If you aren't on a server, HTTP is mostly for reading, typically to get
a Web page and displaying it in your browser. Netrw supports reading and
writing over various other protocols. I know HTTP has been abused for
other purposes, but IMHO other protocols are better suited to read-write
operations: myself for instance, I maintain my online Web site by ftp.
True, but if I want to exchange information with existing web services
I don't have too much choice.
AFAIK, the only Vim scripts in the standard distribution which handle
network operations are the scripts which provide the netrw
functionality. You may look at how they're written:
:view $VIMRUNTIME/plugin/netrwPlugin.vim
:view $VIMRUNTIME/autoload/netrw.vim
and if that code inspires you to write Vim scripts for additional
network functionalities, you're free to do so. Or if you have concrete
suggestions about how to make these scripts even better than they
already are, Dr. Charles "Chip" Campbell, the maintainer, is the man you
should contact, either personally or via the vim-dev list.
Upon closer inspection, netrw delegates network activity to
wget/fetch/rsync and friends anyway, so I guess I'll do the same. It's
given me some direction on how to handle different operatings systems
-- 'if has("win32")' etc. It's not a robust solution, but we work
within our confines, right? :-)
How does one get features like TCP/IP commands included in the
proposed vim feature list?
Thanks,
Stewart
