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Re: lynx-dev Re: Vlad's suggestions


From: Klaus Weide
Subject: Re: lynx-dev Re: Vlad's suggestions
Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1999 08:49:18 -0600 (CST)

On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, Vlad Harchev wrote:

> On Sat, 6 Mar 1999, Philip Webb wrote:
>
> > * regular expression search (preferably ERE), case sensitive and insensitive
> > 
> > this would be useful.

It's amazing how long lynx has been able to exist without any form of
regular expressions :).

Adding support would be useful for some, but looks non-trivial (compared
to the very lynx-specific way searches are done).  I bet it would also add
more complexity to ./configure and the various other platforms' compilation
procedure.

I'd like to have it, if somebody does all the work. :)

Something much easier to do would be adding a third "Searching type":
"Emacs style" in addition to "Case insensitive" and "Case sensitive";
meaning searches are case sensitive if the search string has any capital
letters, insensitive otherwise.

> > * marks (that are local to the file) like in 'less',
> > * ie positions in the html file recorded and then activated some way;
> > * Two non-reserved keys are required for this.
> > 
> > this probably runs into a problem with the way Lynx treats docs internally:
> > FM -- who did much of the early work on Lynx -- used to remind everyone:
> > "Lynx is not a file-viewer"; also, it's probably not worth  2  keys.
> 
>    When viewing large html files (~200 kb) it would be nice to have marks
>  to navigate through the document. There are a lot of such files in the 
>  Web - most of them are automatically generated.

I usually get by with a combination of remembering page numbers, remembering
link numbers, and '/' search.

> > * floating-point numbers be allowed for INFOSECS, MESSAGESECS, ALERTSECS
> > 
> > what on earth for ... (raised eyebrows)?
> 
>    "You are already at the end of this document" and more useful
>    "You are already at the first document" seems to last too long
>    for me for INFOSECS=1, invisible for INFOSECS=0 or '-nopause' command
>    switch. I wish I be able to set INFOSECS=0.3.

Agreed that it would be useful - and less trouble to add *for platforms
where it's easily possible* than most other suggestions.

> > * ability to filter from Inet to be passed through user-defined command
> > 
> > there's already the EXTERNAL feature: see Users Guide.
>     
>   I meant the following: the ability to pass content that is being
>   downloaded by lynx (eg HTML file) to be filtered through some program
>   and then fed to lynx. Preferably such functionality should be activated 
>   by user at runtime (by selecting the filter from a set of predefined or
>   by entering command line). For example, filtering through sed can be
>   used to pack some words (eg Microsoft to M$). It seems to me that it
>   will be possible to implement table renderer in Perl or Python that will
>   render the table to the <PRE> block. Even simple javascript constructs
>   can be parsed and interpreted (like document.write). Complex character
>   set translations will also be allowed by this approach.

Yes, an extension of the internal "Converters" to allow one to specify
external programs as filters would be useful.  I even had a prototype
a long time ago (seem to have lost it now)..  Not too difficult for
Unix, but difficult to kludge around for some other platforms (without
a pipe/fork/exec model).  Another use would be real on-the-fly
decompression.  It should be something done at the WWW lib level.
I wouldn't want to start implementing it (again) without first updating
the libwww interfaces to something like more recent libwww.

Even so, people keep coming up with great ideas for interfacing with
external programs, but the *existing* possibilities are underused.

> > * ESC closes 'option list'
> > 
> > LeftArrow does it already as easily.
> 
>   It's convenient for GUIs and UIs to interpret ESC (or double ESC) as 
>   closing current element of dialog or dialog itself. May be it will be 
>   useful for novice users.

Probably wouldn't work consistently across platforms - might be useful
for those where it does, but would set a new precedent, a naked ESC doesn't
do anything useful *anywhere* in lynx.

> > * for novice users: ability to set start page via 'o' command.
> >                
> > this might be useful: it really belongs under a larger project
> > to fit many  lynx.cfg  choices into the Options form.
> > the rule about Lynx development is very simple:
> > it happens when people -- eg you -- want a feature badly enough
> > to do the necessary programming & submit a patch to lynx-dev.

Yes.

   Klaus

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