Re: lynx-dev Lynx 2.7.1 bugs (fwd)

[Kevin Lowey]

On Fri, 5 Jun 1998, Philip Webb wrote:

> AG has replied very well to your comments; i'ld respond a bit differently:
> you should in any case update to 2-8 from  www.slcc.edu/lynx/release/ ,
> which represents  c 10 mths  improvements in all aspects of Lynx behaviour.
> as for your bugs, look in the Archive at  www.flora.org/lynx-dev/ ,
> where you will find both discussed in recent months;
> do feel free to take up the threads again on lynx-dev,
> where developers & users around the World meet & haggle.

Ok, I'll try this again but will mail the list this time. I tried
searching the "lynx-dev" archives, and found a few messages wondering why
their pages were suddenly centered aligned when they didn't ask for them
to be.  I belive it is the same problem I am describing. However, I didn't
find anything describing the problem with tables I was discussing.

We're using Lynx 2.7.1 and I'm trying to convince our systems programmers
to spend the time upgrading to 2.8. They think 2.7.1 is "good enough" for
now. I tell them there's some serious bugs (described below). They say,
"Well, does the new version fix the bugs". I have no idea. The release
notes don't mention them, and talking to some of the people they seem to
think these are not bugs and don't have to be addressed!!!! Can someone
tell me?

Problem 1:

 <table align="center">
 <tr><td>text</td></tr>
 </table>

The "text" is centered. It shouldn't be. The 'align=center" option for the
TABLE tag means align the table as a whole on the page (in this case
centered). It does NOT mean to align all the text WITHIN the table.
Unfortunately, Lynx is misbehaving and is aligning the text centered which
makes things look really ugly.

The only time the TEXT in the table should be centered is if the
align="center" is part of the <th> <td> or <tr> tags. The <table align=>
tag though is for positioning the TABLE, not the text inside it. 


Now I know, people will say "Lynx doesn't really support tables". Fine,
then do what the older version of lynx did, completely ignore all the
table tags EXCEPT the </tr> (which is treated like a <br>). I can live
with that. That's the correct way for a web browser to handle features it
cannot render.  Implementing it to do something completely different from
all the other browsers and the HTML standard is NOT correct. That's
something Microsoft would do #8-) 


PROBLEM 2:

<ul>
  <li> Paragraph one starts here alka lka as a a lka l 
       lk  a a  aa a lkjhaslfdkhj adsflkjh aslkjsafd lkj flj 
       afdslk jhasd flkja slkj fdlkjhsa lkjah lkashj al skjh a
       <p>
      
       lklka lkja a alk jsalkj sa lkj lkjsalkj a lkj lkjlkj
       lkj lkj aalkjh lkj lkj lj lkj.

       <p>
   <li>Second point goes here
</ul>
  
This should produce (and used to in the older Lynx):

    *  Paragraph one starts here alka lka as a a lka l 
       lk  a a  aa a lkjhaslfdkhj adsflkjh aslkjsafd lkj flj 
       afdslk jhasd flkja slkj fdlkjhsa lkjah lkashj al skjh a
      
       lklka lkja a alk jsalkj sa lkj lkjsalkj a lkj lkjlkj
       lkj lkj aalkjh lkj lkj lj lkj.

    *  Second point goes here

Unfortunately for some reason the <p> is being ignored. I checked in the
DTDs for HTML 3.2 and it says that it is legal to have "block oriented"
tags inside the <li>, including the <p> tag, but Lynx is ignoring it and
is making ugly stuff that looks like this:


    *  Paragraph one starts here alka lka as a a lka l 
       lk  a a  aa a lkjhaslfdkhj adsflkjh aslkjsafd lkj flj 
       afdslk jhasd flkja slkj fdlkjhsa lkjah lkashj al skjh a
       lklka lkja a alk jsalkj sa lkj lkjsalkj a lkj lkjlkj
       lkj lkj aalkjh lkj lkj lj lkj.
    *  Second point goes here


I really like lynx. I use it combined with the edit function and the PICO
editor on our systems to teach people how to develop in HTML so they learn
to develop for text-only browsers, not just fancy graphic front ends. 
However, it doesn't help my teaching when the LYNX program has bugs that
produce unexpected (or worse INCORRECT) results. That just turns people
off from lynx even more, and thus away from well designed web pages. 


So, can ANYONE tell me if the 2.8 version of Lynx fixes these bugs? If it
doesn't, can anyone tell me how I can report these bugs to the lynx
developers so they are addressed in 2.8.1? (or did I just do that?)

Thanks,

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   <http://duke.usask.ca/~lowey/>  -  Phone: (306) 966-4826