Re: lynx-dev file uploads in forms

[rjp]

In message <address@hidden>, 
> 
> If you wand to send a ! Meg file as form contents, this should be the least of
> your worries... (*How many* copies of post_data does lynx keep in memory?)

I know people who transport 2.2M pdf files using form based file upload.

> Only in terms of Content-type afaik, not C-T-E.  Theres an ACCEPT attribute
> (and an ACCEPT-CHARSET attribute), but no ACCEPT-TRANSFER-ENCODING attribute.

Ok, scratch that plan then.

> Well, HTTP is a binary-clean protocol.  It doesn't make too much sense
> to impose restrictions that come from the mail world.
>
> I think you don't really do it this way because it's The Right Way, only
> because it makes implementation in Lynx (apparently) easier...

It did, and my reading of the RFC seemed to indicate it was the way to go.
But no-one supports this and, as you say, we should be able to use binary
data with impunity, so Lynx shall.

> I think we (you:)) should introduce a level of indirection, that would
> overcome *two* problems (one: lynx treats post_data as C strings -> problem
> with '\0' bytes; two: wasteful memory use).

The second of my patches did that.  It remembered that you wanted file X
to upload, and only added that just before it posted the data to the remote
webserver.  No passing round of large chunks of arbitrary binary data, but
it was limited to 8 files at a time (I posted about this at the time).

> [snip idea]
> What do you think about this?

Almost what I was doing already, but you've put a different spin on the way
to do it which might make things a lot easier and certainly makes how to 
handle it a lot clearer.

> Umm, do you have any version that is somewhat up to date wrt. current
> dev code?  I suspect your patches will continue to lead an obscure existence,
> and not have testers, unless you change that.

I'm updating this patch against 2.8.3dev15, which is the only version I have
available at the moment.  

> Below that, it has "Please try this patch and report success or failure."
> Ok, I'd love to help, but not so much that I'd go back to 2.8.2,  sorry...

Fair enough.  I should have a 2.8.3dev15 version by tomorrow, assuming things
go well.
-- 
rob partington % address@hidden % http://lynx.browser.org/