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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