[links] Offer to Help

[Evan Danaher]

Executive Summary:

Links is cool.  I've added some features.  I want to submit them back.
 I am also possibly interested in making Javascript better, and/or
adding in some semblence of DOM and/or CSS support.

Details:

I'm expecting this to be rather long, hence the summary above.

About a month ago, I finally got fed up with Firefox using huge
amounts of memory, and occasionally taking several seconds to scroll
when other processes were using CPU.  So I decided to look for a
lighter browser.  I found that Links, which I had used a bit in text
mode, also had a GUI version, which looked remarkably usable.  Even
better, it has a fairly small, well-organized source base that I can
work on.

I thus began adding features to Links, gradually moving it towards my
ideal browser.  I've been using it as my primary browser for the past
couple weeks, so I've fixed a couple things that annoy me.

Most notably, I merged in some tabs code from links-hacked, and added
a FVWM-style configuration file that allows for easy rebinding of keys
and eventually mouse buttons.

I've also added a couple smaller features:

- URL abbreviations (e.g., wp:hello goes to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=hello"), set up in
a general fashion using the configuration file.

- forward: now going back can be undone; acts just like other browsers
(though I'm thinking it'd be nice to get some sort of tree structure
working.

- "Session Saver": on closing, save the tabs so that the next session
can open up in the same state.  Currently kind of hack-ish, since it's
intended for development, but it saves the full state of every tab
(just like the back history), so I can build a new version, and
restart links and not lose open pages.

- History deletion: in the CTRL-W history menu, you can use the delete
key to remove history items, and insert to put them back (until you
close the window).

I have a decent list of other features I'd like, including a
customizable status line, a good UI for browser spoofing on certain
web sites (likely through the configuration file), an open with...
menu, something along the lines of Konqueror's "Access keys" to make
keyboard navigation easier, better font support, and gestures.  Some
of these are harder than others, and I have no idea how many I'll get
done, but so far I've done a good job of occasionally sitting down and
working on stuff.

I'm also hoping to get better Javascript and CSS support; this might
be better as a project for the summer.  I'll see what happens.

Finally, the point of this e-mail is that I'm interested in submitting
these features back.  Unfortunately, I've been working mostly for
myself, and so some of the code is kind of ugly.  Worse, I haven't
been paying too much attention to text mode, so that's somewhat
broken.  But if you're interested in these features, I can get them
fixed up and ready for submission.