lynx-dev thoughts on adding new commands

[davidh]

After looking through the archives for the past couple weeks, I noticed
that Philip Webb said:

> we shouldn't use up too many scarce keys on this feature, [...]

This got me to thinking... since we're running out of keyspace, I think
it's important that some sort of long-command-entry thing be added, so
that this restriction will no longer apply.

Note that I am not volunteering to actually add this, as I do not (any
more) have the Lynx code familiarity to do so.  I'm just suggesting one
possible idea on how this could work, to provoke thought.


Every command has a text string associated with it... VLINKS, TOOLBAR,
ADD_BOOKMARK, NEXT, and so on.  There is apparently a two-way mapping,
since ^K shows what each key does, and lynx.cfg contains the text command
names as configuration.

Suppose that a ":" command were added, which would add a command line on
the last line (or the third-to-last line, for "beginner" mode).  When you
press : (or ^V: or ^V^V: as required), the status line would change to:

Enter command name: _

(or something similar), and you could type in the name of a command to
execute it.  This way, you could add new commands that are accessible at
any time, without worrying about running out of keys.


Random add-on ideas, for after the above is implemented to some degree:

One problem I foresee is trying to remember all of these new commands.
So perhaps along with a : command, a COMMAND_LIST (CMD_LIST?) that will
act like KEYMAP (capital K), except it will list *all* commands.
Alternately, KEYMAP could be changed to list all commands be default,
leaving the first column blank if no key is mapped to that command.

Another idea is to take the tab-expansion for URLs (that is in the
current code, yes?) and apply it to this.  If you type in "MA" and hit
tab, "MAIN_MENU" will come up.


Okay, so what do you think of the concept?  Is it a good idea?  Do you
foresee problems?  How difficult would it be to add this to Lynx?  Is
this something you'd like to see?

David Henderson
--
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<*> davidh at psiphi.org, davidh at imsa.edu, davidh at cyberdesic.com