Re: lynx-dev Re: bookmarks encoding

[Leonid Pauzner]

13-May-2003 11:52 Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
> Leonid Pauzner wrote:

    >> a) creates the bookmark file with a "random" encoding (encoding of the
    >>    current doc or somesuch);

>     Not "random". Lynx create a bookmark file with "display charset" ecoding,
>     and writes the appropriate META header.

> The display charset is a "random variable"; it is determined by the
> current page charset on the architectures which support a display
> charset switch.

1998-11-18 (2.8.2dev.4)
* implement EXP_CHARTRANS_AUTOSWITCH for OS/2 EMX (Sergey Svishchev).

Perhaps the flag discussed below should have another default value
on the relevant architectures.
(Nobody reported the problem since 1998 before you)...

    >> b) writes bookmarks to the file in a "random" encoding.

>     also in "display charset".

    >> Why not write all the ascii entities in ascii, and the rest via &FOO;
    >> numeric escapes?

>     In this case the bookmark file will hardly be edited by hand,
>     so this is not a default behaviour.

> The alternative is to have the 'v' command showing garbage.  Do you
> like this more?

>   If you change display charset
>     frequently (or automatically), there is a lynx.cfg flag (since 1998):

>   NCR_IN_BOOKMARKS

> Thanks, this may be a partial solution, but the documentation is not
> clear: what does this flag do?  E.g., is the encoding of the the newly
> created bookmark files still random?

The encoding of newly created bookmark in that case will be us-ascii.

> And I do not see *why* this flag is needed.  When newly created, a
> bookmark file is written in a correct encoding (I mean the first
> bookmark in the file is correct).  When subsequent bookmarks are
> written, lynx can read the bookmark file, deduce its encoding, then
> write the bookmark (using Numeric Character References or not -
> depending on the encoding).

Just imagine: you read cyrillic texts and european texts (latin with
ascents), and the first bookmarked document is in iso-latin-1.
In this case all subsequent cyrillic links will be transliterated,
which is not nice. You suggest a new kind of "randomness", dependence
on the charset of the first bookmarked document.

> IMO, in this case coding a correct solution is easier than writing
> documentation for all these workarounds...

Yes, it would be better to use bookmark in utf-8,
but only when utf-8 editors will be widely available.

> Ilya


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