Re: lynx-dev coaching users on how to deal with trouble

[Philip Webb]

980718 Al Gilman wrote: 
> Quoted below is some advice I gave a user on another list.
> Please see if you agree we want mail to come here under the conditions
> I set forth in the invitation.

ok first & foremost: i'm sure all this is meant to be useful.
however, it does seem to me to be the well-known sledgehammer + nut.

i had no problem accessing  http://www.eblast.com/index_t.html :
it's the kindly-provided text version of the basic  www.eblast.com/ .
Lynx 2-8pre.2 does give me warnings that it's stripping leading  ../ ,
but that's all & everything seems to work (i didn't explore very far).

correct advice in such a case, i suggest, is simply
for the user to set the option in  lynx.cfg  to  STRIP_DOTDOT_URLS:TRUE ;
if they don't have access to  lynx.cfg ,
they should ask their sysadmin to recompile with that option set.
i really don't know why it's even an option,
since i can't see anyone wanting their browsing to bomb out
on this very common HTML infelicity.
if they're not using 2-8, of course they need to upgrade:
none of the lynx-dev volunteers has time to support out-of-date versions.

as for telling site owners, good luck ...
my own system's intro page still has this very defect,
despite a note to its manager some months ago, which got the reply:
"oh dear, i haven't got around to checking anything like that yet".

people really don't have the time to fuss: Lynx has to be realistic
& do its best to provide shock-absorption for the bumpy road out there.
as for lynx-dev, we should simply encourage users with a problem to tell us
& ask them for more information if we need it.  it seems to work.

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