Re: LYNX-DEV Table toggle

[Michael Ritzert]

   On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Julian Rodriguez wrote:

   > On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Larry W. Virden, x2487 wrote:
   > 
   > > I doubt that lynx, with the code that now exists for it, will get any
   > > better than it is now.  Perhaps "Son of Lynx", designed and written
   > > from scratch to be a new super whoopie lisp/scheme/ml/hot language of
   > > the week based browser, may stir some student's interest in 
revolutionizing
   > > the web, but other than that, what we have now is what we will be living
   > > with, with the exception of evolutionary improvements such as Fote
   > > provided over the past few years.
   > 
   > Agreed.  We already have an incomplete implementation of coookie support;
   > why not partial table rendering?

   As I posted before, it appears that lynx uses a linear (one dimensional)
   model for rendering, so you could not (easily) create vertical sections,
   much less smaller boxes on the main grid.

   In order to investigate how to parse tables, I wrote an AWK script.  The
   lynx filter is not 100% there (it dupes /FORM and other tags, but I am
   working on it), but the plaintext now handles rowspans with colspans, etc. 
   So now I have something.  Lynx won't have internal table support until
   lynx can render within subscreens.  And at that point (if I haven't done
   so before) I will port my awk script to C and integrate it.

In my opinion it is not a bad idea do give some of the special
rendering tasks to subprocesses, notably tables, preprocessing of the
tabular layout of frames, java (either by using kaffe or by having
lynx executing the Linux specific solution You proposed in another
posting), javascript or even the M$$ specials.

Therefore: Why don't You port it to C earlier and supply it as part of the
lynx distribution? This would avoid firing up awk on each table, and a C
program should be a bit faster (which You might hardly notice on
modern machines).

   But for now, there is something, which allowed me to find all kinds of new
   HTML abuses and errors :).  And produce something that looks correct.

That's probably what most of the people asking for table support are
satisfied with.

Michael
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