Re: lynx-dev jumping around

[Klaus Weide]

On Tue, 13 Apr 1999, Philip Webb wrote:

> and another one: i have an URL in my bookmark file & now jumps file
>  
> http://www.tor.ec.gc.ca/forecasts/forecast.cgi?city=Toronto&province=Ontario
> (of course, it's in the proper anchor setting).
> when i use the bookmark or jumps listing, there's no problem;
> when i enter  j  then  w  (the short-cut), i get a screen telling me
> i haven't entered the full URL: it seems to be  www.tor.ec.gc.ca/  only;
                                  =======================================
What do you mean by that?  www.tor.ec.gc.ca/ is not a URL.  I doubt that
the INFO page says
        URL: www.tor.ec.gc.ca/

Anyway, the basic reason for inconsistencies is that Shortcut files[*]
are being read by two completely different mechanisms[**].  It's a miracle
that they at least sometimes come to the same result...

  A. normal HTML parsing: treated like any other text/html file, with
     everything that entails.  That's what is used when you actually
     'go to' or 'jump to' (with '?') the shortcut file.
  B. the 'shortcut way': file is read *once* (on first use of the jump
     key command), a list of (shortcut name, target URL) pairs is built,
     the list doesn't change until program exit.
     Mechanism B doesn't know much about HTML.  That's why it may break
     if the format is too different from the samples (similar problem
     as with bookmark files).  It also doesn't know anything about entity
     unescaping, the URL strings are just used as they are found.  (And
     if they are not given as full absolute URLs, they may later be taken
     as relative to a different base than when following the link as in
     method A.)

The problem in this specific case seems to be the '&'.  Yes, it's
more correct than just writing '&'.  But mechanism B doesn't understand
it, and simple '&' should also work for method A.  So just change it. 

[*] Yes, you can have more than one, if you have some free keys;
    for example I have 'j'/'J' for main shortcut file, 'D' for Documentation
    shortcuts.  (lynx.cfg says how, after KEYMAP section.)
[**] Actually, three mechanisms for the Jumpfile itself: add one for
     reading it from lynx.cfg.

> even stranger,  =  tells me i have reached the proper destination,
> which is a simple Toronto weather outline & forecast.

What's the URL according to the INFO page?  Does it have '&'?
Or does it have '&' only in the *INFO page's SOURCE*?  (Look at
the real file, not what lynx shows with '\', if you use one of the
new fancy source display thingies.)

> as before, Lynx2-8-2dev.19 on IRIX 5.3 .


    Klaus