lynx-dev Behavior of NNTPSERVER parameter changed?

[Wilson Cheung]

On my NETCOM account, the shell environment variable NNTPSERVER is
usually undefined by default.  The reason is that most of the shell
newsreaders (e.g. trn4, tin, etc.) simply access the local NFS-mounted
news spool directly.

In order to have lynx access news: URLs, I used to hack lynx with some 
extra code so it could read from the local news spool by way of a 
helper "nntpd" program (like the way the "slirp" program does for those
of you who know about it).  This worked fine but it was always pain for me
to update all the code every time a new version of lynx was released.

About a year ago, NETCOM opened up access to Unix shell account users
to their local NNTP servers that can be reached at nntp.ix.netcom.com.

When this happened, I simply defined the "NNTPSERVER:" parameter in
lynx.cfg to point to "nntp.ix.netcom.com" so that lynx could continue
accessing news: URLs without having to add in extra code every time
and without having to do a "setenv NNTPSERVER nntp.ix.netcom.com" at 
the shell prompt or in my .login files.  


I may have missed it in the recent CHANGES files but it appears 
current dev versions of lynx no longer seem to use this NNTPSERVER
parameter in lynx.cfg even though it is listed there?

If I define NNTPSERVER as a shell environment variable, news: URLs
work.  If it is undefined (but is listed in lynx.cfg), the Lynx.trace
file shows lynx trying to attempt to connect to the default "news" URL only.


From what I remember, lynx used to do the following:

1) If defined, use the shell environment variable NNTPSERVER.
2) If #1 is not defined, use NNTPSERVER parameter in lynx.cfg.
3) If neither #1 or #2 is defined, attempt connection to "news".
4) else fail.

Lynx version is 2.8.1dev.28.  OS is SunOS 4.1.4.

-- 
Wilson Cheung
address@hidden