Absolute DOTADIW might be a different kind of ocean boil

CJ Eller caught my attention with practical caution with respect to so-called DOTADIW.

I just so happen to lean in the direction of being able to get at (i.e. execute) and repurpose building blocks.

And I just so happen to love fixed-width font text. (Can you believe it, CJ? ;–) )

So, like, when I read read.write.as, I run a command I wrote called “rwl” (stands for “read write list”). Here's what displays when I run that:

$ rwl 16) https: //brainqm.writeas.com/short-introduction 15) https: //erik.itland.no/frozen-and-unresponsive-pcs 14) https: //write.as/van-voorbijgaande-aard/dode-zee-blog 13) https: //yourintrinsicself.writeas.com/someone-once-said-the-best-way-to-survive-is-to-keep-breathing 12) https: //yourintrinsicself.writeas.com/splicing-fear 11) https: //write.as/van-voorbijgaande-aard/de-p-de-v 10) https: //sappy-alternatives.writeas.com/been-looking-at-reddit-for-divorce-posts-and-stuff 9) https: //linus.writeas.com/la-verita-e-che-siamo-in-crisi 8) https: //jasonpettus.writeas.com/deaf-culture-primer-the-deaf-president-now-student-protests-of-1988 7) https: //blog.cjeller.site/boiling-the-ocean 6) https: //write.as/sikkdays/victim 5) https: //scottnesbitt.online/being-pigeonholed 4) https: //egoecho.writeas.com/hier-is-daar 3) https: //write.as/365-rfcs/rfc-77 2) https: //write.as/365-rfcs/rfc-78 1) https: //write.as/365-rfcs/rfc-79 b) older Select:

(Aw, sh..ucks... there doesn't seem to be a way to mono-space just the list here in the write.as editor!)

(And, oh my, the write.as posting mechanism (or is it the browser? oh how quickly we lose control of what we actually want to accomplish when relying upon others' software..) also automatically makes URL-looking strings actual html anchors... didn't really want that, so I had to work around that by inserting a space character between the colon and the first forward slash in the URLs, otherwise browsers do some undesirable (in the context of this example) anchor formatting....)

I suppose it looks clunky to to many. But it's fast as a rabbit get cooed over. And I don't mind the mystery of the URLs not containing title-ish words, because mystery can be fun, and I'm only two key presses away from seeing a more legitimate title anyway.

So what happens if I press the keys “7” in that dialog?

Well, that code simply passes the URL to good 'ole “elinks”, a text-mode browser. And when I 'Q' in that, I'm returned to the above list.

Boom and boom.

(Getting out of that list is also a snap: ctrl-d.)

Of course, I could also have used cURL to get the html of a target URL (after all, I already use it to get the URLs displayed in the list dialog), parse away the markup, and perhaps pipe the rest to less.

And, who knows, I just might do that one of these days.

But, well, you know, elinks does some things I realize would require my understanding and jumping through some more-than-trivial hoops to keep the overall feel tight and snappy.

But if I did decide to go that route, I suspect I could have a less bloaty elinks that does exactly what I want, exactly the way I want it done, and allowing me to enjoy reading read.write.as articles, enjoy the fun problem-solving process of making that happen, and enjoy the ongoing pride of having made it happen.

See also: the joy of Lua....