Clickable hyperlinks

[Deborah Swanson]

Tim Chase wrote, on January 09, 2017 5:53 AM
> 
> On 2017-01-09 05:00, Deborah Swanson wrote:
> > Code does in fact have the power to control what happens
> > in the console. How do you think Linux does it on their terminals
with 
> > clickable links? Granted, the code may have to specify parameters
for 
> > a particular console, but I certainly wasn't asking for universal
code 
> > that would work with any console.
> 
> Only to a degree.  Some consoles sniff the text sent to them 
> for particular URL-like patterns and linkify them for you.  
> All you have to do is print a URL that its pattern-matching 
> identifies:
> 
>   print("http://example.com")
> 
> However, as Rhodri details, *this is a feature of the 
> terminal emulator*. I've got a smattering of terminal 
> emulators at my disposal and many don't auto-linkify (xterm, 
> rxvt, the base non-X terminal) while others do (Gnome 
> terminal).  And in the ones where it doesn't work, it's 
> because it's the *terminal* that doesn't support linkifying, 
> so no amount of work on the application's part will make it linkify.

Ok, here is the crux of this thread's communication problem. I didn't
ask, or particularly care for all these lectures on the technology of
terminal emulators. I asked how to code Python to make clickable links.

Since all of you are quite obviously passionate about terminal
emulators, I would suggest that you start your own thread. Except that
it would have nothing to do with Python, and would be OT for this list.
What you're doing instead is thread jacking, hijacking a thread to talk
about a different topic. And in every list I've ever been on, thread
jacking is considered to be very rude. And it's also confusing if the
two topics are similar, which is exactly what happened here.

> > The console is a dead thing, it has no mind or soul to choose 
> > anything. Surely an educated person would know that.
> 
> Pretty much every quality system administrator I know uses 
> the terminal.  Just about all of the best devs I know use the 
> terminal. Microsoft added Powershell because of demand. They 
> added Ubuntu/bash support because of demand.  It allows for 
> powerful automation that would otherwise require writing 
> full-fledged scripts.  There is nothing dead about it.
> 
> I'm not sure where you get your baseless claim that "an 
> educated person would know that", since someone who had taken 
> the time to study the state of terminal use would see that is 
> far from dead.
> 
> -tkc

You are an ardently passionate and loyal bunch, aren't you.

I wasn't using "dead" in the figurative sense of no longer in use, I was
using it literally, as I clarified by saying "it has no mind or soul to
choose anything". A console (or terminal) is not a living thing with a
brain and consciousness, and its only capacity to choose anything is
dictated by the conditionals programmed into it. I've never heard of a
console (or terminal) that could choose to respond to some clicks and
not to others, have you? No, consoles have no minds of their own to
choose anything. This is what "an educated person would know" means in
the sentence I wrote.

It's not a good practice to twist other people's words to mean what you
want them to mean, while ignoring what they meant by them. Though it is
a convenient way to invent an argument where there is none, and that's
exactly what's happened here.