Re: [Lynx-dev] BRF charset support

[Henry Nelson]

On Mon, Dec 11, 2006 at 01:52:06AM +0100, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> The following URL outputs a BRF-encoded text.
> 
> http://brl.thefreecat.org/test.php

First, I'm confused.  I downloaded the page and viewed it in vi, and
all that is there is "A B C".  There is no Braille in any encoding
there, nor is there any html.  It is just plain ascii text.  I also
tried to get Lynx to display the source (\), and again all it displayed
was "A B C".  The server header does label the doc as "text/plain;
charset=brf", but I see no evidence that that is true.

> 
> I would expect lynx to output braille patterns when browsing it, but it
> doesn't recognize the BRF charset (though it is supported by my debian's
> glibc's iconv) and lynx considers the text to be latin1, hence the
> result is "A B C".

Well if the page is really in encoding "brf", then my _guess_ would be that
Lynx's transliteration function has kicked in.  In other words, the "A B C"
suggests to me that Lynx does not consider the text to be Latin1, but some
unknown, and thus falls back to the default in "src/chrtrans/def7_uni.tbl".

Something you might try is to toggle to "raw 8-bit translation" using
the '@' key.  If your locale is set correctly, you have the necessary font,
and your terminal [emulator] can handle multibyte characters/brf, then
_maybe_ the Braille patterns will be displayed.

> When lynx doesn't know a charset, it should ask iconv in case the latter
> is able to convert into unicode, and then lynx could display it like any

This request requires a heavy duty c programmer.

__Henry

  "Using Lynx is like wearing a really good pair of shades: cuts out
   the glare and harmful UV (ultra-vanity), and you feel so-o-o COOL."
                                         -- me, March 1999