Re: lynx-dev the necessity of numbering each line in textarea if "links and form fields are numbered"

[Gene Collins]

Rather than eliminate the numbering of all text areas in a form, why not
change the rendering of forms so that only one form field is allowed on
a line?  Numbering of form fields is especially useful to blind people,
as it allows them to jump to a particular place in the form, without
having to traverse the intire form or page using the arrow keys.  For
that matter, from my standpoint as a blind user, it would be useful if
Lynx had a mode where by the fields in a form would not be edited until
the user pressed enter on the field, and pressing enter after the edit
would accept the edits.  This would allow the user to move between links
and form fields randomly, without having to use the arrow keys to get
out of a form.  I don't speak C, so I have no idea how difficult or
simple theese suggestions would be to implement, but I would certainly
find them to be useful.  It would seem to me that changing the way forms
are rendered would not only solve the problems you mention, but would
also make the information more readable for blind folks.

There are probably a Zillion reasons for not rerendering forms, the two
biggest ones I can think of are that the author's originally intended
appearence of the page is changed, and if the form has many fields, it
would mean the user would have to scroll through more screens of
information.  Perhaps vertical form rerendering could be made an option
that could be turned on and off from the options page, lynx.cfg file and
the command line.

Just some grist for the mill.

Gene Collins (address@hidden)

>
> 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? 
>
> 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 regards,
>  -Vlad
>