Re: LYNX-DEV long-term migration

[tz]

On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, Al Gilman wrote:

> Klaus Weide asked:
> 
>   Now if you [anybody] have an idea how to make Lynx more
>   Netscape(et.al.) compatible (a.k.a. Un-HTML compatible) in a new,
>   structured way that doesn't bear those costs, and without sacrificing
>   correct treatment of valid markup, let's see it.
> 
> I interpret this question to be rhetorical.  The discussion on
> this point in the past has usually conceded that if one were to
> make a clean break with the current code and design a replacement
> browser in a more modern programming paradigm, it would be easier
> to combine tolerance and maintainability.

my $0.20 on pairofdimes: I don't know if any specific paradigm was a
problem.  Several proper assumptions were made when lynx was first written
and Netscape wasn't around.  If everyone knew what HTML 3.2+ would be when
lynx was first written, it would have been built differently.  But when
you don't know, you build on the easiest path.

Partitioning would help.  In fact, I wrote an alternative fetcher (called
upget) that mimics lynx -source.  Except that it might break
nonmultitasking implementations, a system like (fetch | render | interact)
would be better, and you could spawn (fetch | download), etc.

Another original assumption led to one big problem with tables is the fact
that lynx renders or notes tags one-dimensionally.  so things like

+---+---+
|[1 |[2 |
|  ]|  ]| [ = <A...>, ] = </A>
+---+---+

would be hard to do.  I ended up creating a [A] for any anchor within a
table.  Another problem is that </FORM> causes a line break.  These
occasionally happen inside tables.

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