Re: LYNX-DEV LYNX: need for 'symbolic links' WITHIN lynx

[Jim Dennis]

> 
> lynx: possible need for "symbolic links":
> I don't know how often this happens to
> lynx users, but I have the problem.

        This is more of a request for an "offline
        browsing" feature.

> I download a huge tree of .html-files, consisting
> of a java-tutorial from sun.  Unfortunately,
> some of the links (all of those that
> refer to the "api") point to the sun www-site
> ON THE WEB -- rather than to a relative
> location (which works out to be on my
> machine, where I have downloaded the tree
> to).  (All the others, to the text itself, work fine, are relative)

        I don't know if the <BASE> construct will help
        you in this case.

        One trick would be to temporarily add the necessary
        host names to your localhost /etc/hosts file (as links
        to your localhost loopback interface.  Then configure
        your locahost web server (httpd) to serve your downloaded
        pages under the (bogus) name.
        
        I supposed you could even do IP aliasing on your loopback
        interface -- using lots of addresses in the 127.0.0.* 
        range (you have a whole, virtual, class A network full of 
        address devoted to your loopback interfaces after all).
        That would allow you to have your local httpd virtual hosting
        several sites that you've downloaded into different trees.

        This is a bit ungainly to set up -- but vastly preferable
        to modifying each file by hand or even to writing perl/awk
        scripts to *try* to automate the changes to each.

        The more general solution would be to have a caching
        proxy server which could be configured to treat your
        DL'd copy/mirror of another site as valid cache entries
        -- or even to have some sort of caching proxy web server
        with "look ahead" or "pre-fetch" or "mirror" features.

        In all cases you'd, presumably, like to be able to set 
        it to work in "disconnected" mode.

--
Jim Dennis  (800) 938-4078              address@hidden
Proprietor, Starshine Technical Services:  http://www.starshine.org
        PGP  1024/2ABF03B1 Jim Dennis <address@hidden>
        Key fingerprint =  2524E3FEF0922A84  A27BDEDB38EBB95A 
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