LYNX-DEV: trace toggle: needs "dribble file", saved-output

[David Combs]

Like everyone else, probably, I went and looked at the
www-site subir mentioned:
   http://www.netusa.net/~eli/erotica/assm/faq.html

and clicked on one of the newsgroups (alt.anonymous, I think),
and saw strange stuff coming about, one of them about trying
to find some local file under the lynx installation here 
at netcom (~wcheung/...).

So I (for the first time ever) toggled-on TRACE.  Yes, neat
stuff coming out.  But its output overlaid the output from
the current display (lynx), ie was mixed old and new lines,
then finally scrolled down to fresh screen, etc.

I looked at it for a few seconds, then POOF, the original
lynx-display reappears, and the trace output is GONE.

So I clicked on the newsgroup again, grabbed the mouse, and
tried to "blacken" the screen as the trace-output was produced,
but quickly and exactly unclick the mouse and instantly press
the "paste" key, just before the original window reappeared.

No such luck.

------

What would be nice would be if, when I entered trace mode (^T),
lynx would ASK me if I wanted the output to go (also?) to
a trace-output file.  Like in the current "p"-print page.

It would keep this file open, appending to it, until I ^T
toggled out of trace mode, when it would close that file.

When it first opened the file, it could maybe put the time-of-day,
date, current url, current link (ie, as in the "=" command),
maybe the current "history" <backspace>-cmd output too.

Also, it might ask for a comment, "want to say WHY you are
  doing this trace?", that would go (first) into this file.

----

Append-mode to this trace-output file:

Likely, you would want to turn trace on and off, and on again
to get more info, say trying some other url, etc.  Same 
problem you are trying to track down, just capturing
another example of it, maybe with different O<ptions>
turned on or off, etc.

Here, maybe you could have an append-option (as now on
the print page).  Or maybe as filename, a simple ">>"
might mean "the prior file, appended to" (or rotate
the cyclic buffer (one for trace-output files) and
then the (weird) ">>" notation appended.

Anyway, all the stuff (comment, date, url, etc)
would get written out (appended) here too, so the
user would be able to easily go to different "segments"
of his trace file, later on.

-----

Sure, there is probably some way to capture the trace-output
via the command-line (I haven't looked!), but it seems
that having this appendable trace-output file, writable
from the current lynx job, would make getting this stuff
a lot easier. 

Especially in this current case, were I was merely interested
in what was happening, but not interested enough to
figure out how to run a separate lynx job to get it, say.

----

I didn't read through the whole manual looking for a way to
do this; I thus may have missed it; I merely did "K", saw
nothing at ^T about capturing the output, and saw nothing
at O<ptions>.

Just an idea...
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