WWWsh

• meandering back from the County library, thinking about all the Google Search commands, I realized these were just a subset of the http://Yubnub.org commands.
• This revived the idea of the World Wide Web shell, that Yubnub doesn't quit nail.
• I'd given thought to making that shell with something like Kermit or CURL.
• Some experiments with the information from the Yubnub html form indicated that the site makes extensive use of http redirection.
• Using these tools would also require using some tool to render the html when that is appropriate (most of the time), yet leave it open to output raw html when appropriate (some times)
• This points back to a web browser, with some kind of plug in, like some of the Yubnub tools listed on their web site.
• One of the main charateristics of a shell interface is that it normally returns back to the prompt, or the command entry field, when it completes running a command.
• To make sure that the you always get back to the Yubnub/WWW command prompt would require either something done at the client program or that Yubnub proxy all the final "command" output.
• One way of implimenting this idea would be to edit some chunk of html form code into all web pages, and this could be done with Privoxy.
• And so the following Privoxy filter, in /etc/privoxy/user.filter:

  
  ###################################################################### 14:24:24##
  #
  # yubnub: Try at a yubnub 'command prompt' on each web page
  #               30/12/2007 d.e.l.
  #
  #################################################################################
  FILTER: yubnub Try at a yubnub 'command prompt' on each web page
  
  
  s|(</body[^>]*>)|\
    <form action="http://www.yubnub.org/parser/parse" \n\
           + method="get" name="input_box"> \n\
      <input type="text" name="command" size="55" value=""/> \n\
    </form>  \n\
    $1|ig
  
  #  For a single text input field, Lynx  will submit on entering return,
  #    so no submit needed
  #  W3M and possibly members of the Links family browsers have
  #    function to force submission of forms
  #  To use with other browsers, you may need to include a line like
  #    this before the closing of the form with '</form>':
  #
  #   <input type="submit" value="Enter">
  #
                    
  

• then this in user.action:

   
   { +filter{yubnub} }
   .
    
  

• And after restarting Privoxy you get a screen shot like this:

  --
  ,,,                                            Los Angeles Free-Net's Home Page+
     The Los Angeles Free-Net
  
     A volunteer non-profit organization dedicated to bringing people
     together, providing community information, and offering Internet
     access at the lowest possible cost.
  
     [1]____________________________________________________
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  (Form field) Inactive. Use  to edit ('x' to submit with no cache).
  --
  

  Where the entry field is the command prompt/entry field.

• In lynx, ^E will always put at the bottom of the current web page, which from now on will be the prompt location.
• This has the obvious weakness that there must be a '</BODY..' tag for it to work, but then some apps run inside bash fail to complete properly and hang also.
• It also turned out that default settings for Privoxy skip edits on sites with 'wiki' in the address (as one example), but it is normal for a shell to not present a prompt while an application is running also, so this makes some logic.
• Time to start learning more Yubnub commands - the ones I think of off the top of my head are 'g ', 'w ' (for a weather report), 'wp ' 'ls' (for a list of commands).

Addenda 15 Jan. 2008

I should point out this idea could be used for simplified services, like Google search, standard and www.google.com/ie, google proxies like www.scroogle.com/scraper.html, etc. It's just that Yubnub includes these as commands, but if there were no Yubnub, these would certainly be fine enough to justify the idea. Also, I may need to rename this - I noticed that WWWsh is already used for some software of some kind!

The Google Project

• A list can be something between the formlessness of stream of conciousness, and mathematics and computer science.
• It all started when I realized that Los Angeles FreeNet for various bureaucratic reasons no longer gained any benefit from it's users having LAFN as their start page. An e-mail and the response confirmed this so the quest was on to create my own start or "portal" page.
• One of the things I wanted on this start page was to have the links go as directly to the functionality of the linked pages as possible.
• I mentioned this to L. while at one of San Fernando Valley LUG's meetings, in conjunction with a stab at it on Google. He pointed me to http://www.scroogle.org/scraper.html|Scroogle_Scraper. At first I had this confused with some direct hack on Google's home search page.
• This list of thoughts got under steam the next day while showering and continued through a walk to the L.A. county library.
• I started digging around for all the Google search hacks.
• Did a bit of web surfing on the subject.
• Located my copy of the O'Reilly "Google Hacks" book.
• Then it occured to me, is there a Google Search man page?
• I stumbled onto the Google help page,
• But using one of the tips, 'man google' did not turn up a properly formated, real man page.
• Getting back to the start page project, one of the goals was to group some links into functional groups like E-mail, Twitter, Web 1.0, Web 2.0 etc.
• And where did Google belong on here, Web 1.0 or 2.0?
• And with a brief glimpse, a nanosecond flash of vision from the Stapledonian perpective, I realized that Google was in fact the first Web 2.0 application. With the power of superior indexing and search algorithms, they had effectivly shanghied preceeding Internet activity into providing the user supplied content for The Google Project, previously known as the World Wide Web.
• (with their search results, the mother of all mashups.)
• ...Or maybe it was Linux, that pulled ahead of BSD in mindshare by opening up to user supplied content.
• Or maybe Richard Stallman and the FSF?
• Besides, Google doesn't seem to have a charismatic leader like Linus, RMS or Jimmy Whales.
• Do they need one?