url and w3 was: Re: ffap and the menu

[Mario Lang <mlang@delysid.org>]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

> On Wed, Aug 28, 2002 at 04:29:40PM +0200, Kai Gro?johann wrote:
>> Should ffap-bindings frob the menu so that File/Open File calls
>> ffap?  I think it should.
>
> `ffap' seems a bit odd in that it asks `Find file or URL'; since emacs'
> handling of URLs is dodgy at best, I think this is a mistake.

Well, I'm using the url library since around 3 years for various
things and I was always happy with what it offered to me :).

Several Emacs extensions use url and/or w3 to fetch information from
the web (web based dictionary lookup tools come to mind, or things
like weather-checkers).  W3 displays most of the sanely-designed
webpages I view daily.  We all know it's not perfect, and could use
alot of improvments, but it is far from unusable.  In fact, I use it
everyday!

There was discussion about integrating url and w3 into the cvs HEAD of
Emacs, and I remember the conclusion always was something like "it
needs more work."

Well, I as a user would say it is good for what I use it, and I think
it would draw a bit more developer attention if it were in the
standard codebase.

Could we please figure out what exactly needs to be done before such
an integration could happen?  Not being very familiar with the
codebase, reading the TODO files of url and w3 doesn't really help me
there.

-- 
CYa,
  Mario