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Re: lynx-dev Forms Word Wrap Problem with Lynx


From: Klaus Weide
Subject: Re: lynx-dev Forms Word Wrap Problem with Lynx
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 1999 02:18:19 -0500 (CDT)

On Thu, 22 Jul 1999, Barry Smith wrote:
> We are having a small problem with Lynx.  Users are complaining about 
> some forms that we have set up on our intranet.  In a text area, they 
> have enough room to type a paragraph or two.  The problem is that the 
> text box allows them to enter more text then fits in the window.  So, 
> when they want to preview what they've typed, they have to move back up 
> to each line and arrow left and arrow right to see the whole thing.
> 
> In Internet Explorer, there are no left-right scroll bars and you can see 
> everything you type.  Since it's on the intranet, there is no access from 
> the outside world.  I pasted the HTML of the form below.  We are running 
> SCO 5.05 with Netscape Fast Start server.  Lynx is at version 2.7.1 (per 
> the = key).
> 
> It appears that you're up to 2.8.2.  I'm not sure what's involved with 
> upgrading on SCO, but I'll run it past our Sysadmin if that is the 
> answer.

You should definitely look at 2.8.2 with its various additions relating
to textareas (editing with external editor, automatic adding of lines...).

You probably want something like automatic text wrapping, but that just
isn't there (and not easy to add).

As an alternative, the users could be prevented from adding lines that
are too long.  The mechanism for that is already there: for text INPUT
fields lynx implements a MAXLENGTH attribute.  It is not recognized
for TEXTAREA (in accordance with HTML 4.0), but if you use lynx only
internally, modifying the source to get a version that supports it
anyway wouldn't be difficult (or you could just hardwire some value
in, but that sounds like a bad idea - no flixibility at all).  I don't
know how this would interact with the external editor invocation of
2.8.2 though.

You can try <INPUT MAXLENGTH=n ...> to see how it acts.  It rejects
input beyond the maximum with a statusline message.  It might be a
good idea to add an audible warning, so folks don't just continue
typing and having the characters dropped.

Actually, just adding an old-fashioned audible (or "visible bell")
warning after some column is exceeded might be enough, probably better
than *enforcing* a maximum length.  I guess that would go in function
form_getstr.

This would go against the "official" tradition of lynx which has
always been a quiet program...

Btw. in 2.8.3dev.N development code there are alternative key functions

 #KEYMAP:???:LPOS_PREV_LINK # Like PREV_LINK, last column pos if form input
 #KEYMAP:???:LPOS_NEXT_LINK # Like NEXT_LINK, last column pos if form input

(not mapped by default) that can make it a bit nicer to go up/down
through overlong textarea lines.  Although I realize you would prefer
to eliminate them completely.

   Klaus



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