lynx-dev LYNX: need option to save V (html) page, every so often. (shellAcct times out!)

[David Combs]

Just happened again -- I had been in lynx
for maybe an hour and a helf, and took
a bathroom-break and drank a coke and
fed the cat and came back up, and DRAT!
the fool isp (for my "shell account" (unix cmd-line), eg
like old-time "computer time-sharing"), HAD TIMED OUT!

LOST, all record of where I had been, what
I had done, how to pop back down to where
I had just come from when I took the break --
all that.

  ----

Now, look at what editors do, at least what
emacs does: if you've made changes to a buffer
(that's associated with a file), and you haven't
flushed ("saved") it to disk for some period of
time when you've typed in nothing at all (eg,
you're away from the computer), and/or after
a certain number of keystrokes.  Emacs calls
this feature "auto-saving".

Very useful, saved many a butt, and probably
employments too.

 ----

Something like that would be WONDERFUL for lynx --
and what lynx would save would be just TWO
files:

(1) The "history stack", written out as a .html
    file (ie, as via doing a "\"-cmd),

(2) The "V-page.html", via the "V" cmd, giving
    that neato indented-sidewise-tree showing
    EVERYWHERE you've been since starting up
    this version of lynx, and as-via-"\", saved
    as .html.

What to NAME these files?

Something built from:

The date/time of the START of THIS run of lynx,
prefixed, of course, by either V-page-
or Hist-page-,

the extension of couse being ".html".

 ----


That way, if isp-connection *does* time-out on you,
you at can least reconstruct *much* of the then
current state, by merely reading in those .html-files.

 ----

Of course, there should be a command enabling the
user to FORCE creation of the two files RIGHT NOW.

Likewise, when there is a time-out, perhaps the
isp sends every process a signal to be interpreted
"you are being crashed -- better do whatever
cleaning-up you need, NOW", which would also
create the two files.

---

**** Although it involves more effort and thought,
it'd be cool if there were a special way to read-in
these two files, and use them to INITIALIZE the
V and History data-structures -- so that any
*further* site-visiting would get recorded on
top of those now-initialized structures, JUST AS
IF YOU HAD NEVER TIMED OUT!

And, FURTHER writing of V and Hist .html-files
would thus include both the old *and* new stuff.

(Of course, there'd be an option on the immediate-command
that would allow only the "new" stuff to be 
written out (via *differently named* files.)

---

Please, could *all* people who have *any* opinion as to
whether this feature would be a help, or that we're
wasting our time, or whatever.

THANKS!

David Combs

PS: I couldn't code it, but I could sure help document
it.



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