Re: standard browser

[Ulrik Sverdrup <ulrik sverdrup gmail com>]

2010/2/4 Sebastian Merz <merz sebas googlemail com>:
> Hello!
>
> Nice that you responded so quickly. Actually this is kind of fun...
>
>>>
>>> The gtk_show_uri support in xfce is the problem in my case. It is
>>> planned to be implemented as it ssem, see:
>>> http://gezeiten.org/post/2009/09/Xfce-4-8-Release-Cycle-Information
>>> So I might just want to wait for that to happen. Thanks for the patch
>>> anyway but right now I am using the version from the ppa and that is
>>> just so comfortible ;)
>>
>> Ah, this is good to know. Making this work for others is high priority
>> for kupfer but requires people to get involved to make their
>> configurations work.
>>
>
> Why not use xdg-open as default? I hardly used Gnome but I suppose it
> works there as well. I suppose xdg-open just looks for the right
> application in the mine-types whicht is making a lot of sense to me.
> Anyways, it is a pitty that this rather simple thing "default
> application" seems to be very confusing...
>

The backstory is simple: Linux needs good high-level APIs for good
applications. I hate doing lots of special cases and hacks to get
things working, and the history shows, it was not until I could use
GIO (from GLib version 2.14?) for the application system that Kupfer
was really viable. gtk_show_uri is just another side of that GIO
functionality. Now it seems to me that the application stuff works
just fine everywhere (listing all installed applications, starting
them, starting them with files, and finding the default application
for files). That URLs don't work equally well is puzzling.

Today Kupfer is in a different position so it is possible to think
about doing this. Although honestly I will let it wait for someone
interested to propose a patch.

>>>
>>> A comment on the zim plugin:
>>> I use zim for a lot of stuff, so whenever I type something in kupfer a
>>> lot of zim pages appear as suggestions. I would love to not have that
>>> on the top level (like the option there is for the browser favourites
>>> plugins).
>>
>> This is something I would like to solve with generality and remove the
>> bookmarks special cases: Simply a catalog configuration where you can
>> choose which sources are "in" and which are "out" of the toplevel.
>>
>
> This is making a lot of sense to me and solves my concern 100%.
>
>>> Also:
>>> A history of kupfer commands invoked would be great.
>>
>> Yes. Feel free to elaborate exactly how you want to use this, what you
>> expect. User stories nbt only help but are almost a must when
>> designing the application. Also notice that you have the Last Command
>> object since the latest version (useful to make a trigger to repeat
>> the latest action, although it only makes sense with some actions,
>> like skip to next song).
>
> Working on the computer I usually invoke the same or similar commands
> a couple of times. I.e. when I update my website I would edit a zim
> file and then run a skript to export the website, look at it, switch
> back to zim, export it again an so forth (using the very convient go
> to window function I started to use kupfer to switch windows as well).
> Right now when I call kupfer I see the last command that I run. This
> is making a lot of sense as you might have done something wrong and
> want to change the command a little. But as described above I often
> would want to run the same command I used a couple of kupfer-actions
> ago. So a history of commands would be very cool (like bash keeps
> one).
>
> My suggestion is:
> to have the history as a catalog source that works like any other
> (which would already be cool enough). If I got the concept behind
> kupfer right the items in there would need to be "composed commands"
> and they could be run but not changed - here I am not sure though.
> Cooler might be to have the history not as a normal catalog source:
> when kupfer is brought up the last command run is presented. When
> control up is pressed kupfer jumps to the secound last command
> (control down lets it jumpt to the next and so forth). Pressing the
> arrow keys without control still has the same behaviour and lest you
> navigate through the catalog right away. For me this would be very
> intuitive as it is very much like in bash. First I wanted to suggest
> to use just up and down key (without the control) but looking at the
> behaviour of kupfer more carefully I realize that would break the
> logic behind it.

This is a very interesting idea! Yes, Kupfer has already taken most
standard navigation keys (and other keys) for "spatial" navigation.

The only thing you can do today is adding composed commands as
favorites or triggers, that's the only way to reuse them.

>
> Making a trigger to repeat the last command is an interesting idea I
> have no thought of at all. Though I don't know if I would use it a
> lot.

Well, it has limited use but it's nice to make it available. It makes
more sense if you know the properties of all commands you use (I have
lots of training :-).  If you repeat a Terminal -> Go To  command,
kupfer will select the next window. So repeating the last command when
it was (Application) -> Go To  will switch among all its windows. But
I mostly use it just to repeat "Skip to next song".

Another is the Next Window object that I added yesterday after a
discussion on identica:  It turns out it is impossible to alt-tab
while you drag-and-drop. However with the help of Kupfer we can solve
this ;-)  anyway bind a trigger to Next Window -> Activate and it's a
rudimentary form of Alt+Tab and it works while you have a grabbed file
or object on the mouse pointer. (It is not the same as Alt+Tab since
Next Window will only cycle all windows on the workspace).

Anyway, making these objects available opens a box of a million
possibilities, I think it's pretty wild actually. Consider you can
save commands as composed commands to favorites. Then you use the
comma trick to stack multiple commands together: Now you can make a
trigger that carries out many commands in one.

And using the Higher-order Actions plugin you can chain commands,
using the result of one (Translate Text) in the next action (Put text
in Tomboy Note)  and so on!

That's why it's pandora's box now.

Best Regards,
Ulrik

PS, Hope you don't mind, I think you intended this whole discussion on
the mailing list, where it can benefit more people.