Re: LYNX-DEV Supression of messages in Lynx

[Al Gilman]

to follow up on what Eric Anderson said:

> For the most part, our users are not computer savvy. Out of sight, out
> of mind. If they see the path and filenames, it's just asking for
> trouble. If they don't, I'm sure it won't even cross their minds that
> these are all stored in little html files...

Have you played with the message display time parameters, to make
them really short?  That is the only hack I can think of short of
getting into the code.  If you go into the code you can suppress
any message you care to.

There is a possibility that some speech users would appreciate
the capability to quash the most informational of messages.
There is an awful lot of listening to the spelling of URLs that
goes into using Lynx with a screen reader.

On the other hand, it sounds as though you think that not only
are your users dumb but that they had best stay that way.  It is
not clear that this policy would achieve consensus support on
this list.  One of the great things about Lynx is how it exposes
the way the web works, and provides a learning environment where
users can gradually take control of a very powerful interaction
with the internet with an amazingly small amount of study.

I myself am a convicted user bigot.  So I would offer that if you
are providing your users with a shell account, you need to
provide the support that comes with user questions about how that
works; and be glad you have Lynx on your side so you can tell
them a reasonably simple way to get done what they need to do.
Unless the service you are providing is defined as a captive
account where Lynx provides opaque access to predefined pages, do
not think you can limit the service you provide to the canned
clicks that you have programmed into pages.

It is not clear that what you are proposing to do (technically)
is not shortchanging your customers, in terms of service profile
definition.

Al Gilman