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Re: LYNX-DEV Supression of messages in Lynx


From: Al Gilman
Subject: Re: LYNX-DEV Supression of messages in Lynx
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 17:09:04 -0500 (EST)

Sorry to sound so severe.  But you still don't seem to have
absorbed the Lynx ethos or the significance of the GNU Public
License under which it is made available to you.

If you want help modifying Lynx, you really need to listen to
ideas as to how your modification can be a general improvement.
You don't have the speech users now [but you're at risk of
violating of the ADA if you don't have the capability to have
such users].  We (i.e. Lynx) do have speech users.  I was just
trying to inform you of how your mod could be viewed as a plus
for the program and hence enthusicastically supported.

Legally, at the minimum, you are required to share your patches.

Morally, you should make a reasonable effort to do your changes
in the way that has the broadest utility.  If you convince the
development team to incorporate your patches, you get free
maintenance after that.  Do you want to be maintaining your
patches forever, or do you want us to do it?

It is true that you can't do all what you want with configuration
variables.  There are people on the list who have done it all
before (not me) and who operate freenets.

The compile time fiddles to take Lynx private (offer an opaque
interface for anonymous users) are well understood but not well
documented because the people who have to defend Unix systems
from hackers are paranoid, shall I say.

So the knowledge you seek is probably out here somewhere.

But you will have to motivate somebody to divulge it.  Better.

Al

to follow up on what Eric Anderson said:

> Please do not put words into my mouth. We are not trying to do ANYTHING
> to our customers. And we do not see them as Dumb.
> 
> We are using Lynx ONLY as an HTML viewer for an HTML based help system
> for our product. They will not be attached to any other servers and will
> not need any other access other than the help files we provide.
> Therefore, Lynx has been "distilled" via every configuration setting I
> could find, to prevent users from getting confused, when all they are
> supposed to be doing with it is viewing our help documentation. There is
> no attachment to the web, or to any servers. All displayed files will be
> local. 
> 
> We have no speech users. Most of our users are people working in data
> entry, order entry and warehouses. The total time they will actually use
> LYNX will be a matter of minutes - to look up a help topic, follow any
> related links to the info they want, print it(maybe) and get back to our
> system.
> 
> Therefore I do not see that we are inhibiting our users from seeing the
> web. We are also not saying they are, or trying to keep them dumb, but
> rather only attempting to make the interface between our product and
> Lynx (as help viewer) as seamless and unconfusing as possible.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> 

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