Re: [emacs-humanities] [External] : Re: Extending Emacs Bookmarks to Work with EWW

[Drew Adams]

Coming to this very late -sorry...

Why is this in the "Humanities" mailing list, rather
than in emacs-devel@gnu.org or help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org,
or better yet, submitted as an enhancement request
(`M-x report-emacs-bug')?  I, for one, would have
noticed it 6 months ago. ;-)

More below...

> I was somewhat surprised that EWW didn't
> already supply a bookmark handler function.  So I looked at
> lisp/net/eww.el in the Emacs sources and found that EWW actually
> has its *own* bookmarking code entirely -- apparently, a totally
> different system from the generic bookmark.el in Emacs.
> (Seriously: search for "bookmark" in eww.el and you'll see a
> whole other system implemented.)

Yes.  And that's unfortunate - doesn't play well...

> While the EWW system doesn't predate bookmark.el (since
> bookmark.el almost predates the World Wide Web itself, it must
> certainly predate EWW), the EWW bookmark system *may* date from
> the time before bookmark.el bookmarks were made extensible in the
> way that your post describes... Well, I checked, and that's not
> the case either.  EWW's bookmark system was added in 2013, and
> bookmark.el bookmarks were already extensible in 2008 or 2009.
> 
> However, maybe EWW bookmarks are not exactly the same
> functionality as generic Emacs bookmarks, so that there is some
> reason why EWW has its own implementation?  I don't know.

No good reason that I found.  (You can ask the same
question of Org, BTW.)

> Anyway, your post is very clear.  If you ever find out what the
> difference is (if any) between EWW's "native" bookmarks and
> bookmark.el bookmarks, I'd love to learn more, either here or in a
> new post.

EWW implemented its own bookmarking, which is
incompatible with ordinary Emacs bookmarking.

Bookmark+ implemented ordinary Emacs bookmarks for
EWW in 2016 (for Emacs 25 and later).

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BookmarkPlus
____

1. You can use command `bmkp-convert-eww-bookmarks'
to add the (pseudo-)bookmarks from a vanilla EWW
file to a regular bookmarks file.  The original
EWW file isn't affected - its "bookmarks" are
just copied and the copies are converted to
regular bookmarks.
____

2. Minor mode `bmkp-eww-auto-bookmark-mode'
automatically sets a bookmark when you visit a URL
with EWW.  The bookmark name is the title of the
web page.

Option `bmkp-eww-auto-type' controls how such
automatic bookmarking behaves:

* `update-only' (default): Update an existing
  bookmark if there is one - don't create a new one.
* `create-or-update': Create a bookmark or update
  an existing bookmark.
____

3. Other options:

Option `bmkp-eww-generate-buffer-flag' says whether
to generate a new buffer when jumping to a bookmark.

Option `bmkp-eww-buffer-renaming' lets you control
whether and how an EWW buffer gets renamed:

* nil: Don't rename - use `*eww* (vanilla behavior)
* `url': Rename to web-page title plus the last 20
  chars of the URL.
* `page': Rename to just the web-page title.

Option `bmkp-eww-replace-keys-flag' says whether to
replace the vanilla EWW bookmarking keys and menus
with Bookmark+ ones.
____

4. As with other types of bookmarks, Bookmark+ lets
you do these things in the bookmark-list display
for EWW bookmarks (i.e. regular Emacs bookmarks for
EWW buffers):

* Mark the EWW bookmarks
* Show/hide only the EWW bookmarks
* Toggle whether to use a new buffer when jumping to
  an EWW bookmark
____

5. Globally, you can cycle among EWW bookmarks (jump
to them in sequence).  You can control the cycling
order etc. - see "Cycling, Navigation List":

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BookmarkPlus#CyclingNavList.)