"hidden" links (was Re: http://www.slcc.edu/lynx/html/todo-list.html) [lynx-dev]

[Michael Warner]

On or about 18 Apr, 1999, address@hidden
<address@hidden> wrote:

> On Sat, 17 Apr 1999, Michael Warner wrote:
> >On or about 17 Apr, 1999, Doug Kaufman
> ><address@hidden> wrote:
> >> You need to turn on "image links". While in lynx, you
> >> control this with the "*" key. It can also be set from your
> ...
> 
> >I don't think that's the problem.  They use an IMG in place
> >of link text, and the '*' key just gets the IMG url
> >(.../high_bidders.gif), not the url of the bidders list.
> >The link he wants is available as a "hidden link" on the
> >'L'inks page.  Using the "-hiddenlinks=merge" commandline
> 
> So what exactly is a hidden link?

Well, it turns out they weren't really the problem, either.
As I think Doug mentioned in an unquoted part, the mark-up
on the page is suspect, specifically some nested anchor
tags, I believe.  TagSoup takes care of it.

With SortaSGML, the link does show in the L)inks page as a
hidden link, which is where I went astray.

An "actual" hidden link could be like:

<a ...><IMG ... ALT=""></a> (I believe)

which gets picked up with "*".  No ALT at all gets "[LINK]"
as selectable text.

An empty link - <a ...></a> - would be the purest form of
hidden link.

> I mean, how does someone create a hidden link and why would they do so?
> (I presume it's not hidden in GUI browsers?)

I'd think the empty anchor form would be hidden, regardless.
I speculate they have some sort of page-maintenance
function, but I think the others are just poor authoring
practice, by and large.

> I may be wrong, but I'm under the impression that "image links" needs to
> be turned on for the case where an image is linked to a URL.. i.e. instead
> of a link being text, the link is a picture.. and since most people don't
> view images in links, this causes these types of links to be invisible.
> (..and causes confusion for Lynx users often..)

Confuses me, anyway.  I may still have some errors above,
but it's better than my first effort, at least.

-- 
Michael Warner          "You're cute when you're stupid"
<address@hidden>                                -- R.A. Miller