Re: LYNX-DEV DOS suggestions (for development code ac-0.73)

[Klaus Weide]

On Sun, 28 Sep 1997, Doug Kaufman wrote:

> The changes made with FNAMES_8_3 and HTML_SUFFIX seem to work well to
> keep the suffix in the suggested filename to 3 characters or less.
> I've looked at the getpid() function in DJGPP. Pid seems to be an
> integer limited to 5 characters (probably limited to 16384), although I
> haven't found the documentation. In order to keep the basename of the
> suggested filename to 8 characters or less, we need to keep "counter" to
> 3 characters or less, and get rid of the other characters.

Ok, I guess being limited to 1000 temp files for long sessions rather
than 10000 is not a severe problem...

> Since the standard DOS switch character is "/", the change in LYMain.c
> to replace "/" with "\", is probably also necessary.

Seems reasonable, as long as whenever a filename generated from this is
used in a context where URL syntax is needed, it is properly converted
to using the '/' separator (with HTDOS_name I assume), rather than just
naively prefixing with "file://localhost/".  (I have no reason to believe
this isn't the case, but haven't checked it either.)

> I have added USE_ZLIB to the makefile for DOS. Is there a drawback to
> using ZLIB?
> 
> I moved LYNX_TEMP_SPACE in the code, so that it overrides "TMP" and
> "TEMP". This wouldn't be defined unless the user specifically wanted
> a different temporary directory for lynx. This will put lynx_386's
> behavior back into compliance with the documentation in userdefs.h.

Good.  (The text there only mentions VMS and UNIX and "ALL" platforms,
there probably should at least be a note that other OSs need to look
under UNIX.)

> The distribution archive still contains
> "about_lynx/about_lynx-dev.html", despite the fact that it was renamed
> "about_lynx/lynx-dev.html" several versions ago. I don't believe that we
> need both versions in the distribution.

Will many links break?

> I didn't make any changes in userdefs.h, but wondered if now that we
> have "FNAMES_8_3", we shouldn't change some of the standard defines
> that exceed 8+3 (e.g. .lynxsig, .mime.types, .mailcap), using ifdef
> FNAMES_8_3.

For some of them, defaulting to an invalid filename may be just as well.
(For most DOS users the distinction between a global and a personal
mailcap file probably doesn't make sense, and reading in things from two
files may be more confusing than helpful.  But I guess you and Wayne
should know better.)  A general advice "Some of the default filenames
are invalid for DOS, you have to change the names to something valid
to make use of such files" may be better.  And there shouldn't be too
much ifdefing spaghetti in userdefs.h, maybe less than now (just my
opinion).

   Klaus

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