Re: lynx-dev next/prev link

[Philip Webb]

990207 Klaus Weide wrote: 
> On Sat, 6 Feb 1999, Larry W. Virden wrote:
>> If someone were to figure out enough about lynx internals
>> to fix the way next/prev link works so that they actually move
>> from link to link instead of from page to page,
>> would applying that code break any important processing?
> I don't consider the current behavior broken.
> It is how PREV_LINK and NEXT_LINK always worked in lynx.

that's hardly rational: clearly, it's always been broken.
it's another example of the hastily hacked coding which surfaces sometimes
& is either left asis because created by Heroes in the Golden Age or ...

> I am used to being able to use Down Arrow repeatedly
> and eventually see all the text.

... because someone has got used to it & is too lazy to learn a new habit.
ok, yes, (smile)'s all round.
 
> Whether the functions should be named differently is another question.

the name is correct: the code doesn't do what it should.
this has been discussed in several threads recently:
 NEXT_LINK  should goto the next link, however far down the document,
&  NEXT_PAGE  should goto the next page, regardless of links:
users should be free to bind each of them to whatever keys they choose;
as for textareas, we now have  ^v  to escape from them,
besides being able to number links thro' Options to skip past them.
 
> TAB acts different from other keys,
> even if they all show NEXT_LINK in the 'K'eymap page.
> See FASTTAB in  LYMainLoop.c .
BL> The #ifdef FASTTAB code which explicitly tests " c=='\t' "
BL> is wrongly hard-coded.
BL> Make it go through the usual command binding paths.

this has to be another bit of primitive hackery: BL is right.

Lynx developed from nothing thro' a great deal of dedicated work by FM,
who kept adding features which generally worked adequately,
but sometimes never got back to perfecting them.
today, we're in a position to clean things up when we come across them,
as FM surely hoped & assumed someone would do later on.

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