Re: LYNX-DEV Various things (Was Re: Displaying graphics)

[Drazen Kacar]

Foteos Macrides wrote:
> Drazen Kacar <address@hidden> wrote:

> >BTW, I can't find xview executable anywhere. The only xview I can find is a
> >library, not a command. My man page (Solaris 2.5) says:
> 
>       Far, far more systems have xv than xview, so that's still the
> best string for the "illustration", but the point is that the viewer
> is a symbolized option for the installer, not anything hard wired in
> the Lynx code that could, never mind "should", be changed.

Which is why I think xv should be left there. Of course, if someone is
preparing a big distribution (like CD), he should change the default
Lynx viewer to whatever comes with the distribution. It could be xv, xview,
xanim, display, even Netscape. :) Or Xemacs. :))

>       The other important point, is that you can NOT change it, nor
> any other mappings that have defaults in src/HTInit.c, via VIEWER
> mappings in lynx.cfg.  For those, you MUST use the mailcap file.
> 
>       How could that possibly be stated more clearly than it already
> is in the "self documentation" of lynx.cfg?!?!?   It's not even a case
> where INN is being used too generically.
> 
>       This keeps happening, and I just can't understand it.  As

It's simple. I compiled various versions of Lynx many times. Hosts always
had xv and I never needed to change that. I never uncommented VIEWER in
lynx.cfg, because I have all viewers (with defined tests) in
/etc/mailcap. That's used by all (at least partially) MIME capable
programs. It never happened that I wanted a particular viewer for Lynx
alone. But I remembered there were those VIEWER definitions in lynx.cfg,
so grep was used to see if they were active. Without looking at lynx.cfg.

> I fondly recall the spare time I spent editing at least 30 C modules
> with over 300 sleep() calls to use symbols added to userdefs.h and
> lynx.cfg so blind users could increase them as necessary.

perl -pi -e "s/sleep\(1\);/sleep\(INFOSECS\);/g" **/*.c

You'll need zsh & perl for that, though. :)

>       The HTTP and HTML specs are totally contradictory about that,
> and servers vary in whether they do what's specified for HTTP, as they
> should, or for HTML.  What Apache is doing is not a bug, because that

It is a bug from the end user's point of view. Is it a bug in server,
browser, HTTP or HTML spec is not very important. We could both spend
time quoting RFCs and drafts and arguing which one is wrong, but that
would be futile, IMHO.

> what I'd like, do still send me something."  In the FM code set I added
> Negotiate: trans  to our request headers, to increase the chances of

I noticed. I've also sent a patch. :)

> a nothing available error.  But I suspect it will be a while before
> servers actually return such bodies.

Depends. Remember the server side image maps. Phttpd was doing the right
thing for ages. If there is no coordinates in the request it sends
text/html which is formatted from the coresponding .map file.
They put that in Apache only recently. The same thing can be done for
.var files. Server can format the output, if somebody writes those
lines of code.

>       And so...  There's nothing that can be put in any Lynx menus,
> documentation, FAQ, or whatever, to explain for the utterly naive,
> first time ever, Lynx users how this works and what they should do,
> and what will happen if they do this versus that.  Who knows??? :) :)

Utterly naive, first time ever Lynx users are not my primary concern.
Utterly naive, first time ever HTML and WWW teachers are. If I keep the
programs in a functional state, I don't have the time and energy for
explaining and educating. And it seems that nobody else has a clue.

The web could have been something... Let's get drunk tonight... ;)

>       Do bear in mind that the FM code set was frozen and bequethed to
> to the Lynx User Community on 29-Jan-97, and I don't have any spare time
> left in me.  I don't see that there's actually any mechanism in place
> to deal with the reports and suggestions that are being posted, and to
> actually put out a v2.7 release.   Hopefully, someone actually qualified
> to do it will step forward and do it, but for now, it seems like they
> might just as well be posted to ListElves, for the North Pole elves for
> Santa Claus. :) :)

Hmmm... I'm clueless here. I didn't have much time and I've been skipping
most of the posts on lynx-dev. I don't have the faintest idea about
ListElves. Or ListDvarves or ListHobbits.

But, dear Elves, should I do some more Lynx patching tonight or should I
prepare those 200 Apache servers that need to be installed tomorrow or
the day after? Or was it 300? It doesn't really matter with that order
of magnitude.

-- 
They work 24 hours a day and 256 days a year  --  address@hidden

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