[Edbrowse-dev] Notify and Rerender

[Edbrowse-dev] Notify and Rerender

[Karl Dahlke]

I was going to document the rerender command, which I obviously need to do,
and I realize I'm not even sure how I want it to work.
The command itself is fine,
update the buffer if the active web page has changed out from under you -
but the question is, should the rerender ever just run ffor you on its own?
You may have no idea that the page is changing.
This is where it gets very very hard to shoehorn the page,
obviously made for sighted users, into our world.
A more accessible web page would be better, but we might not have that option.

Well I can't just update and notify you every time there is a change.
Recall my earlier example, where the page updates once a second.
We can't be spewing out
"line 12 has been updated" once a second.
And it could be more than that.
A page shoing stock prices in realtime -
I don't know how many updates per second that is.
On the other hand, should I just never tell you there has been a change,
and hope you someday invoke some javascript, which will force the rerender,
or type rr?
That doesn't seem right either.

I'm pretty confident that I shouldn't notify you of changes
to background screens (pushed onto the stack)
or screens in other sessions.
You'll see those changes when you switch over to them.
This question is only for the current screen.

I'm wondering if I should mark the time of the first change,
that perhaps you don't know about,
and if a rerender hasn't happened in one minute, or some such time interval,
then I force the rerender and tell you what lines have changed.
That might be the best compromise between reporting every single
asynchronous change and never saying a word.

Karl Dahlke

Re: [Edbrowse-dev] Notify and Rerender

[Chris Brannon]

Karl Dahlke <eklhad@comcast.net> writes:

> and if a rerender hasn't happened in one minute, or some such time interval,
> then I force the rerender and tell you what lines have changed.

That might work.  But perhaps make it toggleable, at least until it is
known to work smoothely.  Even when it is working smoothely, it might be
a good idea to keep forced rerendering toggleable.  Yeah, this is a
really tricky subject, fraught with traps for the unwary...

-- Chris

[Edbrowse-dev] Notify and Rerender

[Karl Dahlke]

> That might work. But perhaps make it toggleable,

Actually I was thinking of

rendertimer = n

in the config file.
We already have webtimer and mailtimer.
So rendertimer = 60 would rebuild and notify 60 seconds after a change,
and potentially every 60 seconds if the web page is constantly changing.
Set rendertimer = 0 for no notifications unless you ask for it.
Anyways something like that.
Trying to keep the power in the users hands.

Karl Dahlke