Re: lynx-dev Is this List for Lynx users or *just* developers

[Henry Nelson]

> Fair enough! I ask again....is there a 'Lynx-user' group, so that I can

No.  BUT, since there isn't one, "lynx-dev" ends up having to serve that
purpose.  Some of the developers seem to appreciate that arrangement, so
I wouldn't hesitate to ask user questions here.  In the past I've found
your queries so cryptic (and hasty?, i.e., "...Later") that there wasn't
enough to go on to reply to.

> quit disturbing _this_ list? If it was up to me only, I'd quit using Lynx
> in favor of 'Links' and/or 'w3m'. However, I'm developing a multi-page
> HTML document (docs) and am adamant that it will be 'text-based browser'
> friendly. I'm getting great page-renderings is IE4+, Netscape, Links and
> w3m -- but some of what works in the aforesaid browsers, doesn't in Lynx.
> This is a _major_ PITA, and makes it extremely difficult to produce
> a document that will be friendly to Lynx AND the rest of the text-based
> and graphical browsers --- especially those HTML tags for which Lynx only
> has half-hearted support.
> 
> Sooo....maybe there are work-arounds. That's why I'm asking about a

Finally I see what you're aiming at.  There are some workarounds.  First, are
you aware that Lynx's speed that everyone raves about (actually it's pretty
meaningless in today's age of 1GHz CPUs, 2MB cache, 1GB memory and 100MB/s+
transfer speeds) is due to it doing only ONE pass through a document? That
means that Lynx has to render and spit out what it has in hand without a lot
of looping again and again.  Remember that when you design pages for Lynx.

Read docs/README.TRST in the distribution for a good idea of what Lynx can
and cannot do with regard to tables.  Supposedly there have been some recent
"improvements" to TRST.  Are you using the latest development version?

Some rules I've followed in the past that nearly always gave a nice table
in Lynx:
   1)  Only use tables when you have to.  If you can get by with ordered
       lists, use them instead.  Ordered lists can be nested in Lynx.
   2)  Don't nest tables. 
   3)  Keep the cell contents short enough that wrapping is not necessary.
   4)  Keep the total length of any one row, including margins, under 80
       character cells.

Study the [endless] possibilities for table rendering external to Lynx, e.g.,
proxies, printers and external applications.  Most of these work so smoothly
that you'd think Lynx was doing the rendering.

Give us the URL of your finished product. :)

__Henry

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