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

[Vlad Harchev]

On Fri, 8 Jun 2001, Duke Normandin wrote:

 Hi, 

> > 
> > Make use of something like Acrobat PDF, Flash, etc. if you want exact
> > control.  Otherwise, people who have to have java/javascript/etc. turned
> > off, who are not permitted to make use of plugins, etc. are not going
> > to be able to see the page the way you want anyways.
> 
> I don't use Javascript, plugins or anything else specifically to make
> sure that the pages can be rendered by all browsers. For me to ask about
> why Lynx does not support the 'width' element in <td> correctly isn't
> out-of-line, IMO. Were I a programmer, I would sure as hell be working on
> this myself, if only to make Lynx friendly with other browsers and web
> developers -- regardless of _how_ <table> would/is used by these same
> developers. Perhaps there would be no 'Links' and 'w3m' had this been the
> case.
> 
> Right or wrong, HTML _is_ used, to varying degrees, for layout -- it's a
> fact of life. Excessive use for layout _is_ inefficient and should not be
> used that way -- there are better tools. But a simple layout like:
> 
> Prev                  Home                      Up                   Next
> Page1                                                               Page3
> 
> is NOT excessive use, and should be rendered by <table> correctly,
> because at the end of the day, all it is IS 'tabular data'.

 Your demands for exactly such layout seem fair to me. In the ideal world,
provided infinite hours of programmers' time was spent on lynx, lynx would
render such tables exactly this way. Currently, lynx's support for tables is
imperfect in many respects, with the proper handling of column widths being
something of not mostly demanded (i.e. there are other more importants aspects
of table rendering that deserve to be improved in lynx). The short answer -
it seems to me that lynx won't render your table as you wish, unfortunately.
Some reasonable amount of hacking will be needed to fix this.

 Best regards,
  -Vlad


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