Re: LYNX-DEV feature-requests

[Hiram Lester, Jr.]

On Mon, 2 Dec 1996 address@hidden wrote:

> there are some features that I would like to see in a future
> release of Lynx , and i guess I'm not the only one to think so ...

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.  Individual comments appear
below...

> most important (imo)
>   -  Document-source-view 
>         I would like to have long lines wrapped rather than chopped when
>         viewing the html-source of a www page

Ok, this has been brought up before and since lynx renders even text/plain
when it displays it, causing it to wrap would cause other problems like
knowing where the original source was wrapped.  Simply put, Lynx is not a
file viewer.  If this is an important feature, you can add an entry to the
PRINTER to definitions in lynx.cfg to "print" the file to a pager such as
more, less, or most which WILL wrap for you.

>   -  A-posteriori-download: 
>         I really miss a way to download a html-file that is already
>         displayed. (using the print-menu i can only safe the rendered
>         page ...)  (the only workaround i found was to add a bookmark 
>         on the document and press ´d´ in the bookmark-page :-(  )

There is a better way to do this.  Go to the history list by using the
backspace key and hit 'd' on the link listed to the current page and it
will download it.

> minor important:
>   -  why does lynx reload the page when I toggle source/rendered-mode ?

See my comments above about lynx rendering text/plain.  Lynx renders
everything and throws the source away.  It would slow things down to keep
the source and render on the fly in the off-chance that you might want to
view the source.  Caching has been discussed, and it is unlikely that Lynx
will implement any kind of document caching (other than the memory based
rendered caching it does now) any time soon.  The good news is that there
are other solutions to this.  You can use an HTML server such as CERN
(www.w3c.org) or Apache (www.apache.org) httpd as a caching proxy.  If
your system is already using one of these, it might be worthwhile to check
with your system administration to see if it's already configured as such
and if not if it can be done.  Otherwise, you can compile one of these in
your own account.

> probable bugs:
>   -  sometimes , when i return to my bookmarks-page with the "back"-key
>         the bookmark-page appears in source-mode.

Hmmm, never heard of or seen this one before.  What version of lynx are
you using?

>   -  Resizing is not possible in lynx (this may be a "ncurses"-bug, but
>         i don't know):  however i change the size of xterm, the lynx-screen
>         will be in a mess (even if i resize the xterm back to its original 
>         size !)

Yes, this has been mentioned by several people, and I think that people
have reported better success with slang than any native curses or ncurses,
so it may be curses related...

> if these features are already implemented (,which would really surprise
> me after the time I spent searching the man-page and cfg-files) , then 
> please let me know ...

Ah... it's refreshing as a helpdesk consultant to see someone who actually
spent some time searching in the docs for something before asking. :)

> PS: lynx2.6-ncurses w/o patches  under linux  

Ok, welll, there's the answer to my question about version... Try the
composite patches at:

http://www.mtsu.edu/~ripa0003/lynx.html

since extensive work has been done on bookmark support in the last week
and see if it helps your source rendering of bookmarks.  This will also
allow you to use multiple bookmark files for better organization of your
links.

   +------------------------------------+-------------------------------+
   | Hiram W. Lester, Jr.               | E-Mail: address@hidden    |
   | Computer Science                   | Home page:                    |
   | Middle Tennessee State University  |   http://pobox.com/~hwlester/ |
   +------------------------------------+-------------------------------+

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