Re: lynx-dev Lynx 2.7.1 and 2.8 refuse to render certain HTML documents

[Heather Stern]

I ate the fortune cookie first, then read what Jason F. McBrayer wrote:
> >>>>> "HS" == Heather Stern <address@hidden> writes:
> HS> The server having stated it wants text/plain, Lynx is honoring it...
> As it should.

And I agree!  Just so we know I'm in the choir.

> HS> I'd say this is a server misconfig, and the site's unix or Apache
> HS> distribution bug that its default config is broken, or maybe a bug
> HS> in their sysadmin :) ... but we could probably add a user override
> HS> option to assume that URLs ending in .htm and .html should always
> HS> be rendered.
> 
> That would be a very bad thing to do.  There are constant complaints
> on comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html about the fact that MSIE does
> that.  In any case, file names, URLs, and file types are three
> separate things, and we shouldn't do anything that would conflate the
> three any more than absolutely necessary.  

An *option* for the user to do this moderately stupid thing would let
certain folks control their web view better.  See below about extensions.

Hmmm... good point... perhaps we could add it to the type of warnings.
(Oh no. A "flame bad code" mode which warns of every web mismanagement
such as what kind of broken HTML, possible server misconfig of MIME, etc.  
Forget I thought it... unless we want a bloat mode.)  Perhaps we shouldn't!

Maybe a better thing would be to have a "render dammit" key which would
force an attempt to render the present page.  That way, it's sent like
the server said to... but the user can override it AFTER it has arrived.

(This might have side effects, see the caching thread.)

> Using file extensions for
> file typing is an abomination, and since the web has a perfectly
> satisfactory alternative (mime types), we should do file typing the
> right way.  It _is_ reasonable to assume that the server is
> misconfigured, but that's a matter for the sysmonster, not for Lynx to
> handle, since Lynx can't know what was really intended.  

Theoretically with MIME types we shouldn't need extensions at all... except,
as far as I can tell, that's how most servers determine what MIME type to
state during HTTP!  

Like I said, a bug in the sysadmin.  

> For example,
> a site might send some HTML files as text/plain as sample code that is
> meant to be viewed unrendered for educational purposes; trying to
> outsmart the server would break that.

Actually the most common deliberate use of this I've seen is for .pl to be 
configured to ship as text/plain, so that it would be available to developers 
to fetch, rather than attempt to run on the server.  This is a very good use 
for CPAN mirrors as far as *I* am concerned.

  . | .   Heather Stern                  |         address@hidden
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