Re: LYNX-DEV highlighting bug in color slang version

[Laura Eaves]

> Date: Sat, 19 Apr 1997 10:45:39 -0500 (CDT)
> From: Klaus Weide <address@hidden>
>...
> I tried to document "what is".  I didn't say it was good.
> I would call it a "known limitation", are you happier with that?

Actually I just noticed it is also mentioned in the PROBLEMS file.

> Also I don't understand what problem you want to solve now.
> This seems to be a different problem from "Lynx forgets if a link
> was in an emphasised section"??

It is a different problem -- the one you mentioned in your previous mail
about attributes not working properly on some terminals even without color.
Since I was in that vicinity of the code, I thought I might "kill 2 bugs
with one stone".
But it was jsut a thought.

> > I've never tried Rob's style stuff.
> > If you could point me to where I can pick it up, I have time
> > to try it over the weekend.
>
> You can find an *older* version, merged with some of the development
> changes, in
>       <URL: http://sol.slcc.edu/lynx/klaus/merged/oldRP/>
> but cannot recommend that myself.. We're all waiting for his recent
> stuff.

I've since picked up the original lynx2.6RP from lynx.browser.org and built it.
I think it was dated Oct or Nov '96.
I noticed the highlighting problem also occurs in that version --
see http://www.newslink.org/.  It occurs on different links however.

(I also had an unrelated problem with lynx2.6RP: I used the ! command to get
to the shell, but when I exited the shell to resume lynx, it said there was
an error parsing STYLE ALINK in the config file, and it crashed.  (I didn't
think it would need to read the config file at that point.)

> > As for whether it's a better solution in all cases, I use the
> > color slang stuff because I have trouble seeing reverse video
> > and can't read the lynx status line otherwise.
>
> But the "Lynx forgets about highlighting on Lynx" problem doesn't
> cause any of those problems - right?

No, but it's a nuisance...:)

> > The only reason the diff was so large
> > is that I had to pass an extra arg (me->inUnderline) in all the calls to
> > HText_beginInput() and HText_beginAnchor().
>
> And that's the reason why I don't like it that much.  Information on
> visual attributes doesn't seem to belong in HText_beginAnchor IMHO.
> Just imagine when we (Rob?) want to make Lynx understand more attributes -
> should we then add an argument for each of them?  So this doesn't seem
> like a good thing to base further development on.
>
> It also couldn't deal with things like 
> <A HREF=X>a <em>partially</em> emphasized</A> link.  (I don't know whether
> Rob's code does, or even if it is particularly desirable.)
> I think a more general implementation of the highlight() code is
> desirable, including the capability to highlight (with appropriate
> different color/attribute) a search string within the link so that
> we can get rid of some unnecessary screen refreshes after WHEREIS
> searches...

I thought about the problem of needing other args for other attributes.
One way to avoid that would be to embed metacharacters in hightext and
hightext2 of the link.  Let those determine when to turn on underlining
or blinking or whatever.  Then you wouldn't need the style args to
HText_beginWhatever(), and you would also be able to handle embedded
<em>..</em> within links...

I didn't try this myself as there seemed to be a lot of code in lynx to
handle special chars and I didn't want to mess with it if it would get
special-casy...
Maybe it would be easy to do if someone wanted to try it.

> IMHO What you are doing is the right thing, offer your changes separately
> so people can decide whether they want them.  Even better if you could
> now and then check whether your patches also still work against our
> development code at <URL:http://sol.slcc.edu/lynx/current/>.
>
> I will put your "submit button" change in the development code when
> I get around to it.

I haven't been using the code in /lynx/current/ because (1) it doesn't
have the fixes I want (or if it does, no one seems to post what the updates
are) and (2) it didn't builid on bsdi when I first tried it.
Jspath sent me mail asking if I'd build it on bsdi as he didn't have access
to one.  I did try it again recently and it worked for
vanilla lynx, but configure failed for screen=slang.
I tried various suggestions for running configure but it didn't work.

--le
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