Re: LYNX-DEV more on the newspost problem

[Foteos Macrides]

"Christopher R. Maden" <address@hidden> wrote:
>[Henry Nelson]
>> Lynx isn't doing the posting, and actually I'm generally in favor of
>> keeping everything out of lynx itself except for the bare essentials
>> of a browser.  Don't get me wrong though, I want the same
>> flexibility you want, too.  It may not be all that hard to do.
>
>It seems that it shouldn't be too hard - just set NNTPSERVER to the
>current NNTP server before spawning whatever news poster is
>configured.  Is that difficult to do?  It should just be a matter of a
>setenv() before running the posting software, no?

        That's an assumption implicit in the orginal code that Lou
wrote for posting to newsgroups, and I've been assuming it's true all
these years, as I've modified and extended the original code, but I just
did some empirical checking and it's not reliably true.  If you do an
Alta-Vista search for:
        "news://genetics.upenn.edu/perl.porters-gw";
your top ranking hit recommends that for some news programs:

   Linkname: Re: Goodbye
        URL:
http://www.rosat.mpe-garching.mpg.de/mailing-lists/Perl5-Porters/9601/msg00943.html

but when I checked some others, they don't seek and give precedence to
enviroment variables, but instead just use what's in their configuration
file.

        It would not affect the Lynx image appreciably to add a real
gateway for posting.  You're already connected to the nntp server via
HTLoadNews(), and that connection is held until a news, nntp or snews
request is made for a different host.  We'd just register that function
as the protocol for newspost: and newsreply: URLs, strip the LYNews.c
module to just the code for creating the temporary file to be posted,
and actually post it from HTLoadNews().  The headers could be configuration
variables in lynx.cfg, and LYNew.c could check for a $HOME/.lynxsig for
appending to the message (and that could be done for email as well).  A
real gateway would have the advantage for people using the SSL support
that they could post to secure nntp servers as well.  You'd actually
save overall system overhead, 'cuz you wouldn't be starting another shell
and having the site's news software again doing a whole bunch of things
that Lynx has already done in HTLoadNews() and could still use.

        But I doubt that could be done, debugged, and adequately field
tested by the 15th.  Once it were done, adding ablibily to read and
update a $HOME/.newsrc file could be added, at least in theory, though
I don't know if those RC files are in fact identical across news
software, and that could get tricky unless it's used only for groups
and articles carried by the local nntp server.  That feature could
be a compilation option, since it might add up to a more substantial
amount of code.

                                Fote

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 Foteos Macrides            Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research
 address@hidden         222 Maple Avenue, Shrewsbury, MA 01545
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