Dear Michael, Ron,
and other bookmarkers,
>Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2000 19:10:11 +0100 (CET)
>From: Michael Polak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: About hotlist, bookmarks, etc.
>
>The ideas discuessed in Arachne digest about bookmarks are very simillar
>to my actual plans: current primitive bookmark functionality will be
>probably totaly removed, or made only optional, and some kind of DGI
>script will be called, which will produced dialogue simillar to
>movemail.dgi selection box. However, compact HTML page will be generated
>by such manager, so you can still copy all personal data in single file,
>upload them to web or attach to e-mail, etc.
>
>Anyone can start writing such manager: MIME.CFG syntax will be
>
>addbookmark.dgi >HTM|someprog.exe "$u" $h>$2
the problem is, that *not* anyone can do it. We bloody amateurs who
have in mind only our bookmarks and where to put them, we are not
even able to write a small utility. But, Michael, your strategy for
the project (Javascript, Linux) is certainly correct. Do not give up!
Now what to do, if the hotlist manager in its present form does not
meet my needs? Instead of programmes I will propose some work-
arounds, until "anybody" writes the utility. But first I would like
to explain again why somebody (even besides me) may probably not
want to have all bookmarks in one file:
- loading time: is not a quantité negligeable, Ron. It depends
on processor speed and the type of monitor. As I want to use
hotlist also for offline browsing, it should be practical even for
the old 386 on which I use Arachne only to view HTML documents.
- CTRL+arrow keys: yes, Ron, the home key gets me back to the very
beginning of the file. But then I have to start my search again. Take
the worst case eg. that your screen displays only some 22 rows of
text. Even with the best index it will happen that you do not exactly
remember in which category to look for the link. You try one
category, and if you failed, you go to the category which is next to
it. But you do *not* go back to the beginning. This is my concern.
If you have the categories in different files you can navigate by the
CTRL+arrow keys, if everything is in one file you cannot (only with
MSIE, but do not do that!).
- I admit that the above problems are not relevant as far as you
just want to collect a couple of links for your individual online
traffic. But let us say there are several people working with Arachne
on one PC or in a local network. Each of them will collect his own
bookmarks and can have his own hotlist (customized in ARACHNE.CFG).
But it would be quite practical if they also had access to bookmarks
collected by others...
- And finally: I always considered Arachne to be an ideal combination
of online browser and offline viewer. As I work with old and quick
text editors that do not display HTML grafically, I really need a
HTML viewer, because I am neither able nor willing to convert
everything to pure text in DOS codepage. So there is a constant
growth of useful files on my hard disk, some of them containing
further online and offline links. You could say that my hotlist is
actually not a hotlist, but a hot-and-cold-list containing all those
HTML files that I once downloaded to my hard disk and wanted to keep
for the future. When I started to edit my hotlist manually I had to
differentiate between online and offline links. It can be done by
colours (insert eg. <BODY LINK="...">). Eventually I arrived at
this: links to further lists display green, links to the web blue,
links files on the harddisk yellow. I think, what I describe is
commonly called infranet. Anyway it is too much for a single
HOTLIST.HTM.
These are the reasons why I arrived at putting my bookmarks into a
DOS directory tree. I wanted to share them with you. Nothing more.
With best regards
Christof Lange
_______________________________________________
Christof Lange
Prokopova 4, 130 00 Praha 3, Czech Republic
phone: (+420-2) 22 78 18 00 / 22 78 20 02
fax: (+420-2) 22 78 18 01
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
WWW: http://www.volny.cz/cce.zizkov
