Re: lynx-dev Found DNS lookup strange problem in Lynx 2.8.1 Win 95 versio

[Klaus Weide]

On Fri, 11 Jun 1999 address@hidden wrote:

> I tested Lynx on Win NT 4 PC with SP4. This PC has no DNS entry.
> For lynx.cfg, I use proxy server setting of http://10.217.1.5:8080/
> 
> If I do
> lynx http://www.pcworld.com, able to access web site. DNS resolve by proxy
> lynx www.pcworld.com, unable to access web site as DNS fails. i.e. resolve by 
> PC
> lynx, press g, www.pcworld.com, unable to access web site as DNS fails, i.e.
> resolve by PC
> lynx, press g, http://www.pcworld.com, able to access web site. DNS resolved 
> by
> proxy.
> 
> I did not test on Windows 95 PC, but I suspect the result to be the same.

That is working as designed - complete URLs are the preferred form of
input.[*]

If you just type www.pcworld.com, Lynx doesn't know what it is.  So it
checks whether www.pcworld.com is a hostname and whether there is a file
or directory named "www.pcworld.com".  If neither check returns true,
access fails.

You don't need a DNS entry for the PC in order to resolve names, you
just need access to a valid name server.  (Disregard this sentence if in
MS lingo "DNS entry" means something different than for the rest of the
world.)  I guess you could add frequently uses hosts to the HOSTS file,
as an imperfect workaround (with the expected problems: if the
server changes address in the future your entries will be wrong).

[*] Different browsers have different heuristics for completing incomplete
input.  Things work best with full URLs, you tell the program exactly what
you want and (hopefully) get what you want.

Somebody may want to improve the heuristics used by Lynx.  (But it's
good enough for me - I know what to expect, no unexpected surprises
because the program thinks it's cleverer than the user.)


  Klaus