LYNX-DEV Bold and underlined text

[Michael Sokolov]

   Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
   
   In my previous posting, I wrote that I were going to investigate the
curses problem. I have looked at the source code for more and discovered
that the BSD support for bold and underlined text is half-way. The
appropriate entries are present in the termcap database, but the curses
library doesn't use them. This is not a problem for more since it doesn't
use curses and uses termcap directly.
   Strictly speaking, there is nothing wrong with not using curses and
using termcap directly. The curses library is only a labor-saving device.
If you don't want to use it, you don't have to. The terminal-independence
is provided by termcap, not curses, so not using curses doesn't make a
program ill-behaved or system-specific.
   In theory, one could lift the bold/underline code from more and plop it
into Lynx. However, this would cause some curses code to be duplicated, and
there will be a mix of curses and non-curses code. The latter IS a dirty
programming practice.
   I think that a different solution would be better. When I do away with
my current temporary FreeBSD system, get a complete 4.4BSD tape or tarball
from UCB, and set up my pure BSD system, I will create a collection of
minor BSD patches and keep it on my anonymous FTP site. One of the patches
will be for curses. I'll take the standout() and standend() functions and
make their equivalents for bold and underlined text. Adding such equivalent
functions to curses, as opposed to adding them to apps like Lynx, won't
cause code duplication, since they'll use existing termcap read-in code.
   Each of the patches in my collection will be completely independent of
others, and one will be able to add any of them to his/her BSD system
without any trouble. When I write that patch, it would be possible to add a
new target to the static Lynx Makefile for 4.4BSD with that patch.
   A side note. Given my earlier argument about BSD purity, you may wonder
who come I'm planning to patch BSD. However, my patches will be much less
significant than the changes introduced by, say, FreeBSD. Also they will be
completely independent of each other, and a user will have the choice of
which patches to apply and which not to apply.
   
   Sincerely,
   Michael Sokolov
   Phone: 216-646-1864
   ARPA Internet SMTP mail: address@hidden
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