Anything in my personal nodelet that sits unused for a week, I move to my scratchpad. That makes a dandy place for long term storage and keeps my page load time low.

• click on link in nodelet
• click on add to scratchpad
• delete it from my nodelet when I have the time (go to user settings on your home node and scroll down)

Perhaps a checkbox in your personal nodelet to delete links from it, or to move them to your scratchpad in one step would fit this bill?

In my opinion Scratchpad has some limitations:

• space is limited and nothing will warn you when you reach the limit of 64Kb;
• nodes are added using href links, wasting even more space but probably saving some load to the server;
• it isn't devoted only to bookmarks;
• it doesn't detect duplicates (Personal Nodelet has the same problem of course);
• it cannot be accessed by programs if it is marked as 'not public', even if you provide your login and want to access your scratchpad.
Using your brower bookmarks isn't a good solution, because it may be difficult to obtain a 'bookmarkable' address after you voted on a note.
So, I think coreolyn has some reason on his side, but I would ask for something different: a third link to something external and user defined that would receive the id of the node currently showed. This solution would provide a hook to implement your really personal way to set bookmarks.

Ciao, Valerio

update: fixed an error
update2: Coruscate is right, it is possible to access your own scratchpad parsing user info, but the canonical solution remains broken.
In the meanwhile, larsen informed me that there is a patch from belg4mit that would solve the href problem.
update3: clarification for tye: the canonical solution is to use displaytype=xml on a user node. In normal conditions, with scratchpad public, I see the content in the data section; otherwise it is not shown. Using displaytype=raw with node 108949 is not a good solution, because the page would be rendered, altering the original content.

it cannot be accessed by programs if it is marked as 'not public', even if you provide your login and want to access your scratchpad.

it is possible to access your own scratchpad parsing user info, but the canonical solution remains broken.

I don't understand this. Perhaps you need to define "the canonical solution" for me because I can't find any solution that cares whether your own scratchpad is public or not (if you provide your login information or cookie).

I just used a program to access my scratchpad that I had marked as "not public". I did not use "edit user information". I simply pulled down the scratchpad page. It was as easy as:

perl -S GET "http://perlmonks.org/?node=scratch+pad+viewer;user=tye;di
+splaytype=raw;op=login;passwd=yeah,right"
[download]

where "displaytype=raw" is optional, you can replace "node=..." with "node_id=108949", and you can replace "op=login;passwd=..." with a cookie.

Perhaps you are hoping for "displaytype=xml" to work. It doesn't, even if your scratchpad is public. The solution for that is to split scratchpads out of the 'user' table (which solves several other problems and even reduces DB load).

What am I missing?

                - tye

it cannot be accessed by programs if it is marked as 'not public', even if you provide your login and want to access your scratchpad.

Wanna bet? :) (replace 'xxxxxx' in below code with your homenode id)

use LWP::Simple;
use XML::Simple;

my $home_id = 'xxxxxx';

my $f = XMLin(get
  'http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=' .
  $home_id . '&displaytype=xml'
);

print $f->{data}{field}{scratchpad}{content};
[download]

Update, moments after posting this reply: I am too tired. My eyes read "it cannot be accessed by programs even if it is marked as 'not public'". I still maintain that you can get the scratchpad contents of a non-public scratchpad. Simply parse the textarea from the edit user information page. Also, why do you mention that as a bad side effect of scratchpads? You can't access the personal nodelet in any special outside manner either...

Perhaps a checkbox in your personal nodelet to delete links

No, no! That'd be tons of check boxes. The "add this to my personal nodelet" link needs to become "delete this from my personal nodelet" when you are on a node that is already in your personal nodelet.

                - tye

Good idea! (Should have thought of that one myself.) The checkbox idea really sounds sweet.

coreolyn

I went to super search to look for non-replies that had "personal" and "nodelet" in their titles and quickly found what I was looking for: Personal Nodelet Extractor and Personal Nodelet Restorer.

I didn't look at them to verify my recollection, but I believe you can use them to backup your personal nodelet, edit it, then upload it again. I also recall these not handling some types of links, but it sounds like you are mostly using lots of node-ID-based links, which would be what they'd support first.

Every once in a while I go through my personal nodelet and move anything I want to save to my home node. That keeps a permanent reference to the node and leaves my scratchpad available for other things. Your scratchpad and home node are both maintained from your user information page so it's pretty easy to move from one to the other.

This only applys if you browse mostly from one computer and browser of course.

<a HREF="/index.pl?node_id=306473">me</a> <a HREF="/index.pl?displayty
+pe=edit&node_id=306473">stuff</a> <a HREF="/index.pl?node=user%20sett
+ings">settings</a> <a HREF="/index.pl?node_id=108949&user=dominix">Pa
+d</a> <a HREF="/index.pl?node_id=43037">shortcuts?</a>
[download]

<a HREF="/index.pl?node_id=1322">debug</a> <a HREF="/index.pl?node_id=
+69927">Refs</a> <a HREF="/index.pl?node_id=252477">POD</a> <a HREF="/
+index.pl?node_id=216602">Cheat</a> <a HREF="/index.pl?node_id=perlbot
+">OO</a> <a HREF="/index.pl?node_id=224666">Pack</a>
[download]