Re: Comments on plucker
---On 14 May 2001 23:04:01 +0100, MJ Ray said luis fernandes [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have another question (oh, no!): when a URL that has not been downloaded is followed, plucker displays a dialog for which one of the buttons is Copy URL. [...] It actually appears in a memo on mine. I can see why this is both useful and why the button should be renamed. It would also be good if it added to the *end* of a memo instead of making a new one each time. Actually, it _will_ add the URL to the end of the memo, if you don't exit plucker between 'Copys'. --re: Re: Comments on plucker Chris #include stddisclaimer.h #include win_slams.h [EMAIL PROTECTED] Christopher R. Hawks Software Engineer Syscon Plantstar a Division of Syscon International
Re: Comments on plucker
Chris Hawks [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Actually, it _will_ add the URL to the end of the memo, if you don't exit plucker between 'Copys'. Time to update my copy of Plucker on the Palm side, I guess. Or do power downs count as exit to Palm apps? -- MJR
Re: Comments on plucker
To summarize: If the document is taggged with a title, use it (perhaps a new option --use-doc-title); if not do something reasonable like use the db-name or the url. I would much prefer if plucker displayed the document title (if available, or (none) if one is not available) in the db-manager. The problem with that is that titles in pages are often vague and generic to the point of uselessness, whereas the filename is something that the user has control over and can make as specific as necessary. I think that the current behavior is probably a good default, but that adding a preferences switch to the parser to use the title instead, falling back to the filename, is an OK idea. Note too that the user can set the exact dbname with the --db-name, so there's no real need to suffer through Plucker's use of the filename if you really prefer something else. Bill
Re: Comments on plucker
(My apologies for taking so long to reply.) micke That is, we release new version quite often, so running a micke version that is almost 6 months old is not recommended You are right, of course; I've now downloaded and installed 1.1. micke And if you don't specify --db-name it will use the name micke from --db-file as the default and since you have to micke specify a file name it seems perfectly logical to me to micke use that name as the default database name. There is one problem with this, however. What usually happens is that my db filenames are rather brief and using them as db-names (in the plucker db-manager) is not overly helpful if the topics are related. For example, if I download an HTML doc titled: An Interview with Seymour Cray, I will typically call the db-file cray.pdb. If I also then download another document titled The T3 Cray Supercomputer, I'll probably call it, crayT3.pdb. I just think it would be more helpful if the db-manager showed: An Interview with Seymour Cray The T3 Cray Supercomputer rather than: cray.pdb crayT3.pdb micke What you wish for is an unreliable way of specifying the micke database name. A text file will not have any TITLE tag and micke a HTML file might not have a TITLE tag, but all databases micke DO HAVE a file name. You have a valid point. In such cases, it would seem resonable for plucker to default to the db-filename (or perhaps the url (as netscape does, especially when ftp urls are bookmarked)). To summarize: If the document is taggged with a title, use it (perhaps a new option --use-doc-title); if not do something reasonable like use the db-name or the url. I would much prefer if plucker displayed the document title (if available, or (none) if one is not available) in the db-manager. I just had an idea: how about just adding an additional toggle to the db-manager to display the document-title in addition db-name, size, date, etc. I have another question (oh, no!): when a URL that has not been downloaded is followed, plucker displays a dialog for which one of the buttons is Copy URL. I assumed this meant that the url would be copied into the cut-buffer so it can be pasted somewhere else (I tried pasting into the datebook so I could download it the next day), but this doesn't seem to be the case.
Re: Comments on plucker
micke What README file tells you to look at the FAQ? AFAIK, only micke the INSTALL file tells you about the FAQ. I am attaching the README (dated Oct 28 07:27) that I got with my plucker 1.0 download. I was looking for some mechanism that would automatically select a default name for me rather than having to specify it micke But you have to specify a filename, so why not use that micke instead? OK, let me try again... According to the man-page, --db-file specifies the name of the pdb file (on the file-system); --db-name specifies how the database will be identified in the viewer. To me, it seems logical that the title of the document (in the title/title) should be used as the argument to --db-name IFF --db-name is not specified. Using this approach, backwards compatibility is not broken and new functionality is added that allows one less thing to be specified. Let me give an example: if I bookmark a url in netscape, netscape uses the name of the document as the identifier in my bookmarks file; it does not ask me what the bookmark should be called. I can later edit the properties of the bookmark, if I so desire, but by default, something resonable is automatically picked for me. This is all I wish for. One other thing I didn't mention the last time I wrote, was that when I install plucker into my 8mb flash card (on my Visor) I get fatal errors at random times when I turn on my Visor; those errors go away when plucker is in RAM. I don't know whether this is specifically a plucker thing or a side-effect of interaction with any number of hacks. plucker 1.0 README
Re: Comments on plucker
On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, luis fernandes wrote: Now, I've read further in the INSTALL but there is nothing there on usage (i.e. how to download a single webpage and load it into my Visor). 1. install 2. Edit and change the home page (which links to all other pages) by changing the ~/.plucker/home.html file. You can of course edit the other files too. You can also edit .pluckerrc, to set up the default behavior of the python parser. 3. Run 'plucker-build' to download the web pages. Why are there many levels of indirection? (INSTALL says look at the README, README says look at the FAQ) What README file tells you to look at the FAQ? AFAIK, only the INSTALL file tells you about the FAQ. Also, what does plucker-dump do? Well, if you can't figure that out by reading the source code then you probably don't need that tool ;-) It's a developer's tool and as it says in the header of the file, This module decodes a PDB back into the 'cache' directory i.e. it takes a Plucker database and splits it into individual records. These records can then be examined by using plucker-decode. I was looking for some mechanism that would automatically select a default name for me rather than having to specify it But you have to specify a filename, so why not use that instead? Are you concerned that 26 chars will not be unique enough to identify the document? Nope. /Mike
Comments on plucker
I've been using plucker on my Visor for about a month now and here
are my comments:
(I like the new design of the web-site; it is far better and
intuitive that when I was last there so there is no need to comment
on improving it).
* When I initially unpacked it and tried to use it I found it very
difficult to do what I was trying to do-- basically I wanted to
download a single webpage and load it into my Visor. I liked the
install procedure-- don't change that.
* Looking at the command names in bin/ I couldn't tell what the
commands did without running them; and when I did run them the error
messages were cryptic. (I still don't know what plucker-decode and
plucker-dump do and I don't care since plucker-build has all the
finctionality I need).
* The HTML manual (whether on-line or in pluckerdb format) is too long to
read there should be something in the README that says: "If you want
to download a page, do this...".
* I finally stumbled on the man-page which was great! I love
command-line stuff with millions of options. One nit I have is about
the inconsistent naming of the options: e.g. "--noimages" rather than
"--no-images". If "--no-urlinfo" has a dash after the "no", why
doesn't "--noimages"?
* --dbname should default to the contents of the title/title tag
of the document being downloaded.
* I wrote an zsh function as an alias for plucker-build, and I use
this consistently:
#pluck: download website to PDA
#takes 3 arguments: 1)URL to d/l 2)maxdepth 3)name of pdbfile
pluck()
{
if [ -z "$1" -o -z "$2" -o -z "$3" ]; then
echo "Usage: pluck URL maxdepth pdbfile "
else
plucker-build --pluckerdir=$HOME/public_html --home-url="$1" --maxdepth=$2 -f
$3
fi
}
I think it would be useful to have aliases pluck1, pluck2, pluckN
that would retrieve a doc, with maxdepth set appropriately to N
(based on stripping N from argv[0]).
* User-interface issue: I would like to suggest that links not
downloaded (followed) should either not be rendered in plucker or
should be rendered in another distinct manner that indicates to the
user, before he clicks on it, that it will not be followed. (If you
have a chance, read Alan Cooper's _About Face_ a good book on UI
issues.). It's just like a grayed-out menu option; the item is
there but it can't be selected rather than having a dialog box
pop-up saying that you shouldn't have clicked on this
link/menu-item, etc.). Perhaps if maxdepth could be embedded into
the document so plucker would know how many links deep it has data
for.
* Why do the bottom 2 lines of the previous page appear at the top of
the next page when scrolling? I've already read those 2 lines and
the screen real-estate is precious enough for this to be justified.
* Would it be possible to seamlessly read a large document rather
than ask the user to click "Click here for next part", etc. Isilo
does this and it would be nice if plucker this this too.
* There are 2 types of uses for plucker: 1) update a set of pages
"every morning" to be downloaded; 2) retrieve a specified document
on demand (something interesting on slash-dot, etc.). There should
be appropriate front-ends for these 2 distinct uses.
That's about it, for now :).
