Re: LYNX-DEV upgrade possibility...

[Foteos Macrides]

address@hidden wrote:
>Hi, I have a question on a possible upgrade for Lynx... would it be
>terribly difficult to implement a function in the new version of Lynx
>to spawn a talk daemon?  I was thinking along the lines of setting 
>it up to be accessable in a manner similar the way "finger" is
>accessable as url (ie: finger://address@hidden).
>
>Most likely, this would work for "talk" as well, using a url
>like:  talk://address@hidden:tty
>
>I've noticed that a lot of people are looking for a similar function,
>but don't know who to ask.

        Finger, cso, ftp, gopher, news, nntp, snews and wais URLs are
handled via "gateways".  What that means is that Lynx internally
emulates the client side of the corresponding software to send a
a request to a server according to that scheme's protocol, then
receives the server's reply and converts it to an HTML stream which
is handled equivalent to a stream received from an http server.

        Talk is, instead, like telnet, tn3270 or rlogin.  It requires
creation of a separate process (via a system("talk ...") call), after
turning off Lynx's own curses setup, so that the user can interact
directly with the talk daemon, and the daemon can set up its own
windows and communication lines.  It would involve extensive security
considerations when Lynx is used on a multiuser system and potentially
captive and/or anonymous account, like those Lynx applies to telnet,
tn3270 and rlogin URLs.

        If security is not an issue for you, the simplest way to do
it with Lynx is via a jump shortcut.  The "talk" shortcut would be
mapped to a script which prompts for the address@hidden and tty,
and then invokes talk with those parameters.  But if security is
not an issue for you, you've given yourself use of the '!' command,
and can use that to invoke talk from the command line of a spawned
shell.

        If what you're seeking is ability to specify a particular
address@hidden and tty as the HREF in an Anchor or LINK, e.g.,

        <LINK REF="made" HREF="talk://address@hidden/tty">

so that, in that example, you seek a talk session rather than
a mailing to the owner of the document via the 'c'omment command,
that would be more problematic, but you'd in effect have to reproduce
the code for the telnet, tn3270 and rlogin schemes, so complete models
for such code are already there.

                                Fote

=========================================================================
 Foteos Macrides            Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research
 address@hidden         222 Maple Avenue, Shrewsbury, MA 01545
=========================================================================
;
; To UNSUBSCRIBE:  Send a mail message to address@hidden
;                  with "unsubscribe lynx-dev" (without the
;                  quotation marks) on a line by itself.
;