Re: LYNX-DEV bug or "feature"? :-)

[Klaus Weide]

On Mon, 11 Aug 1997, Michael Plump wrote:

> I have noticed one problem with the version of lynx I am using (2.7.1. w/
> FOTEMODS from around 7/20 or so...).  Most programs update the access time
> of the user's tty anytime a key is pressed by the user.  This is how 'w'
> calculates the idle time: by comparing the access time of the users' ttys
> against the current time.
> 
> Well, for some reason lynx does not do this.  In other words, a user in
> lynx, no matter how active he/she is will be marked as idle by 'w'.  The
> problem I was having with this is that I wrote a program to keep track of
> active users on my system and it was getting way out of line.  I also know
> of several programs that log users off if they have been idle too long;
> all these programs would not work with lynx.

I assume you are have compiled lynx with the Slang library.
Slang opens "/dev/tty" (NOT /dev/tty1 or whatever the specific device file
is) and reads user input from that new file descriptor (as long as Lynx
remains in curses-on mode).  I expect you'll find the same behavior in
other slang applications.

There's nothing I can think of lynx can (or should) do about this.
You may want to talk to the slang author about it, if you think it is a
serious enough problem.  However, you can compile lynx with ncurses, which
doesn't have this behavior (well at least on my system).  Note that color
is supported also with (n)curses (although somewhat differently) in the
developent code at <URL:http://sol.slcc.edu/lynx/current/>,
if you have an appropriate (n)curses version.


       Klaus

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