Re: lynx-dev tabs for Lynx (was reloading documents)

[Chuck Martin]

On Mon, Jun 02, 2003 at 01:46:57PM -0400, Philip Webb wrote:
> > I can do something similar to this already, using a shell script as a viewer
> > when pressing '.' or ',' to view a page.  My shell script allows me
> > to load the specified URL in another screen window, another xterm,
> > or either another browser.  Unfortunately, that has to be done
> > every time I load a new page if I want the benefit I'm talking about,
> > because I don't know ahead of time which pages I'll want to hold onto
> > while I go back to another page, and that isn't practical.
> > I also don't have the benefit of the current history
> > or list of visited links in that other browser or window.
> 
> that sounds a bit complex & more limited than tabs.

On the contrary, it's actually very simple, and from your description,
I think it's actually more versatile than tabs.  I merely press '.' on
a link, or ',' to use the URL of the page I'm currently viewing, and I
get a menu like this:

1) lynx/console         8) elinks/screen      15) netscape/existing
2) lynx/screen          9) elinks/xterm       16) mozilla
3) lynx/xterm          10) netrik/screen      17) galeon
4) w3m/screen          11) netrik/xterm       18) nautilus
5) w3m/xterm           12) dillo              19) konqueror
6) links/screen        13) opera
7) links/xterm         14) netscape/new
#?

(I'm not up-to-date on links/elinks; elinks was supposed to be what
links was going to be in the future, and I haven't upgraded in quite
some time, so those may be redundant now.)

After selecting an option from the menu and pressing ENTER, I have the
requested page in whatever browser I've chosen.  Option 1 only works
from a virtual console (in Linux) without screen, and the */screen
options only work if the lynx already running is in a screen session,
either in a text console or an xterm (or equivalent).  The graphic
browsers and */xterm options work whether or not lynx is running in X
as long as there's an X server running as display :0 on the same host,
because the script sets DISPLAY to :0 before running any browser if it
isn't already set.

I've used the select shell command for simplicity, but I could easily
use something like dialog for a nicer user interface if I wanted, and
because it's a shell script, I can easily add or remove browsers as I
see fit (and am hoping to add more when I get the chance).

It seems from your description that option 2 is identical or nearly
identical to tabs in other browsers, without having to add the feature
explicitly to lynx.  The only advantage I could see to adding tabs to
lynx would be that the source cache could be used to duplicate the page
currently being viewed in another tab without reloading it, and the tabs
could share a common history and collection of visited links, but from
what you've said, tabs in other browsers don't do this (at least not the
duplication of the current page in another tab), so that would be a
lynx-specific behavior if it was implemented.

What I think would be nice would be if something like my script could
be implemented internally to call other browsers (including another
instance of lynx) and pass the source cache, history, and list of
visited links, while telling the other browser what the real URL of
the source being passed was so that following links in the new browser
would use the same "referer" as if it had obtained the page from it's
original source.  Unfortunately, this would mean creating a standard
protocol for passing this information and convincing the authors of the
other browsers to follow our lead, which probably wouldn't be an easy
thing to do.

Chuck


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