Why I use lynx as a news READER. [was] Re: LYNX-DEV more on the newspost problem

[Nelson Henry Eric]

I very much like lynx as a news reader because:
        1) The other news readers available to me do not have a color
           interface.  I have lynx set up with a color scheme which
           I find very easy on the eyes, and thus have a news reader
           which is in color.
        2) Lynx presents the articles in a `html' format that I find
           easier to navigate through than in the other news readers
           I have.  If you like numbered links, as I do, all your
           articles can be reached by number.  I can go to the top
           and bottom of the article list, search the list of articles,
           and navigate around the list or an article I am reading
           in a way (the Lynx way) I am familiar and comfortable with.
        3) URLs within an article are parsed into links by Lynx.
           This is an extremely convenient feature which is not
           available in the other readers I have available.
           
There are other reasons, but I'll stop here.  If you don't like the
news reading interface of Lynx, then don't use it.  No big deal.  Anyway,
it is rather simple to not compile it in and save a meager <1% in the
size of the Lynx image if you want to.

It is important to understand that Lynx is NOT a news POSTER.  Lynx
CAN enlist the aid of certain news posters to act as a helper application,
but you're on your own turf if you want to use anything besides `inews'.
If you absolutely must have reading and posting together, then Lynx might
not be the right application for you, plain and simple.

_Personally_ (and that's because I'm not a programmer and have no choice,
and also because the growing Lynx image is an enemy of my limited-resource
machine), I'm working on extending the compatibility of the helper
application posting.  For the application I'm working on, it requires proper
configuring of the .----rc file because of it's special handling of the
article composed with the default editor.

Fote has rightly indicated that trying to do what I'm doing across the board
would create a mountain of FAQs for each individual news posting helper.

Come on people, if someone does tweaking, hacking or modifying of Lynx, it's
because it's fun, neat, enjoyable, out of love and things like that.  They
do this or that because they WANT to do this or that.  No one is hacking to
keep up with the Jones' (=Netscrape, MSIE) or out of duty, at least I hope not.

_______
|soap| '-;__Henry

PS Here's a little summary I once did on Lynx-n-news.  Mostly I just hope
it's correct:

It is very important to clearly distinguish between news reading and
posting.  Lynx is a fullfledged news _reader_.  You do NOT need any
helper application whatsoever to read news with Lynx from either a
news:, snews: (though you need SSL) or nntp: URL.  You do not need
to define INEWS in either userdefs.h nor in lynx.cfg to _read_ news.

Posting is a completely different story.  Lynx simply cannot post.
You must have a helper application to post.  Unfortunately, not
just any news application can be used for posting from within Lynx.
What you have defined as INEWS takes a temporary file you edit with
your default editor and some headers that you create with Lynx's line
editor (or use the defaults) and posts them.  However, not all news
applications are compatible.  More importantly, ONLY news: URLs are
supported.  You can NOT post from Lynx to nntp: or snews: URLs, period.

Synopsis:
        You can READ news from any of news:, nntp: or snews: URLs
        without any helper application.

        You can only POST to news: URLs, and you must have a
        helper news poster, both compatible with the Lynx format
        for posting, AND properly defined and configured.
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