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Re: LYNX-DEV RE: error recovery for formparsing -- BETTER SOLUTION


From: Bela Lubkin
Subject: Re: LYNX-DEV RE: error recovery for formparsing -- BETTER SOLUTION
Date: Sun, 6 Apr 1997 01:42:35 -0800

Wayne Buttles wrote:

> Will lynx be better or worse off when it accepts *and promotes* god-aweful
> HTML like Netscape?

Klaus Weide wrote:

> Another step in making Lynx's parsing more like that of the abovementioned 
> vendor's(s') products, unfortunately.

Ahem.

Wayne: yes, Lynx will be better off.  Better off when it can cope with
the overwhelming mass of bad HTML without Lynx's users having to
continually fight with uncaring web page authors.  Better off when Lynx
users do not carry a reputation of being backwards whiners.  Better off
when web page owners won't automatically dismiss complaints from Lynx
users.

Klaus: I agree that it is unfortunate that Lynx has to move in this
direction.  Yet it does have to.  An overwhelming majority of web page
authors do not care what their pages look like in anything but Netscape
Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer.  For that matter, a
significant number of sites assume that you are using *one* of those two
and won't even respond to breakage with respect to the other.

This gets down to a basic philosophical question.  Is Lynx a tool to
promote better HTML authorship, or is it a tool to let people access web
pages through a text interface?

I hope nobody really believes the former.  Such programs are called HTML
validators, and Lynx certainly isn't an HTML validator.  If you want to
take it in that direction, please give the resulting program a new name,
because it won't be useful to people like me who just want a fast,
usable browser.

What Laura suggested sounds great to me.  Foteos raises valid technical
details about the implementation -- and, I think I understood, he also
produced an implementation which circumvents those details.  Let's use
it.

>Bela<
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