[ros-general] writing file manager / how to use lex?

[Jan Tisje]

hi, 

I started to write a file manager.... 

my target is to make it easy to use but very powerful and flexible. 
apart from windows fs, it will support many filesystems (eg. nfs, http,
ftp, webdav... )
it will be able to preview thousands of file types. ;-)
it will be responsive as all slow tasks will be moved to separate
threads

of course none of these goals yet has been reached. At the time I am
designing the interfaces. So it will remain a one person job for some
weeks. 

but there are already two jobs that may be delegated: 

One point is to show if and how the "C:, D:" drive assignment  may be
overcome.
So i will use URLs. 
The most important part missing is an URL parser. 
**** does anyone know how to use lex to generate a parser? ****

I write in delphi, so the interesting part of the lex file will be the
left side, finding the URL components. 

there are BNFs available for URL, but 
BNF is no standard, so syntax is odd (to me) 
lex does not expect BNF but it's own format. 

URI, BNF in appendix A
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2396.html
URL, BNF in chapter 5
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1738.html


btw, the filemanager will use plugins to view the file contents. 
**** Who wants to write some plugin DLLs? ****
they may be written in C, interface will be strictly WinAPI standard. 

There will be two types of DLLs
- those that render to a windows device context (or bitmap, I do not
know yet)
- and those that convert a file to a HTML representation. 

(yes, the file manager already is capable to display html, without IE!)

Jan