Re: lynx-dev reverse search

[David Combs]

On Fri, Jul 28, 2000 at 11:43:57AM +0500, Vlad Harchev wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Jul 2000, David Combs wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Jul 27, 2000 at 08:42:51AM -0400, Larry W. Virden wrote:
> > > If someone goes into play with reverse search, how about considering 
> > > adding
> > > regular expressions at the same time?  The ability to search for
> > 
> > Doesn't gnu have a regexp library?  Maybe more than one?
> 
>   Yes, they have one (used by emacs). But regexp lib should support unicode to
> be used in lynx. Only few support unicode - latest Spencer's one and the
> slightly unfinished by Mark Leisher (and also in new perl, but it's hard to
> extract the exact rx stuff).
>  

Does lynx support unicode now?

The conversion from ascii to unicode must be HORRIBLE,
screwing up everything, all those unix string-length calls,
arrays of chars, "is this a space" -- effecting just
about EVERY line of code.

Maybe it's been done already; but I sure couldn't find a more
awful task for someone to have (except converting apl into
c, maybe :-).

Who wants to write yet-another-regex program?

Seems to me that to add in an ASCII-ONLY regex-feature,
accessible via some multiple-key combination (to turn
"ascii-regex mode", and turn it off, too).

Probably 99% of the users use ascii (does anyone have
ANY statistics on usage?) -- if so, the easy way out is to 
just hook-in some existing regex-library.

---

Not being a developer (of lynx), I don't know what
lynx has in unicode already -- so you tell me.

---

But people all over the world have, for the last
40 years (at least the first 35 of the 40) survived
nicely using ascii terminals, ascii OSs, etc.

And other than the blind, seems to me that the percentage of 
people who want a non-gui browser is shrinking daily.

Even here at lynx-dev itself, we see subject-lines like 
"is lynx dead", etc, due to all the javascript, java, etc.

Likely that even the new CS-grads use guis for everything!

Thus, seems like a lot of trouble, work, blood, sweat, and
tears, for little ADDITIONAL
usage, what with the corporations and their GREED are making
lynx less useful, again day by day.  Deliberately, almost.

(FYI: anyone see the wall street journal two days ago?
Front page article, long, on SO MANY big companies SCREWING
the pension plans, WITHOUT TELLING THE EMPLOYEES.  Not just
grunts shoveling dirt, swabbing the floors.  EVERYONE (except
the ceo, officers, etc).  IBM doing it even MORE than that
stuff we heard about some months ago.  READ THE ARTICLE --
YOU WILL NOT LIKE WHAT YOU SEE.  Seems that ALL these (biggish)
companies are doing it, fiddling the numbers and forumlas,
cutting pensions by 30%, employees (yeah, programmers, managers,
everyone except the very very top) taking it in the ear.

You know how every 2-bit dirt farmer, with his starving,
barefoot children, votes republican -- after all, he's
a "businessman".  And when these guys in Manhattan are
on the corner selling apples -- hell, what with their
plant and equipment (apple cart, maybe cardboard box
instead) will also be a "businessman" -- and will continue
voting republican because of it.  And I always thought
that politics was about "voting your pocketbook".  :-(

Indeed, it seems that it really IS "labor vs capital":
even doctors no longer "professionals", just more replaceable-
employees to be let go when their pay grows a bit.
And of course, programmers; replace them with ones living
in India, bangladesh, the prior Soviet Union -- anything
to get more money for that 1% at the very very top who
own 80 or whatever percent of everything.

</rant>    (via nifty new M$ html-feature -- end-tag only,
  browser to place start-tag itself.)
)

OK, guys, you can snip the political aside.

David

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