Re: LYNX-DEV History disappears - how do I get a list of ALL past URLs

[Robert Bonomi]

+ Date: Thu, 5 Dec 1996 20:26:45 -0600 (CST)
+ From: "Hiram Lester, Jr." <address@hidden>
[...  snip  ...]
+ 
+ I presume this is from the next document command on less and most... Seems
+ kind of an odd choice... I think most of us agree that 2 key commands will
+ eventually come, but is this necessary right now?  There are still several
+ keys unmapped.  To the best of my knowledge the following keys are still
+ free:
+ 
+ Dollar Sign   $       (might be a problem on international keyboards...
+                        the British have those funny little cursive L's
+                        *tongue in cheek*)
+ Percent Sign  %
+ Caret         ^
+ Ampersand     &
+ Underscore    _
+ Vertical Bar  |       (common in unix as a pipe command and might should
+                        be reserved as such...)
+ Curly Braces  {}      (both are still free)
+ (Semi)Colon   :;      (again, both are free.  A WHOLE KEY on many kb's!)
+ Period                .
+ Tilde         ~


I'd nominate '{' and '}'  for 'back' and 'forward'.

'~'  would find reasonable use as "yet another"  HOME key.

From a 'plan ahead' standpoint, it would seem reasonable to preserve ':'
as an 'extended commands' introduction character, and to use ';' as a
separater between multiple such commands invoked at once.  with this,
one is not limited to 'reasonable' restrictions on the form of the command --
e.g. one can have a command 'd', a command 'x', and a -different- command
'dx'  and have 'xd' have yet another meaning.  preserves the option for 
having some of the extended commands take parameters or arguments.

This could be useful for those situations were you want to, for example,
change =several= settings (e.g., soft-quote, minimal, inline as link,
_and_ pseudo-alts) after having called up a large/complicated page.
Normally, _each_ of those operations is going to cause a re-fetch/re-load/
re-render of the page,  and you _really_ just "don't care" about what
things look like, till you're "all done".

I could see great utility in, for example, having some link selected,
and being able to just type in
         :a l marks2; d f something.txt
to: 1) add the link to my bookmarks lista in file 'marks2' (this _might_ 
have an automatic extension appended) and, 2) download to a file called
'something.txt'.

or, for the first example, 
  :";];';*
which would change all the indicated settings, and _then_ re-fetch (once!)
the page.

*OBVIUSLY*, this is -not- something that will, would, or even _could_
be implemented quickly - at least I don't think so (anybody want to take
a stab at proving me wrong?  *grin*).  I'm broaching the idea as a basis
for discussion, with a view towards building a consensus with regard to
a strategic outline for future directions of the user-interface.

As long as I'm 'stirring up trouble' :), has anybody thought about using
tcl/tk as the 'command processor' inside lynx?  it would then be trivial
to, among other things, bind a single keystroke to a -series- of actions,
or to have some keys have 'context sensitive' functionality.

;
; To UNSUBSCRIBE:  Send a mail message to address@hidden
;                  with "unsubscribe lynx-dev" (without the
;                  quotation marks) on a line by itself.
;