Re: lynx-dev Is this List for Lynx users or *just* developers

[Duke Normandin]

On Thu, Jun 07, 2001 at 11:02:36AM +0900, Henry Nelson wrote:
> > Fair enough! I ask again....is there a 'Lynx-user' group, so that I can
> 
> No.  BUT, since there isn't one, "lynx-dev" ends up having to serve that
> purpose.  Some of the developers seem to appreciate that arrangement, so
> I wouldn't hesitate to ask user questions here.  In the past I've found
> your queries so cryptic (and hasty?, i.e., "...Later") that there wasn't
> enough to go on to reply to.
> 
> > quit disturbing _this_ list? If it was up to me only, I'd quit using Lynx
> > in favor of 'Links' and/or 'w3m'. However, I'm developing a multi-page
> > HTML document (docs) and am adamant that it will be 'text-based browser'
> > friendly. I'm getting great page-renderings is IE4+, Netscape, Links and
> > w3m -- but some of what works in the aforesaid browsers, doesn't in Lynx.
> > This is a _major_ PITA, and makes it extremely difficult to produce
> > a document that will be friendly to Lynx AND the rest of the text-based
> > and graphical browsers --- especially those HTML tags for which Lynx only
> > has half-hearted support.
> > 
> > Sooo....maybe there are work-arounds. That's why I'm asking about a
> 
> Finally I see what you're aiming at.  There are some workarounds.  First, are
> you aware that Lynx's speed that everyone raves about (actually it's pretty
> meaningless in today's age of 1GHz CPUs, 2MB cache, 1GB memory and 100MB/s+
> transfer speeds) is due to it doing only ONE pass through a document? That
> means that Lynx has to render and spit out what it has in hand without a lot
> of looping again and again.  Remember that when you design pages for Lynx.

Good to know! Thanks for the heads-up!

> Read docs/README.TRST in the distribution for a good idea of what Lynx can
> and cannot do with regard to tables.  Supposedly there have been some recent
> "improvements" to TRST.  Are you using the latest development version?

I'm using the win95 port of lynx-2.8.4.....I'll look for 'README.TRST'

> Some rules I've followed in the past that nearly always gave a nice table
> in Lynx:
>    1)  Only use tables when you have to.  If you can get by with ordered
>        lists, use them instead.  Ordered lists can be nested in Lynx.
>    2)  Don't nest tables. 
>    3)  Keep the cell contents short enough that wrapping is not necessary.
>    4)  Keep the total length of any one row, including margins, under 80
>        character cells.

Thanks for the above do's and don'ts...
 
> Study the [endless] possibilities for table rendering external to Lynx, e.g.,
> proxies, printers and external applications.  Most of these work so smoothly
> that you'd think Lynx was doing the rendering.

This won't help the end-user much will it? The docs that I'm churning out
are not for myself but for a friend (and his software). The end-users
could be using _any_ browser -- I just wanted to adequately cover _all_
the bases -- BUT not break w3m/Links/etc rendition in the process.
-- 
-duke
Calgary, Alberta, Canada


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