[eev] text with arbitrary text properties (sometimes hyperlink actions)

[Eduardo Ochs]

Hi people,

this is to announce a piece of code that is hot from the oven... take
a look at <http://angg.twu.net/eev-current/eev-ttp.el.html>, and
scroll to the bottom for a screenshot. From the description:

  Danger! Danger! This is a piece of VERY IMMATURE EXPERIMENTAL
  SOFTWARE! I'm only including it in the eev package because it has
  some interesting ideas that I would like to make public and to
  discuss with some of the people from the mailing list!

  The main idea, short form: there are several packages for hypertext
  for emacs around - planner, howm, what else? - and each one of them
  offers a few kinds of hyperlinks, which implement a limited class of
  "actions" that are performed when we "follow" these
  links... actually these packages also implement "lisp://" or
  "%lisp%" hyperlinks that can hold arbitrary Lisp code, and so links
  can do anything; but what happens if we try a simpler solution, in
  which we implement only one kind of hyperlink, whose action is to
  evaluate a piece of Lisp? Also, what happens if the same process
  that associates some Lisp code to a region of text can also
  associate arbitrary text properties? Think on an enriched mode on
  steroids, with tools for making parts of the text "active"...

This is actually my second or third reimplementation of that idea... I
started playing with that because I wanted to write quick reference
pages for languages and libraries - with lots of hyperlinks - that
would fit in a single page; but the code was getting so ugly - and it
didn't seem to be worth the trouble - that I gave up.

In discussions via IRC with David O'Toole (dto) several new ideas
popped up: some of the hyperlinks could be just buttons, with actions
like: controlling audio parameters, playing a new song, or adding it
to the playlist; inspecting or changing an entry about a book in a
database, etc... I keep thinking about arranging my CDs and my
favourite songs from them bidimensionally, like

    Cure                 Bowie
      Faith  12345678      Low...
      Pornog 123456789     HunkyDory...
      Lullaby orig ext
                         Eno
    Dinosaur Jr            By This River
      YLAOM...             HCTWJ...
      Bug...               Tiger Mountain...
      JLH EP (123)

where, for example, each digit after "Faith" is one track of the
album, and "Bug..." is a link to another page where each track is
listed in full.

Anyway: this is an open-ended message; I'll leave you thiking.
By the way: I would love to hear your ideas!
  Happy hacking,
    Edrx