Re: LYNX-DEV Lynx with VMS

[Foteos Macrides]

address@hidden wrote:
>With the command procedure (for VMS) build.com, it lists
>Acceptable TCP/IP agents are
> [1] MULTINET (default)
> [2] UCX
> [3] WIN_TCP
> [4] CMU_TCP
> [5] SOCKETSHR_TCP
> [6] TCPWARE
>
>Yet in descrip.mms, it does mention that DECNET is supported.  Am I correct
>in assuming that I can build with DECNET, or is there a reason why it was
>not put in the menu?

        No.  The DECNET support was in the utterly original (v1) CERN
libwww (CERN, back then, was a heavily VAX site), and requires a header
the CERN folks had created, but was never copied to Lynx, and no one
seems to have.  It doesn't look like it would be too hard to revive
the DECNET support, particularly if someone came up with that header,
but you'll just get a lot of compiler errors if you try that the way
it is now.  A better way to do it, that wouldn't create an either
DECNET or TCP-IP image, is to add a safe character as a flag for
indicating that the first URL symbolic element in file URLs is a
DECNET node rather than a device, and modify the URL symbolic path
to VMS path translation function accordingly.  Another way would be
to use some trick for indicating that the host field is a DECNET
node rather than a TCP-IP host.  I got such tricks working in the
v3 library for the CERN server, enough to fetch files from other
DECNET nodes, but it's HTStat() function wants things for directory
listings which you can't get via DECNET, so you'd also have to add
a parser like that for directory listings from VMS ftp servers to
get the "rich" listings Lynx creates.  I doubt anyone wants that
functionality enough to do the work necessary to revive it, at least
no one has as yet, but who knows. :) :)

                                Fote

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 Foteos Macrides            Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research
 address@hidden         222 Maple Avenue, Shrewsbury, MA 01545
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