[Vimperator] request statusbar / q regex / possible bug: 'all extensions incompatible'

[Peter Jakobi]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2007 at 08:42:44AM +1200, Nigel McNie wrote:
> On 23/06/07, Peter Jakobi <PJakobi at t-online.de> wrote:

Rehi Nigel,

> >1) status / feature request: regex searches
> >Anyway: is there a chance to implement REGEX searches?
> 
> My replacement was a simple search only, it uses the Firefox inbuilt Finder
> component to do all the dirty work (and was stolen from conkeror for the
> most part...). I don't think that regex search will be possible unless a
> component can be found for it.

The  author  of  the  findbartweak  had a comment / feature request on
addons.mozilla.org regarding regular expressions and said  he'd  check
it. Maybe that's a useful lead.


But maybe we should be careful about depending on other components, as
they          might          introduce          some          concepts
alien/contraproductive/(time-)inefficient to vi style  userinterfaces.
Quick-Find  for examples is useful for fallback, but it's really alien
to vi and e.g.  doesn't lend itself to quick positioning or ranges  in
:ex  mode,  etc.   Depending  on conceptual-alien extensions like that
might also restrict the possible ideas  that  can  be  implemented  in
vimperor.

Possible  exceptions  here  are the other text-tool derived interfaces
(weren't there some less/emacs extensions?).  But maybe that  more  in
code-sharing sense.


1)  vi is about text; so mapping the dom representation of the page to
a plaintext view (with location information) should  be  possible  and
could  be quite useful when coupled with an interface derived from vi.
Though this conversion  should  be  done  only  when  it  is  actually
requested  by  the  user.   And  excepting  input fields, it should be
pretty much static during tab lifetime.

2)  regex  do exist in javascript (study() doesn't?); or possibly with
object code in probably more powerful form as  the  pcre  library  for
various  OSes.   Javascript  can be invoked as vimperor is javascript,
and as an extension, shouldn't vimperor also have access to  the  text
content of dom objects? 

3) even if we leave the dom-to-text idea alone, there's an interesting
feature  that  would  nicely  match  vi:  large  text input fields and
editing them in vim style (that means enter a text in  input  mode  in
the  field,  then  press  escape  and  use normal vi movements to move
around in the text you entered in the field, yank a few lines to  move
them  around,  reformat  a paragraph and use some visual block moves),
maybe even with vim-style syntax markup.

Consider  bloggers  and  their  text input or bugzilla and writing bug
reports.

-- 
cu
Peter
jakobi at acm.org