Re: question about emacspeak-websearch

["T. V. Raman" <raman@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Those ines of code in emacspeak-websearch deserved to be deleted and
are now gone.

However your assertion that its presence meant that you couldn't use
emacspeak-websearch unless w3 was installed was incorrect--
it set up browse-url to use W3 if and only if W3 was installed.

Note that some of emacspeak-websearch's functionality --in fact quite
a lot of its advanced functionality-- may not work with w3m --

--Raman >>>>> "Yvonne" == Yvonne Thomson <yvonne@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

    Yvonne> At Fri, 26 Sep 2003 13:22:23 +1000, Tim Cross wrote:
    >>  Hi Yvonne,
    >> 
    >> Whenever I need to change the way something in emacspeak works,
    >> or for that matter any other emacs code, I find emacs' advice
    >> facility (see defadvice and the emacs lisp manual for details),
    >> very useful. Its main advantage is that you can modify a
    >> functions behavior without editing the original code - this
    >> avoids having to re-edit everytime you do an upgrade. In fact,
    >> emacspeak makes extensive use of this facility itself. Its also
    >> very simple - essentially, you are writing a "wrapper" function
    >> which can be used to alter inputs before they are passed to the
    >> original function, alter the return value from the function or
    >> totally replace the function.
    >> 
    Yvonne> Thanks, for this, but I knew about advice. The problem is,
    Yvonne> the code involved isn't a function. It evaluates, as far
    Yvonne> as I can tell, after emacspeak-websearch loads, using
    Yvonne> eval-after-load, and then changes browse-url to use w3. I
    Yvonne> have no idea how to change something like this with
    Yvonne> external code. Any help here would be much appreciated.


    >> One minor correction to a statement in your post. You don't
    >> have to have w3 installed to do web browsing within
    >> emacs/emacspeak. Other alternatives are w3m and lynx within a
    >> terminal window.
    >> 
    Yvonne> Er, I know about the alternatives. I'm using w3m, that's
    Yvonne> why I'm dealing with this in the first place. But
    Yvonne> emacspeak support for w3m still appears to require the
    Yvonne> emacspeak w3 code, in order to deal with xslt, which makes
    Yvonne> separating the browsers at this point a bit awkward.

    >> It may be possible for Raman to add a customize setting to
    >> select the preferred web browser. However, this can sometimes
    >> be difficult because in some instances, there is no 1-to-1
    >> mapping of functions between w3 and w3m - that is to say, where
    >> in w3 you may be able to achieve some particular functionality
    >> with just minor coding, doing the same within a different
    >> browser may require considerably more coding. Raman favors w3
    >> over w3m because it offers some features which are not
    >> available in other browsers like w3m. For example, w3 supports
    >> auditory cascading style sheets (ACSS) which makes it very easy
    >> to define a style sheet which will use certain audio attributes
    >> for various html elements.
    >> 
    Yvonne> I *know* what the drawbacks are. Trust me on this. I've
    Yvonne> been using emacspeak long enough to know this. As a user,
    Yvonne> I prefer to trade off a way, *way* faster browser
    Yvonne> experience for the emacspeak facilities available with
    Yvonne> w3. That's my choice to make. Since I've tried to hack
    Yvonne> some features that are in emacspeak-w3 that aren't in
    Yvonne> emacspeak-w3m, I also know that it's difficult, if not
    Yvonne> impossible, to achieve some effects *without*
    Yvonne> w3. Searching the web with emacspeak-websearch, however,
    Yvonne> doesn't seem to be one of them. I know this, since if I
    Yvonne> run the emacspeak wizard that already exists, to change
    Yvonne> the browser back to w3m, it runs just fine.

    >> Finally, Raman is often more receptive to making changes if the
    >> request includes patches or lisp code which either achieves the
    >> required modification or goes a long way to doing the job. The
    >> main reason for this is because he often doesn't have the time
    >> to actually do the changes himself. so, if you work out some
    >> functions to add the ability to select the preferred browser
    >> for operations like web searching and provide them along with
    >> your request, the likelyhood of them being added to the
    >> standard distribution is higher.
    >> 
    Yvonne> Perhaps, but I don't really know that I'm good enough with
    Yvonne> elisp to go there. Not to mention I'm not entirely sure
    Yvonne> where I would go with this behaviour. Emacs already
    Yvonne> specifies a way to specify which browser is used for web
    Yvonne> requests, browse-url. I'm not sure that adding another
    Yvonne> version that specifys the browser you want to use for
    Yvonne> emacspeak web requests vs normal web requests is quite the
    Yvonne> right way to go. On the other hand, an option in
    Yvonne> emacspeak-websearch which specifies whether to use w3 or
    Yvonne> some other web browser for searches seems a little
    Yvonne> specific. As a user, and not an author, I don't really see
    Yvonne> why the code I'm talking about is in there at all, and
    Yvonne> without knowing the reasoning, I have no idea how I'd go
    Yvonne> about patching it to add the customization I'm looking for
    Yvonne> here.

    >> I strongly recommend checking out emacs' advice mode. You can
    >> find lots of examples of its use within emacspeak. I would have
    >> to say I have found it to be one of the most powerful and
    >> simple mechanisms for modifying emacs/emacspeak's
    >> behavior. Often, when I think there is some part of emacs which
    >> I would like to behave differently, I will first attempt to
    >> achieve the different functionality via defadvice, use it for a
    >> while and possibly refine it. Once it has stabilized and
    >> appears to be working well, I may then either convert this into
    >> a stand-alone mode or submit patches to the package
    >> author. However, most of the time, a simple defadvice is
    >> sufficient and I just leave it in my personal advice .el file
    >> which I load at startup.
    >> 
    Yvonne> I've used advice myself, mostly for adding speech to my
    Yvonne> own functions or giving packages that don't at least a
    Yvonne> minimum of emacspeak ability. If I'd been a better elisp
    Yvonne> programmer, and known what to do in the case of something
    Yvonne> not actually being a function, I think I'd've done that,
    Yvonne> and not bothered the list with it, which is my usual way
    Yvonne> of dealing with these things.

    Yvonne> Thanks for your help

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-- 
Best Regards,
--raman

      
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