Re: lynx-dev LYNX: sometimes need <br><br> to generate blank line

[David Woolley]

> The paragraphs are here denoted by <br><br>.

That's not a paragraph delimiter in HTML.  Someone is misusing it.

> Now, I don't know much html at all, and probably what lynx does
> with the two br's is just what it's supposed to do.

Learning this level of HTML should only take you about an hour,
once you have tracked down a copy of the version 2.0 specification.

> Presumably the articles I see that DO have blank lines
> between paragraphs use some other code than two br's.

The articles you have seen with blank lines probably have more than
one paragraph.  HTML paragraphs are marked by enclosing the paragraph
in <p> and </p> although the </p> is optional prior to XHTML 1.0.

> My question: is or could there be some (run-time!) option to
> make lynx INSERT a blank line at paragraph-breaks -- something
> I could turn on and off as I pleased, according to what I saw
> on the screen?

Lynx *always* inserts a blank line at paragraph breaks.  The text you
quote only has one paragraph.

> To fend off the suggestion "send their webmaster notice
> that their html is wrong", I come across too many of these
> sites to do that.  And if I do ask them, they'll probably
> tell me "well, use IE or NS -- they show it just fine!".

True, but not telling them will leave them blissfully ignorant!
You could try demonstrating a style sheet that indents the first line
of real paragraphs, or generates an oversize initial capital, although
I'm not sure which, if any, GUI browser supports these features.

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