[Lynx-dev] LYNX: copy of reply (re lynx) to Stallman, re self-link via 'print'

[David Combs]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2005 at 12:07:39PM -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
>     I send just a piece of this excellent article;
>     go to         URL: http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/printer_012305L.shtml
> 
> Thanks for sending the article's URL.  Now that you know how to find
> it, it would be really helpful if you would send the URL with each
> article you send.  When I know the URL, I can post a note immediately.




Richard:


(Note: I'm going to, by separate email, send this email, as is,
to lynx-dev.)


Getting the link in a separate step, mousing it, then editing
the article to insert it, all extra steps over my usual

   mutt -s "nifty article on xyz" some < t5

, is, perhaps surprisingly, a pain, a negative, that little
bit extra of hand and finger effort and time to affect
the "do I send this one?  Is it good enough?" question --
ESPECIALLY either late, late at night, in a huge rush to
get off the computer and hit the bed,  or when in
the usual huge rush, plus semi-guilt feeling from
"wasting time" doing this (enjoyable) stuff.

The absolutely best *solution* to this no-self-link
problem *of lynx* is to *change lynx itself*.

I have, over the years, pleaded with the lynx-dev
readers to *please* have lynx, when it "prints" an
article (to file -- which file I then send out), to
include a self-link.

All to no avail.   :-(

(Even though the easiest way to do it would be to,
down in the references section, add a zeroth
one to itself, eg:

   [0] http://www.foo.com/~joeblow


Or, if worried about some wget-like software automatically
parsing the file, looking for http://-strings, and
getting into a length-one loop or even just grabbing
the same document a 2nd time -- then they could hack
that ZEROTH http-ref to get it to be ignored by the parser.

 -----

They won't do it for me.

Richard -- MAYBE they'll do it for YOU  --  being as
they, the lynx development-team members, each one
of them, surely use *your* FSF software tens or hundreds
of times every day.

So -- since you really want (the result of) this feature,
YOU join the lynx-dev mailing-list, and YOU, with the
widely admired person, ask for it.

Maybe have a look at the sources (ask them to guide
you to the appropriate .c-file for lynx's "print" (to file)
feature), then cut-n-paste the piece of code that
needs to be hacked, including your own ideas
of how what you want might be added.

You do that, and there's a chance that someone'll actually
do it.

(No, don't spend your time actually doing it; too much 
to know, eg the .cfg-file, adding to the options-table
(so users can turn feature on and off), etc, etc --
too much overhead for adding just a single *wee* feature!)

I'm going to, by separate email, send this email, as is,
to lynx-dev.

Good luck!

David

PS: If somehow you succeed in getting them to add this feature,
I've got *years* worth of suggestions I've tried to get
them to add to lynx, so maybe .....     :-)

D.