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Can you elaborate on what the extension does? e.g., for moderating comments more effectively, for reading deeply nested comments, some kind of internal actions

Can you elaborate on what the extension does? e.g., for moderating comments more effectively, for reading deeply nested comments, some kind of internal actions we don't have access to, etc.

dang 11y ago
Hmm, let's see. It does a lot of moderatory things, but general readery things include highlighting stories or commments and jumping to related pages (e.g. the story url, the thread url, the user's profile page, the user's comments page, other stories from that domain), opening and closing those tabs; navigating up and down comment trees (go to parent, go to prev/next sibling); marking stories or comments as 'seen' and thus hiding them, but keeping track of whether 'seen' items have changed and displaying how they changed; finding comments that match regexes and highlighting the matches; if a comment contains a url, open that url in a new tab; jump around between open tabs; go to the root url of a comment (i.e. the original story item); select text and open tabs based on that text; show HN search results in the form of an HN story list that looks like the front page; take various actions based on what's in the clipboard, or copy HN urls or titles to the clipboard; filter stories or comments being displayed according to various criteria; upvote or flag a post; go to the internet archive for a url; show the current rank of a story on pages other than the front page; request the 'more' url at the bottom of a page and inline its results instead of navigating to it. Edit: I forgot one of my favorites, which is aligning the current selection to the center, top, or bottom of the window, a la ctrl+L in Emacs. It's all done by keyboard shortcuts, which means the mapping to keys is pretty complicated and not as consistent as I'd like. Edit: It's also written in a Lisp we made that only three of you have ever heard of :)
- tedmiston 11y ago
  That's a great list. Some of these specific features I've considered building as an extension from a reader perspective. Especially for dealing with deeply nested comments, and "find the top HN discussion if any for this URL that I'm currently on". And you can compile that Lisp to JavaScript to build the Chrome extension?
  - dang 11y ago
    Yes, the Lisp exists so we can write JavaScript without having to leave the Garden of Eden.
    - deleted 11y ago
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      - deleted 11y ago
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- zck 11y ago
  The extension is written in Arc? That's...not a use of Arc I expected. Did you have to change the language much to do it?
  - tptacek 11y ago
    I'm guessing it's written in the Lisp Dan built for Skysheet.
    - zck 11y ago
      Wow! Do you know of anything more written about it? I can't seem to find any information.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - i336_ 11y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673343 \o/
    - dang 11y ago
      One of them. :) Dan and Scott, though, and in this case mostly Scott.
- tptacek 11y ago
  I recommend you not let the perfect be the enemy of the good on this, and go full-on Dwarf Fortress with this, bizarre undocumented keybindings and all.

Can you elaborate on what the extension does? e.g., for moderating comments more effectively, for reading deeply nested comments, some kind of internal actions we don't have access to, etc.

dang 11y ago

Hmm, let's see. It does a lot of moderatory things, but general readery things include highlighting stories or commments and jumping to related pages (e.g. the story url, the thread url, the user's profile page, the user's comments page, other stories from that domain), opening and closing those tabs; navigating up and down comment trees (go to parent, go to prev/next sibling); marking stories or comments as 'seen' and thus hiding them, but keeping track of whether 'seen' items have changed and displaying how they changed; finding comments that match regexes and highlighting the matches; if a comment contains a url, open that url in a new tab; jump around between open tabs; go to the root url of a comment (i.e. the original story item); select text and open tabs based on that text; show HN search results in the form of an HN story list that looks like the front page; take various actions based on what's in the clipboard, or copy HN urls or titles to the clipboard; filter stories or comments being displayed according to various criteria; upvote or flag a post; go to the internet archive for a url; show the current rank of a story on pages other than the front page; request the 'more' url at the bottom of a page and inline its results instead of navigating to it. Edit: I forgot one of my favorites, which is aligning the current selection to the center, top, or bottom of the window, a la ctrl+L in Emacs. It's all done by keyboard shortcuts, which means the mapping to keys is pretty complicated and not as consistent as I'd like. Edit: It's also written in a Lisp we made that only three of you have ever heard of :)

tedmiston 11y ago
That's a great list. Some of these specific features I've considered building as an extension from a reader perspective. Especially for dealing with deeply nested comments, and "find the top HN discussion if any for this URL that I'm currently on". And you can compile that Lisp to JavaScript to build the Chrome extension?
- dang 11y ago
  Yes, the Lisp exists so we can write JavaScript without having to leave the Garden of Eden.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
zck 11y ago
The extension is written in Arc? That's...not a use of Arc I expected. Did you have to change the language much to do it?
- tptacek 11y ago
  I'm guessing it's written in the Lisp Dan built for Skysheet.
  - zck 11y ago
    Wow! Do you know of anything more written about it? I can't seem to find any information.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - i336_ 11y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673343 \o/
  - dang 11y ago
    One of them. :) Dan and Scott, though, and in this case mostly Scott.
tptacek 11y ago
I recommend you not let the perfect be the enemy of the good on this, and go full-on Dwarf Fortress with this, bizarre undocumented keybindings and all.