surf browser hints /3

Another couple of hints about surf, after my previous post.

Honestly, I stopped using surf after 0.3 release. I think that the authors stripped out of the code too much sugar that, not being suckless, was nonetheless useful: a status bar showing the current URI, for example. Now URI editing is done via xprop and dmenu, which is great piece of software, but not always user friendly (it does not have editing capabilities).

Moreover bookmarking is a pain as it relies on external shell scripts. Or does it not? I realized that there is no need to use external shell scripts, as they can be "embedded" in C code. Here is how.

In config.h put these lines, right before the definition of keys[]:

#define BM_PICK { .v = (char *[]){ "/bin/sh", "-c",
"xprop -id $0 -f _SURF_URI 8s -set _SURF_URI `cat ~/.surf/bookmarks | dmenu ||
exit 0`",
winid, NULL } }

#define BM_ADD { .v = (char *[]){ "/bin/sh", "-c",
"(echo `xprop -id $0 _SURF_URI | cut -d '"' -f 2` && cat ~/.surf/bookmarks) |
sort -u > ~/.surf/bookmarks_new && mv ~/.surf/bookmarks_new ~/.surf/bookmarks",
winid, NULL } }

Then inside keys[] definition, add:

{ MODKEY, GDK_b, spawn, BM_PICK }, { MODKEY|GDK_SHIFT_MASK,GDK_b, spawn, BM_ADD }

Now, recompile. in your shiny new surf, CTRL-B pops-up dmenu with the list of bookmarks and CTRL-SHIFT-B adds the current page to the bookmarks (making sure to remove duplicate entries).

No need for shell scripts!