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Re: [Lynx-dev] using fresher libwww?


From: Thomas Dickey
Subject: Re: [Lynx-dev] using fresher libwww?
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2007 18:26:50 -0400 (EDT)

On Mon, 2 Jul 2007, Mikhail T. wrote:

Hello!

It appears, lynx is using its own bundled version of libwww. The bundled version is rather old, and a much newer one is available from http://www.w3.org/Library/ . Its most recent version is 5.4.0, and was released in 2002. Quite stable, and can not be dismissed as a "moving target".

yes/no.  lynx uses a heavily modified version of libwww from around 1996.
To use a more recent version would involve a lot of work to determine which of those modifications should be moved into a newer version (as
well as whatever concerns about interface changes).

Are there reasons _not_ to use the up-to-date W3's implementation? It would require some catching up in code and makefiles, but it would be a good thing.

about 95% of libwww has been modified (usually, but not always, keeping
the same interfaces).  A lot of those modifications are functionality
that is not in libwww.  (One would expect some of the modifications to
be changes with the same intent - that's taken into account).

Libwww is used for a number of things on a typical computer, and there is no reason for lynx to build its own private copy, IMHO.

Actually I've not _seen_ libwww used in anything other than possibly amaya (and having run _that_ a few times, did not think that was a good recommendation). Wikipedia lists Mosaic and lynx as users.

Here are a few links which give opinions regarding libwww:

http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/libwww.html
http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0061.html

http://www.w3.org/Library/User/ToDo.html
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/46849/w3c-stops-work-on-libwww.html

This is not to say "no", but to point out that changing the code would
not be a matter of "upgrading", but a selective rewrite.

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net




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