Re: lynx-dev programming forms in lynx

[David Woolley]

> 
>   I have a problem/question/suggestion. I would like to have a document in
> my own directory (unix user) that behaves like a form, but without a cgi
> program to interpret it (because something like that does not exist in my
> server). I would like the cgi interpretation to be made by lynx, that is

Have you investigated lynxcgi:   I haven't used it myself, but as I understand
it, it causes lynx to invoke a script on your machine according to the
CGI protocol.  I'm not sure what security mechanisms there are to prevent
abuse by a remote page.

> to say I want to have a menu in a local html file (say my bookmarks file),
> group them in options menu, select one of them and lynx do the work of the
> cgi program that takes me to the link I choose. I am thinking of something
> like the options menu forms, but in that case there's no html file. Am I
> clear enough ?

I'm afraid I'm confused.  However, the use of CGI for basically cosmetic
purposes should be avoided on the real web, as it tends to increase traffic,
in particular, by creating non-cacheable URLs.

The way that most GUI browsers would approach this these days is to use
Javascript, but adding Javascript to Lynx is non-trivial and could never 
support many of the graphical Javascript uses on the real web.  Also, there
have been two different attacks on IE4 published recently that allow a
remote site to read  a local file as a result of holes in the Javascript 
implementation, so personally, I reject offers of Javascript when running 
GUI browsers.

It's non-trivial because JS is large and because it assumes the Netscape
object model (IE4 allows a more relaxed model but, mostly, but not always,
works for the Netscape model - layers, which would be almost impossible for
Lynx, are one exception).

You should really ask yourself the same question that most web sites seem
to fail to ask:  what is the best way to work within the constraints of
the medium?