[Lynx-dev] Streaming (was: Windows Lynx style sheet ...)

[gilmap]

In a recent note, Thomas Dickey said:

> Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 11:59:39 -0400 (EDT)
> 
> On Sun, 30 Jul 2006, Lawrence Armstrong wrote:
> 
> > I'm not downloading anything.  I'm following the link with the right arrow 
> > key.  I'm listening to an internet radio station.
> 
> What's the URL you give lynx?
> 
I understand what Tom said.  I often see pages on which the "Play"
button anchors a cover page containing the URL of the stream.  In
that case, Lynx will download that page to TMPDIR, in less than a
second, imperceptibly, pass it to the VIEWER, and delete it.

Too often the "Play" button is a Javascript (unnecessarily).  This
is a case where Javascripting would be useful to Lynx.

What happens if you D(ownload) such a link?  Do you get an endlessly
updated status line, or a short document containing the (very likely
encrypted) URL of the stream?

Here's my idea of how true streaming from a browser might work:

    if ( pid = fork() ) {
        close( SOCKET );
    } else {
        if ( SOCKET != 0 ) {
            close( 0 );
            dup( SOCKET );
            close( SOCKET ); }
        exec( VIEWER ); }

The tricky part is being sure the socket-stream is positioned
precisely at the start of the streamed document at the point of
the exec().

-- gil
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