command.
Another idea is to take the tab-expansion for URLs (that is in the
current code, yes?) and apply it to this. If you type in "MA" and hit
tab, "MAIN_MENU" will come up.
Okay, so what do you think of the concept? Is it a good idea? Do you
foresee problems? How difficult would it be to add this to Lynx? Is
this something you'd like to see?
David Henderson
--
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
<*> davidh at psiphi.org, davidh at imsa.edu, davidh at cyberdesic.com
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