LYNX-DEV Re: Solaris compiling problem

[Michael Sokolov]

   Bruce,
   
   I don't know anything about Solaris (my UNIX system of choice is BSD),
but I know that problem in another context. I'm 99% sure that this problem
has nothing to do with the compiler. In Lynx, like in any WWW client, there
is a desire to render an HTML as fully as possible. Therefore, having
better screen control is an important issue in Lynx. In particular, Lynx
tries to use bold and underlined text. For some reason beyond me, the Lynx
developers think that the BSD curses library don't have these features.
Obviously, it does, as anyone who has ever run the man command (or the more
command on any file produced by nroff or groff -Tascii) on BSD can see. But
nonetheless, Lynx has a compilation option called -DFANCY_CURSES which is
required for these features to be available. Well, when I tried setting
that option on BSDI v2.1, I immediately got the exact same error messages
you have got about A_BOLD, A_UNDERLINE, and A_REVERSE being undefined.
Evidently, BSD implements these features in a different way and doesn't
support the System V way, while Lynx has evidently been written in the
System V camp.
   Apparently, your system has BSD-style curses too. What we really need is
to end this anti-BSD discrimination and make Lynx respect both "coasts"
(schools of thought) equally. In particular, make it support bold and
underlined text with BSD curses.
   According to the "Cursor Movement and Screen Updating Optimization: A
Library Package" document in the BSD documentation (PSD:19), curses doesn't
support these attributes. However, the more command proves the opposite. I
will investigate the issue and post the results to the list in a few days.
   
   Sincerely,
   Michael Sokolov
   Phone: 216-646-1864
   ARPA Internet SMTP mail: address@hidden
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