lynx-dev design of L)ist-links page

[Al Gilman]

From the discussions in progress in the WAI, I would like to
introduce some ideas.

One function of the list-links display is that it exposes what is
in the URL for cases when the author has not provided any clue as
to where the link goes in the link contents (outside of an
image).  That is an error recovery perspective.  The following is
a more positive approach to try to forestall the need for the
fixup.

I have been trying to think of a presentation which would put
link text in the context of where the link is going.  Not just
the machine code of the URL, which may contain machine-generated
garbage, but in the context of a TITLE for the link target, if
such is known.

The following is a bit verbose, but a straightforward version
that Lynx could easily do is that list items in the l)ist-links
display would contain:

[<link-number>] Anchor-text 
  URL
  <TITLE of destination if no #fragment, 
    superceded by contents of #fragment anchor if known
    and non-empty.>

This would increase the proofreading-for-effective-communication
value of Lynx.

One of the few features that
        a) has been getting positive attention in the User Agent
        Working Group and
        b) did _not_ come from Lynx first

..is the marginal table-of-contents summary such as what IE give
you.

Note that pwWebSpead also formulates a page abstract something
like the Nescape InfoPage (which incorporates a links list) which
is spoken to a user before the user descends into the page that
the author wrote.

The only change I would make in the above formula to turn it into
"my ideal skim-reading page" is that I would include the full
line(s) of text from the formatted page where the link text is
found as opposed to just the anchor element contents, because the
way people make anchors the interpretation depends on the context
and not solely the anchor content.

This would make it a great tool for skimming pages and also for
checking the continuity of how the story flows through the links.

Al