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Re: LYNX-DEV problem when page has only one input area


From: Foteos Macrides
Subject: Re: LYNX-DEV problem when page has only one input area
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 1996 19:46:01 -0500 (EST)

Filip M Gieszczykiewicz <address@hidden> wrote:
>Greetings. I'm not sure if this issue has been beaten to death here,
>so let me know if it has.
>
>It seems that people get the notion that Netscape is more than a browser
>and also a validator - "if my pages work in Netscrape, they must be ok".
>Too many of these same people don't know and don't care that this is
>absolute BS.
>
>As a result, a lot of broken HTML gets out there and really messes with
>stricter browsers like, say, lynx. I just heard that Fote fixed the
>unclosed <form> - YES! I run across these all the time... another
>infamous is <a name="blah"> (no closing </a> or tag text), and various
>combinations of markup in links. Example:
>
><ul>
><li><a href="Howdie1"><b>Howdie1</a>
><li><a href="Howdie2"><i>Howdie2<i></a>
><li><a href="Howdie3">Howdie3</b></a>
><li><a href="Howdie4"><b>Howdie4</b></a>
><li><a href="Howdie5">Howdie5</a>
></ul>
>
>The first doesn't show up as the link, neither does the second one
>(and the bullet is gone from now on, as well), the third one is OK,
>as is the fourth. The fifth one hoses up but DOES select, and shows
>some silly "* Howd" on the sixth line...

        Lynx has no realistic prospect of handling HTML that bad
as intended.  When it's that bad, the objective is simply not to
crash.  Lynx can't ignore any interdigitated container (SGML_MIXED)
tags that it recognizes, which is functionally what you have there.
It must substitute the end tag it's expecting.  It should unwind to
what it's expecting, but I changed it not to do that a year or so
ago, and that helped.  I also changed the worst offenders to
SGML_EMPTY, and look for their end tags explicitly, so those can
be interdigitated, but you can't do that for everything and still
have reasonable performance.

        It may behave somewhat differently with that bad markup
now that it's unwinding on EOF, but it won't make it "right". 

                                Fote

=========================================================================
 Foteos Macrides            Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research
 address@hidden         222 Maple Avenue, Shrewsbury, MA 01545
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