Re: LYNX-DEV more on the newspost problem

[Jim Spath (Webmaster Jim)]

On Thu, 6 Feb 1997, Foteos Macrides wrote:
> "Christopher R. Maden" <address@hidden> wrote:
> >[Henry Nelson]
> >> Lynx isn't doing the posting, and actually I'm generally in favor of
> >> keeping everything out of lynx itself except for the bare essentials
> >> of a browser.  Don't get me wrong though, I want the same
> >> flexibility you want, too.  It may not be all that hard to do.
> >It seems that it shouldn't be too hard - just set NNTPSERVER to the
> >current NNTP server before spawning whatever news poster is
> >configured.  Is that difficult to do?  It should just be a matter of a
> >setenv() before running the posting software, no?
>       That's an assumption implicit in the orginal code that Lou
> wrote for posting to newsgroups, and I've been assuming it's true all
> these years, as I've modified and extended the original code, but I just
> did some empirical checking and it's not reliably true.  If you do an
> ... 
>       It would not affect the Lynx image appreciably to add a real
> gateway for posting.  You're already connected to the nntp server via
> ...

I agree that folding the mini-inews concept into Lynx proper is a good
idea.  I would make it optional, if possible, not standard. 
 
>       But I doubt that could be done, debugged, and adequately field
> tested by the 15th.  Once it were done, adding ablibily to read and
> update a $HOME/.newsrc file could be added, at least in theory, though
> I don't know if those RC files are in fact identical across news
> software, and that could get tricky unless it's used only for groups
> and articles carried by the local nntp server.  That feature could
> be a compilation option, since it might add up to a more substantial
> amount of code.

I can't see how that can be done in under 30 days given the variety of
environments to be tested under. 

I would vote *against* more Lynx development as a news reader, however. 
There are already more news readers than you can shake a stick at, and the
thing I like about Lynx's method is that it is fast and simple.  Pine can
post, read, sort, update .newsrc, grow bananas, etc. 

Fote, we could use your considerable talent to expand on "cookie storage"
and the other Web tools of tomorrow (leave Usenet to the Aolers).

------
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