Re: lynx-dev the necessity of numbering each line in textarea

[Heather]

>  When "links and form fields are numbered" is in effect, each line in textarea
> is numbered. When growing textarea, the numbers of all links below textarea
> are recalculated (and fixed on the screen immediately). It's obvious, that
> when the number of digits in the number of given link increases (eg its number
> was 99 and became 100) the line in which this link starts becomes wider. If
> there are several links in the line, in worst case the line will be become
> wider by the number of links starting in that line.
>  Seems the code currently present is buggy (and it works bad with colorstyles
> too). Also this concept makes any rendering unreliable -e.g. justified texts
> or upcoming rendered tables. Seems renumbering link numbers due to textarea
> growth is the only case when the HText structure changes (ie the rendered
> presentation of document without form contents) - this inhibits the use of
> very smart memory allocation schemes.
>  If each line of textarea wasn't numbered, then (obviously) all problems
> listed here will be solved, and this will allow more features to be added
> without additional (and seems redundant) programmer pain. Keep in mind that in
> the ideal case the text should be re-rendered if the number of digits changes
> in the number of some anchor.
> 
>  So, the question is:
>   is it so useful to number each line in textarea? 

I have to admit I do not use numbered links so take the usefulness of my 
opinion as you may.

I think it isn't - I think textarea should be changed into some stateful
subarea.  (This is why the idea of making textinputs have to be invoked 
drew my attention, I was wondering if they meant they were going to do
what I always thought textarea would be.)  Um, I'm not awake yet, so I
hope that made sense.

Too bad we can't number things 11a, 11b  ... 11h for example as textarea
sublinks, assuming 11 were link number for an example page's textarea.  But
I suspect it would lead to confusion, trying to figure if someone merely typed
these numbers by accident, then wanted to do whatever b does, for example.

>  Please state your opinion.
>  I placed a sample page showing the problems (with instructions  how to see
> them) at 
>  www.hippo.ru/~hvv/lynx/links-renumbering-problems.html

Best of luck detangling 

* Heather