Re: LYNX-DEV Re: highlighting bug in color slang version

[Nelson Henry Eric]

                                                 [...] many terminals
> > > or emulaters intended to be supported by Lynx had problems with
> > > combinations of attributes, regardless of what was in termcap/termlib.
                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I cannot speak about the past, but I very much doubt that that statement
is true anymore.  Having a situation which pretty much forces me to install
ncurses and apply Rob's character styles approach to color support, I have
found that one cannot separate the production of a correct and fully
functional terminfo database entry from the proper (=desired) rendering
of documents by Lynx.

The problem as I see it is that writing a terminfo file perfectly suited
to a physical terminal is, for the `clueless', a downright chore.  I mean
in my file I have the entry for sgr=\E[0%?%p1%p6%|%t;1%;%?%p2%t;4%;%?%p1%p
3%|%t;7%;%?%p4%t;5%;m%?%p9%t\016%e\017%;, which I seem to need to get color,
but it barely works at the best (destroys underlining; what else, who knows).
As far as I know, this is the multi-attribute define.  If you can't get this
one right, no amount of hacking to Lynx is going to pull you out.

How does one systematically go about writing this and the 100 or so other
defines?  (There're not all so easy as bel=^G,.)  So what I'm really getting
at is that for Lynx to carry on it's tradition of serving the masses, and at
the same time offer flawless rendering when using the (n)curses library,
training/tutoring resources either need to be produced or pointers to such
resources need to be in the distribution package.

> > the terminal descriptions are wrong then - why change the program to
> > accommodate bad data?
> 
> It seems that that is what a lot of Lynx development is all about. :)

And what an admirable mission it is!  It's not just features, Lynx is
everyman's browser, and Netscape and MSIE cannot and never will be able
to say that ==> . <==

__Henry

PS  Rob, if you're listening, could the problem with my screen not clearing
after q)uiting Lynx have to do with the physical terminal understanding
`ESC[Ps;40 (to 47);Ps m' to mean the background color for the _whole_ screen
and not just the attribute for the individual character?  There is no way to
set the background attribute on a per-character basis on this terminal.  A
seemingly related problem I have is wrapping of hightlight (reverse?) so that
what `should' be a blank (ie, normal attribute) left margin shows up as
highlight (reverse?).
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