Re: LYNX-DEV This weekend's hacking

[Laura Eaves]

> From: Andrew Kuchling <address@hidden>
> Date: Wed, 7 May 1997 16:40:54 -0400 (EDT)
>...
>       * With multibookmarks enabled, have -book=c take you to
> bookmark file C; -book prompts the user as it does now.
>       
>       * Saving cookies to a file on exit.  One question: where
> should cookies be saved by default?  ~/.lynxcookies?  Netscape creates
> a private directory ~/.netscape and puts lots of stuff in it,
> including the cookies file; perhaps Lynx should create its own private
> directory, too?

It think a private dir is a good idea.  The default bookmark file and .lynxrc
already clutter up $HOME.  I also create a .book/ dir for my multiple bookmark
files.  Maybe everything not beginning with / should go into $HOME/.lynx/ by
default instead of $HOME.

>...
>       * There's also a suggestion from David Combs to allow sending
> trace output to a file.  That's not hard to do, but it'll make a
> massive patch; right now there are many bits of code scattered all
> over the place which do 'if (TRACE) fprintf(stderr, "whatever");', and
> they'd *all* have to be changed to print to some file, which might be
> stderr, or might not.  Most Unix users can run "lynx -trace 2>err",
> which sends stderr to a file while leaving stdout alone; however, I
> don't know if Mac/Win95/VMS users have that sort of option.  Should
> this be added for their sake?

I know there have been subsequent coments on this in this thread.
But rather than butch up the code to change all the calls to fprintf,
why not just reopen stdout?
        close(2);
        open debug file
-- or would this only work on UNIX?  (I've not written code for DOS/VMS/W32).

Also, I think setting the trace file should be configurable at runtime --
either by putting it on the options menu or by having the ^T command prompt
you for a file name.  (No file name means no change.)
Then the user doens't have to exit lynx and restart with a different command
line to do a trace.  (Sometimes it's hard to retrace one's steps to the page
where the problem is.)  Specifying a trace file name on the command line
is pretty much the same as redirecting stderr.
--le

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