LYNX-DEV beware: 2-7 ambush

[Philip Webb]

visiting Financial Times (London) & the Toronto Star this morning as usual,
using my brand-new 2-7, i encountered a nasty little problem:
headings were not spaced properly & stories' paragraphs were run together.
2-6 presented no problems with the same pages;
the source showed nothing bizarre.

then something came back from the hazy past: when i compiled 2-7
there was a line something about double break tags or something ...
i searched thro'  lynx.cfg  (asking for  br  gets every other line,
so i had to do it page by page).
yup, there it was:

# If COLLAPSE_BR_TAGS is set FALSE, Lynx will not collapse serial BR tags.
# Note that the valid way to insert extra blank lines in HTML is via a PRE
# block with only newlines in the block.
# The default is defined in userdefs.h, and can be overridden here.
#
#COLLAPSE_BR_TAGS:TRUE

so i replaced the last line with  COLLAPSE_BR_TAGS:FALSE ,
tried the pages again & all was ok, as with 2-6.
the source revealed that indeed the writers had used  <br><br>  at those places

so what's the problem? -- several things:

(1) this is new to 2-7: i can't find it in  lynx.cfg  for 2-6.
    why is it not flagged as new?

(2) clearly at least 2 serious & generally well-written newspapers
    use  <br><br>  habitually instead of  <p> :
    why would anyone want to make 2-7 LESS able than 2-6
    to cope with diversity on the WWW ?
    there's hardly anything pernicious about the practice, after all.

(3) the 2-7  lynx.cfg  above says

      the valid way to insert extra blank lines in HTML is
      via a PRE block with only newlines in the block :

    what is the authority for this statement?
    i have checked under  HTML 2.0  in the 2-7 Help
    & also in the Beginner's Guide to HTML
    & can find no mention of treating  <br><br>  as if it were  <br> .
    taking them literally is the natural & rational thing to do.

(4) has there been any demand for this change expressed in Lynx-Dev?
    has there even been discussion of it, more than briefly & long ago?

(5) at least if someone believing they had HTML 2.0 authority decided to do it
    why did they not leave the old 2-6 practice as the default?

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