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223 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
223 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
The Ultimate Bookmarks Guide
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----------------------------
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Glad to see you again, mortal. Now, we are going to learn about bookmarks -
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how to use them, how to maintain them, and also something more about the file
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formats and maybe even about the code structure later. But don't fear, we
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won't burden you with it, just stop reading when you already know enough.
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In order to read this, you need some common sense, the ability to start ELinks
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and some idea about what's a Web document, a URL address and knowledge like
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that.
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If we ever mention some keys here, please note that you can rebind almost any
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action to another key which you like more - then you must obviously imagine
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your own key in place of that. Below, we will list all actions, options and so
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on related to bookmarks. We won't tell you how to rebind the keys, though;
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another document will take on that.
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Somewhat out-of-order, a very frequent FAQ: In order to move bookmarks around,
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you need to mark them first - press 'Insert' or '*' (if you use the default
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keymap) to do that.
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The Bookmark Manager
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Basically, almost everything is going on in the so-called bookmark manager.
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That's a special dialog window, which contains a listing of all the bookmarks
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you ever told ELinks to remember and it lets you to do with them anything you
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would ever want to do with them.
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You launch the bookmark manager by pressing the 's' key in standby (standard)
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mode. You should see a big empty space (bookmarks will slowly appear there as
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you will add them) and couple of buttons shriveling at the bottom. So, as a
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start, move with the right (or left; both will do) arrow to the button *Add
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bookmark* and fill in the input fields it offers to you. I mean, you can type
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something like "ELinks homepage" to the first field, then move down by e.g.
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the down arrow and fill "http://elinks.cz/" to the second field. Then,
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bravely press enter and watch the bookmark popping up at the top of the vast
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area reserved for bookmarks.
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Repeat this step few times. Now, you can move between bookmarks by the up and
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down arrow, jump to the location any of them points to by the Goto button,
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change it by the Edit button, delete it with the Delete button and so on. When
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you'll become bored, press the escape button and you're free again!
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The Ancient Forests
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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It's not very convenient to have all the bookmarks mixed up - soon, you will
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get lost in them. Thus, in ELinks you can categorize them to various folders,
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subfolders, subsubfolders and so on, then you can expand and back enfold them
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and so on.
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In order to create your first folder, use the button *Add folder* and fill the
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first input field. You can safely ignore the URL field, ELinks will do the
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same. *POOF* and you see it - it has that strange `[+]` or `[-]` thing there.
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If it has `[+]` near, it's enfolded, while when it has `[-]` near, it is
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expanded, while you can change that by pressing the spacebar.
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In order to add a bookmark into a folder, move on the item of the folder (it
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must be expanded) or onto any bookmark inside of the folder and simply do the
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usual *Add bookmark* job. You can also move the bookmarks around, obviously.
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Before pressing the *Move* button, you need to first mark all the bookmarks
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(or even folders) you want to move using the 'Insert' or '*' key--asterisk
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will appear near of all marked bookmarks--and then move to where you want to
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have the stuff moved to.
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Separators can be inserted as well, using *Add separator* button, or by
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entering a special bookmark with "-" as title and no url.
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Searching for a needle in the haystack
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Of course, you can search in the bookmarks. Just use the *Find* button - for
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convenience, you have the current document's URL and title pre-filled there,
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and for convenience only up-up-enter-down-down sequence is enough to have the
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playground clean. Then, just fill a substring of what you are looking for, and
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the bookmarks will be filtered so that only the matching ones are shown.
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(Actually, currently it will not be filtered but the cursor will only jump to
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the first matching bookmark below the current cursor position - and it will
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*NOT* wrap around. The exact behaviour changes time by time and hasn't been
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stabilized yet.)
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File formats
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~~~~~~~~~~~~
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ELinks supports two bookmark formats: the native format and a generic bookmark
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exchange format called XBEL. Each of those formats has its pros and cons,
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which we shall discuss below. You can switch between then by changing the
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option 'bookmarks.file_format'.
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However, first please note that ELinks 'CANNOT' read Links bookmarks directly.
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Importing Links-0.9x (or Links-1.x) bookmarks is easy - it is just matter of
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changing all the '|' (pipe) characters to tabs. There is a script for that in
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the contrib/conv/ directory. Importing Links-2.xx bookmarks is not so easy; in
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fact, the scribe knows of no way of doing that at the time of writing this, so
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this is up to you to figure out (if you do, please tell us so that we can add
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it here). Perhaps you might find a way to convert Links2 bookmarks to the
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XBEL format, which can then be loaded in ELinks.
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Native file format
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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This is the preferred bookmarks format, which is also used by default. The
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bookmarks file is `~/.elinks/bookmarks`, in a simple format:
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<name> '\t' <url> [ '\t' <depth> ['\t' <flags>] ] '\n'
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'\t' represents a tab character, '\n' represents a newline character. [Square
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brackets] denote optional parts. The '<name>' and '<url>' fields should be
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obvious. '<depth>' contains the depth level of the entry - by that, ELinks
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can unambiguously figure out the bookmarks hierarchy:
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Bookmarks structure: Depth:
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,-- The Pasky's C Bestiary 0
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[-]- Wonderful things 0
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| |-- Christmas Carol in l33tsp34k by L.M. 1
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| [-]- Beautiful Potato Camera Shots 1
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| [-]- Gallery of Scary Images of Jonas Fonseca 1
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| |-- Jonas torturing gdb 2
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| [-]- Urgh 2
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| | `-- Jonas consuming Tofu 3
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| `-- Jonas with crashed ELinks 2
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|-- Slides from Witek's hack-patch show 0
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`-- Miciah's English Grammar Spellbook 0
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'<flags>' is a string of characters. Currently, two flags are supported:
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`-------`---------------------------------------------------------------------
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Flag Description
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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E This folder is currently expanded. (No effect for non-folders.)
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F This entry is a folder. The <url> part is usually empty.
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Separators: these are special bookmarks with "-" as title and no url.
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Pros::
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Naturally, ELinks handles the native format the best, easiest and most
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reliably.
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Cons::
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It is unlikely that you could use the native format anywhere else than
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in ELinks.
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To use the native format, set 'bookmarks.file_format' = 0.
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XBEL file format
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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The XBEL file format support was added at some point during the 0.4
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development by Fabio Boneli. It has never been complete and has plenty of
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troubles, but generally, it works at the basic level. The bookmarks file is
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`~/.elinks/bookmarks.xbel` (thanks to a different filename, you can have both
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XBEL and native bookmarks saved in your `~/.elinks` directory).
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We shall not describe the XBEL file format here,
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http://pyxml.sourceforge.net/topics/xbel/
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is the authoritative resource on that. It also contains list of some of the
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applications supporting the format. Basically, you will be probably able to
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convert from/to the XBEL format to/from most of the other widely used formats,
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so this way you can import your bookmarks to ELinks from basically anything.
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Pros::
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XBEL is the gateway to the rest of the bookmarks world.
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Cons::
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The support for XBEL is incomplete and there are known bugs.
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Especially, national character sets are basically not supported, so
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ELinks will most likely get it wrong if you have any non-ASCII
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characters in your bookmarks. Generally, the XBEL support should be
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considered experimental and you shouldn't rely on it. It *could* trash
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your XBEL bookmarks file so make regular backups.
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To use the XBEL format, set 'bookmarks.file_format' to 1.
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Usage hints
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^^^^^^^^^^^
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As already noted above, probably the best usage pattern is to use XBEL for
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importing/exporting your bookmarks to/from ELinks and the native format for
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regular operation. Of course, if you want to synchronize your bookmarks in
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ELinks and some other XBEL-supporting gadget and you are brave, you can use
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XBEL as your exclusive bookmark format - the choice is upon you.
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Regarding the bookmarks synchronization, there is one important note. ELinks
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saves your bookmarks each time you added one through the 'a' shortcut
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(add-bookmark action) or when closing the bookmarks manager if you made any
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changes or when quitting ELinks. However, ELinks reads your bookmarks only
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*ONCE*, during the startup. This behaviour may change in the future (tell us
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if you need a way for ELinks to re-read the bookmarks file), but this is how
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it is done now.
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Actually, you may now ask "So how do I convert bookmarks between the two
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formats?". It is quite easy. ELinks simply follows the current value of
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'bookmarks.file_format' whenever loading/saving the bookmarks.
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So, e.g. if you normally use the native format but you want the bookmarks to
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be saved in the XBEL format once, change 'bookmarks.file_format' to 1, then
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cause the bookmarks to be resaved (e.g. by doing some simple change, like
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adding a trailing space to some bookmark's title or so), then change the
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'bookmarks.file_format' value back to 0.
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It is a little more complicated if you normally use the native format but you
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want to import bookmarks from the XBEL format once. You again change
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'bookmarks.file_format' to 1, then cause the bookmarks to be reloaded. That
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involves saving the configuration, quitting ELinks _completely_ (that means
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closing/killing all instances of it you have running), then restarting it and
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changing 'bookmarks.file_format' to 0. Then save the configuration again and
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cause ELinks to resave the bookmarks.
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Agreed, this all strange dances are quite clumsy, likely some simple
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wizard-like interface for switching the bookmarks formats will be introduced
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in the future. So far, we have had no reports from our users that anyone wants
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to switch their bookmarks format frequently, so this is not too high on our
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TODO list. So be sure to tell us if you would like this process to be
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simplified rather sooner than later.
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