Re: lynx-dev lynx2-8-1/Linux patch for new VTs

[Bela Lubkin]

Philip Webb wrote:

> as JS pointed out, one basic principle of Lynx development is
> to keep it fully compatible across all platforms,
> so if you want your patch accepted,
> it will have to work on other UNIX's, VMS, Win95 etc.
>  
> > There's the possibility there's already a way of doing something similar
> > without having to resort to the VT ioctls
> > (which are heavily festooned with warnings in the manpages).
> 
> well, on a UNIX system -- incl Linux -- you can easily run Screen,
> which gives you a lot of other capabilities:
> if you don't know it, goto  www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/screen .

Heather Stern mentioned an implementation that would work for most
Unices.  Lynx splits itself into two processes, one of which puts itself
to sleep with job control.  The user can then job control out of the
foreground Lynx and activate the background one.

I think if that was implemented, then if people found it useful we would
eventually have other options, like transmigrating the process to
another X window or another `screen` display.  Those things don't have
to be implemented immediately; the fork-and-present-two-user-interfaces
part is the crucial bit that allows other parts to be implemented
piecemeal over time.

> > It is also deficient in that it is a patch against Lynx 2.8.1,
> > rather than the latest developer release.
> 
> all patches should be against a recent development version:
> the current latest is dev.20, but dev.21 is expected any day.

Tony knew that -- that's why he said it was "deficient".  It isn't easy
to keep up with the development stream while implementing a complex
feature of your own; sometimes it's easier to release it against an old
version and see if there's any interest.  Obviously there is, so now he
has a reasonable incentive to port it to current top-of-tree.

>Bela<