[Vimprobable-users] two ideas to improve the quickmarks

[Marcos C. <vim...@pr...>]

== First idea

It would be nice to use any (ASCII?) letter as quickmark (even better,
optionally, case sensitive).  Digits are more difficult to remember.

I think the changes in the code would not be big.

== Second idea

Quickmarks of any length would let hierarchical and easier to remember
shortcuts, the same way keyboard-driven environments (e.g.  GNU Screen
and Ratpoison) can be configured.  Example:

    Qmark  -- Meaning
    -----------------
    ss -- [S]earch-engine [S]tartPage
    sd -- [S]earch-engine [D]uckDuckGo
    sg -- [S]earch-engine [G]oogle
    nx -- [N]ewspaper [X]
    ny -- [N]ewspaper [Y]
    nzi -- [N]ewspaper [Z] [I]nternational section
    nzn -- [N]ewspaper [Z] [N]ational section
    nzc -- [N]ewspaper [Z] [C]ultural section

That would mean a whole rewrite of the quickmarks' code, but I think
there's an easier alternative: The current searchengines feature is
already very similar and it could be easily modifed into an alternative
generic shortcuts system: Simply the search string (%s) should be
optional: no %s defined in the shortcut, no parameter expected.
Currently %s is mandatory and a searchengine shortcut without its string
parameter is not recognized, but passed as search string to the default
search engine.

This change would be backward compatible, no current config would be
affected  (though an alternative name for "searchengine" would be
desirable, for example "shortcut").

The Elinks text browser uses two kinds of configurable URI rewriting:

    Dumb prefixes - simple URI abbreviations which can be written to the
    Goto URL dialog instead of actual URIs - i.e. if you write 'elinks'
    there, you are directed to http://elinks.cz/.                                        
    Smart prefixes - URI templates triggered by writing given
    abbreviation to the Goto URL dialog followed by a    list of
    arguments from which the actual URI is composed -  i.e. 'gg:search
    keywords' or 'gn search keywords for news'.

Smart prefixes accept several parameters, what is very versatile:

    Replacement URI for this smartprefix:                    
    %c in the string means the current URL                   
    %s in the string means the whole argument to smartprefix 
    %0,%1,...,%9 means argument 0, 1, ..., 9                 
    %% in the string means '%'                               

My suggestion for Vimprobable is a similar system, but a bit simpler for
the user: one single list of configured shortcuts for URI rewriting,
with optional parameter(s) (if several parameters are implemented, a
good choice for the parameter separator is the first char found in the
command line after the shortcut).

Marcos

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