Re: LYNX-DEV SOCKS firewall

[David Woolley]

> 
> 1. You need to recompile lynx with -DSOCKS (read the fine makefile).

He's using Windows, so it is very unlikely that he would have access to
a compiler, certainly one that works with a Unix Makefile.  I'd also
be surprised if the Unix SOCKS code will port to Win32, but even if it
does, he's going to need to obtain, tar, gzip and socks before he even
starts.

Now, there is always a problem in making negative statements about what
can be done with software, that someone may have done something that
you didn't expect anyone to do; so if there is a SOCKS library for
Win32 which is source compatible with Lynx, with the Win32 conditionals
turned on, it would be useful to point to it.

It wouldn't surprise me if SOCKS support for Win32 is only available as
a commercial product.  Microsoft have obviously implemented enough SOCKS
for a browser, so it is possible that support is bundled with the Win32
SDK, all the same - I don't have access to the MSDN libary here or to the
rest of it at all.

Re another reply to my first response, my understanding is that SOCKS
proxies the sockets API rather than wraps "security sensitive" functions.
To the extent that that is true, I assume that a Win32 SOCKS will look
more like Winsock than Berkeley and therefore the code will have to be
modified to to take this into account (if he's very lucky, there is a SOCKS
library which is source compatible with Unix, and all he needs to do is
turn off any attempts to use Winsock instead).  (Actually SOCKS must proxy
the Berkeley API, but I would still expect a Win32 version to look like
Winsock to the application.)

However, in reality, Win32 is mainly a binary distributions only world, so
end users cannot / do not have the skills to (given that there are Gnu ports
now) install from source.

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