Re: LYNX-DEV Where is Zaire?

[Benjamin C. W. Sittler]

On Sat, 2 Nov 1996, Philip Webb wrote:

> impressed as i am by the erudition of lynx-dev subscribers,
> am i the only one around who hasn't yet learned all the terminology?

Probably not, I frequently learn about things when they are mentioned on
this list. 

(Help me out if I get some of this wrong, please.)

>   1  what is  linux ?

Linux is a freely-distributable (GNU Public License) UNIX-like OS
available for a wide variety of platforms, including Intel (i.e. 386, 486,
Pentium, etc.), 68K (several systems, including Amiga), SPARC, DEC Alpha,
PowerPC, and MIPS. 

>   2 what are ncurses / slang ?

ncurses is an extended implementation of the UNIX curses package, which
allows color, in addition to the usual curses capabilities like
highlighted text, in arbitrary windows on a character-cell terminal or
terminal emulator. 

slang is a portable programming language that happens to understand ANSI
color displays fairly well, and, when used with Lynx, allows color
rendering of elements in the document.

>   3  what is  SSL ?

This is the "secure sockets layer" that's supposed to make Internet
Commerce easy and secure. Basically, it allows encrypted network
transactions. Unfortunately, code of this nature may not be legal for
export from the U.S.

>   4  what is the difference between  gethostbyname  &  LYgethostbyname ?

My guess (since the 2.5FM code I'm looking at doesn't have it) is that
it's an abstracted interface to hostname lookup which may eventually be
asynchronous. (gethostbyname() blocks until it has a response or times
out.)

>   5  what is  VMS ? -- presumably it has nothing to do with VM or CMS
>      (i seem to remember VAXes using something like it years ago).
>      no doubt it's irrelevant to ask why everyone doesn't use unix.

VMS (Virtual Memory System? Very Minimal Security? Vast Money Suggested?) 
is an operating system developed by DEC which was (and is) used on VAXes,
as well as the much newer DEX Alpha (AXP) machines. 

> there is regularly expressed anguish at the fact that the terrible world
> out there doesn't know about lynx, doesn't write good code & is generally
> going to hell, BUT if lynx developers simply talk to one another in jargon
> with never a gesture -- eg  [for the rest of you, SSL is whateveritis]  --
> they really have only themselves to blame.

I agree that more could be explained, but a lot of this is mentioned in
the FAQs reachable from http://lynx.browser.org/ and elsewhere.

> there are apparently people out there who read the washington post
> who need to be told "Zaire is a large country in Central Africa"
> & "It has been ruled with an iron hand for the past 30 yrs by Pres Mobutu":
> that's why the wp & other journals include a few such sentences
> in EVERY story they write about the latest from that unhappy place.

> but perhaps what's good enough for the washington post
> is not good enough for lynx-dev.

Some more explanation certainly wouldn't hurt, but I'm afraid we're too
lazy! ;^)

For those of you who care, I have written a simple renderer for HTML which
uses the output of nsgmls. It is still largely uncommented (and it's still
in perl, that prototyping language,) but I decided to make it available
anyhow, since it could be of some use, perhaps even as a "plug-in" for
Lynx. It's available as a tar'ed, gzip'ed archive at
http://www.nmt.edu/~bsittler/tree2ascii.tgz and expects the parse tree on
standard input.

Have fun!
--
Benjamin C. W. Sittler - address@hidden - http://www.nmt.edu/~bsittler
#!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj
$/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)
# three-line PERL RSA cryptosystem

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