Re: lynx-dev Wishlist: Javascript protocol and EXTERNAL

[Morten Bo Johansen]

Michael Warner <address@hidden> wrote:

MW> YAY!  Another chance to beat the drum for CERNRULES, the
MW> coolest unknown feature in lynx (that I know of :). Thanks,
MW> Klaus.

This is a truly great feature you just revealed to me there! I
don't know why, but I had missed out completely on that one.
Yes, it certainly makes things a lot easier. However, at an
initial glance it seems that there are a lot of cases where one
can't use it. But take what you can get and be happy..

MW> One limitation: you only get one wildcard per redirect,
MW> so you need an original URL that meets some usability
MW> constraints.  The format has to be predictable and
MW> specifiable such that you can pick out the useful info in
MW> one chunk.  It may be that you could get "abcdef" out of
MW> "xxxabcyyydefzzz" by chaining rules or something, but the
MW> thought makes my head hurt right now, so you're on your own
MW> there.

Yes, that's right So a script could still be of some use there.

MW> cernrules.txt will tell you more than I'm ever likely to know
MW> on the subject.

It requires a good read. Perhaps the somewhat arcane denotation
"CERN rules", "cernrules.txt" is why I haven't paid attention.
CERN is some Swiss laboratory where the inventor of the WWW
worked? Oh well, the denotation surely makes sense if you have the
background knowledge.

Btw, the initial remark in cernrules.txt that.."Most users and
most installations will not need this feature"..is one I'd
contest; any lynx user could benefit greatly from this.

MW> On the other hand, if you could come up with script(s) or
MW> whatever that were general enough to parse out the path info
MW> to tack onto the BASE, and it worked well enough to be useful
MW> (considerably less than 100% might still be useful), I for
MW> one would be interested.  Not JS, perhaps, but a somewhat
MW> life-like facsimile?

I have no other ideas right at the moment beyond the principle
I showed in the script I mentioned. It does give you some more
possibilities that cern rules but is somewhat clumsy to work
with, and you have to memorize en ever growing number of hosts
that you have defined rules for. Still, I will refine it over
time and post it, when it possibly gets interesting enough for
others to look at.

Perhaps others have more elegant solutions? I was thinking that
perhaps it was possible to introduce a more general option where
one could simply have a script act as some kind of proxy where
all protocol requests were filtered through, i.e. whenever one
clicks on a link the URL is passed on to the script and modified
if a rule is found.

MW> I've shamefully drifted into following mozilla development
MW> and away from daily use of lynx, so my rules file hasn't been
MW> maintained, but I'll tack it on anyway, in case it's useful.
MW> (Does Yahoo mutilate attachments?)

Mozilla has turned into a great browser, so if you're
contributing, then hats off to you ;)

(We ought to collect all those power user tips on a page
sometimes).


Thanks,

Morten


PS: Your posts got deleted in my spamfilter (yahoo.com), but
fortunately I had gmane. I must remove the yahoo filter, if you
have posted anything privately and get to wonder about a missing
reaction, you know why.

-- 
"Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed
 to be doing at that moment."                             (Robert Benchley)

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