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

[Phil Helms]

On Sun, 6 Apr 1997, Bela Lubkin wrote:

> 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.

Although I'm not a Lynx developer, I agree wholeheartedly with the idea
of a more "off-the-road" Lynx, one that doesn't always require nicely
paved highways to get to its destination.

> 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.

I disagree that Lynx moving in the direction of greater robustness
is unfortunate.  The Internet was originally designed to be a robust
communications medium.  I see no problem with Lynx following suit as
a robust Web browser.

> 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?

If there is a need for a text-only Web browser (and I believe there is),
and if one such browser is to be Lynx, then Lynx needs to do what it has
to in order to thrive in the not-so-clean world of the Web.  To paraphrase
part of a well-known quote: It's not what goes into a browser that makes
it unclean.
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