Lua embedded in a web browser

[Bennett Todd <bet@...>]

Disclaimer: I've yet to write any non-trivial amount of Lua. Too
much to do, too little time. I keep wanting to.

But I've been admiring the language from a distance since I first
heard about it, and plugging it when it seems appropriate.

I've recently gotten seriously hooked on a relatively new text-mode
web browser, named links. It departs from Lynx in a couple of really
dramatic ways: it uses non-blocking network I/O, so it has
background downloads; and it does a reasonably competant job with
tables and frames.

A great many wonderful things --- e.g. bookmarks, customization,
adding commands for launching a new browser or some other unrelated
command on a URL, hooking to special handlers like e.g. MUAs for
special URL types --- would be really, really easy if it had an
extension language embedded in it, and I've been plugging Lua really
hard in the links mailing list. Lua's great speed, tiny memory
footprint, clear syntax, and very portable implementation seem to
have carried the day.

One of the links users is looking into trying to glue Lua in. The
big barrier is probably not anything to do with lua, but the poor
internal documentation and weak modularization of the links source
code.

But if anybody is interested in offering their services as a Big
Brother for this undertaking, please let me know and I'll put you in
touch with the links folks who are working on this; it might comfort
them to know of a Lua guru they can ask for help.

-Bennett