mirror of
https://github.com/rkd77/elinks.git
synced 2024-12-04 14:46:47 -05:00
0a844e6534
... also drop comment about hacking.txt being extended gradually. AsciiDoc burps on it and it really is kind of a boot message.
90 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
90 lines
4.2 KiB
Plaintext
URL Shortcuts in ELinks
|
|
-----------------------
|
|
|
|
One extremely useful and convenient feature in ELinks, which may not be very
|
|
well known, is so-called URL rewriting. If you give ELinks a URL (by passing it
|
|
on the command line, through the -remote magic device or, most frequently, by
|
|
typing it to the Goto URL dialog), it has the ability to mangle it in certain
|
|
ways before processing it. This mangling is called URI rewriting.
|
|
|
|
|
|
What it does
|
|
~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
|
|
|
The URI rewriting can expand certain URL shortcuts to complete URLs. For
|
|
example, if you type 'sd' to the Goto URL dialog, it will be rewritten to:
|
|
|
|
http://www.slashdot.org/
|
|
|
|
first, and then loaded. /.'s front page will be displayed.
|
|
|
|
Further, if you type 'g elinks' to the Goto URL dialog, it will be rewritten to:
|
|
|
|
http://www.google.com/search?q=elinks&btnG=Google+Search
|
|
|
|
and then loaded, therefore, a Google search for the keyword 'elinks' will be
|
|
performed. Note that you can separate the 'g' by either a space or a colon, so
|
|
'g:elinks' will do the exact same thing.
|
|
|
|
A large number of those shortcuts are already defined for you. You can browse
|
|
Protocols :: URI Rewriting :: Dumb/Smart prefixes in the Options Manager for
|
|
a complete listing of already defined shortcuts (press the [Info] button on
|
|
a shortcut to see what it will be rewritten to). See below for details on how
|
|
to enable or disable this rewriting and how to define your own shortcuts.
|
|
|
|
|
|
How it works
|
|
~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
|
|
|
All the URI rewriting can be controlled by options in the 'protocol.rewrite'
|
|
option tree.
|
|
|
|
In the case of 'sd', a URI rewriting mechanism called 'dumb prefixes' is used.
|
|
If protocol.rewrite.enable-dumb is true, ELinks looks at the contents of the
|
|
protocol.rewrite.dumb.* tree, and if it finds option protocol.rewrite.dumb.sd,
|
|
it will use its value as the target URI.
|
|
|
|
Therefore, more generally speaking, if ELinks looks at
|
|
protocol.rewrite.dumb.<typed_string>, and if it exists, will replace the
|
|
entered URI with it. These dumb prefixes can be used as a kind of alternative
|
|
bookmark systen - if you want to have fast access to a certain site and you
|
|
don't want to spend a while navigating the bookmarks manager, you can just fire
|
|
up the Goto URL dialog, type the shortcut and there you go.
|
|
|
|
A dumb prefix can contain '%c', which will be replaced by the URI of the current
|
|
document. This is used, for example, in the 'arc' dumb-prefix, which provides
|
|
a shortcut to the Wayback machine at archive.org.
|
|
|
|
In the case of 'g', a slightly different URI rewriting mechanism called 'smart
|
|
prefixes' is used. If protocol.rewrite.enable-smart is true, ELinks looks at
|
|
the contents of the protocol.rewrite.smart tree and, if it finds option
|
|
protocol.rewrite.smart.g, it will use its value as the target URI.
|
|
|
|
The difference is that the smart prefixes can take arguments and reference them
|
|
in the target URI. As with dumb prefixes, '%c' in the URI means the current
|
|
address. Additionally, '%s' will be substituted by the whole string following
|
|
the prefix ('elinks' in the 'g' example above; '%s' is by far the most
|
|
frequently used expansion), while you can reference individual space-separated
|
|
arguments with the codes '%0' thru '%9'. Finally, if you want a plain % to the
|
|
resulting URI, use '%%'.
|
|
|
|
Note that the prefix searched in the protocol.rewrite.smart tree is everything
|
|
in the typed address up to the first space or colon (so 'bug:123' and 'bug 123'
|
|
are identical). These prefixes are generally useful for searching anything very
|
|
fast - be it Google ('g:foo', 'gi:foo', 'gr:foo', ...), ELinks Bugzilla bugs
|
|
('bug:1234'), the RFC database ('cr:foo'), or the Czech-English dictionary
|
|
('czen:foo'). The only limit is your imagination.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Alternative URI rewriting mechanisms
|
|
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
|
|
|
In the past, before this was implemented, Lua scripting did the job. And you
|
|
still have complete control over the URI in the internal scripting goto-url
|
|
hook. The advantages are clear - you get complete control over the URI and you
|
|
can do many more interesting things with it. For example, there are some very
|
|
advanced CVSweb and Debian package database URI prefixes implemented in the
|
|
sample Lua hooks file. The one disadvantage to this is that you must have Lua
|
|
scripting enabled in order to make use of it, and many users don't have Lua
|
|
installed.
|