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Re: LYNX-DEV Since Lynx won't, what will?


From: Jonathan Sergent
Subject: Re: LYNX-DEV Since Lynx won't, what will?
Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 22:58:53 -0500

In message <address@hidden>, Jim Dennis writes:
 ]      One of the other enhancement requests I've seen at browser.org
 ]      is the one  calling  for   some  sort  of embedded   scripting
 ]      language.  

 ]      I followed that up with  the recommendation that we
 ]      TCL for this task 
    (?)
Who or what should we Tcl?

 ]      (since  TCL is  specifically designed to  be
 ]      embedded).  I've also recommended that  we look at ctk (curses
 ]      tk) since   it's  designed  to  work with  TCL   and  we could
 ]      seriously benefit  from the layout manager   for use in tables
 ]      (among other things).

[sorry, not going to format my email with nroff, deal with it :-]

The language is not what is causing problems with table support in Lynx,
instead the current "API" is, specifically the fact that it wasn't 
designed with things like tables or extensibility in mind, so it's not
just a matter of writing a function to calculate column widths and such.

I really don't think that the current Lynx code base can benefit from
having a Tcl (or Perl or Python or Scheme or INTERCAL) interpreter
slapped onto it.  I'm not convinced that scripting really belongs in
a browser.  

[no, I'm not trying to be language specific, so don't try to turn this
 into a "my language is better" thread; the language is immaterial to
 the point I'm trying to make]

Extensibility does make sense; however, like I say IMHO the Lynx design 
can't accomodate that very well.  It really would take lots and lots of 
rewriting to make it worthwhile, at which point it would become 
questionable as to whether it's worthwhile to keep the code that remains.

I'm not saying that we should throw away Lynx, just that it's not really
sensible to try to make it do some of the things that people want it to
do.

As always, feel free to prove me wrong!


$0.02,

-- 
Jonathan Sergent / address@hidden / address@hidden
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