Re: lynx-dev LYNX re Control-D abort

[Mike Castle]

Amazingly enough David Combs said:
> Why was ^D chosen for this?  What's wrong with ^C --
> or is there some problem with those user-accounts where all
> they can do is run lynx, and maybe cannot ^C.

c-D is what's often used to exit a shell.  Perhaps whoever put in this
particular feature wanted a keymap that corresponded to what they use for
that?  Anyway, it works as advertised for me (though I admit to using
dev3).

c-C often send an interrupt to a program.  Traditionally that means
interrupt the current work the program is doing and return to a known state
(a awesome example of this is trn.  Use trn to go into a large group, say
comp.jobs, and start a search with /foo or something... then hit c-C.  It
doesn't exit trn, instead it stops the search and returns to a menu.  If
you hit c-C at a MENU, then trn uninstalls the signal handler until the
next key is hit, or so it appears from testing, I didn't analyze the code).

So, in general, c-C should not be used to immediately exit an interactive
program, but instead INTERRUPT the current processing.

Oh, btw, I just noticed that if I start up lynx, then hit c-C I get:

Exiting via interrupt: %d


Shouldn't it be putting a number in there?  Also, isn't calling most
functions dis-allowed inside an asychronous signal handler?

> At any rate, ^D is not so hot for those of us who often
> use VI.  

Fortuntely, you can start lynx with an alternative lynx.cfg that you set up
your own KEYMAP with.

> SUGGESTION: "do you really want to quit?", just like q has,
> but programmed at the lowest level in c, no subroutine calls
> except the most basic, so there is no loss of guarantee
> of being able to get "out".

But that sort of defeats the purpose of "unconditionally."  Sort of like
hitting 'X' in elm.  I don't want it to ask me.

mrc
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