lynx-dev "gettidy.sh": why must one define proxy before evoking Lynx?

[Henry Nelson]

Before your keyboard shorts out, can you explain in layman's terms
the reason why defining the proxies in lynx.cfg will not work?

# o Define the following environment variables *outside of lynx*,
#   before starting lynx.  Putting them in lynx.cfg *does not work*.
#      xhttp_proxy='lynxcgi://localhost/PATH/TO/gettidy.sh?/'
#      xxhttp_proxy='lynxcgi://localhost/PATH/TO/gettidy.sh?/'
#      export xhttp_proxy xxhttp_proxy

Thanks much.

__Henry