lynx-dev Re: STARTFILE patch

[Philip Webb]

990402 Greg Marr (with support from DK) wrote: 
> Philip Webb wrote:
>> having changed  .login  by commenting out that line & restarting,
>>  WWW_HOME  remained set to  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca  as before:
>> is there anywhere else it might be being set?
> Since you're using  csh , probably in  .cshrc  or there is a system setting.
> it is called  global.cshrc  I think.
> The location should be listed in the  csh  man page.

on this system, it's  /etc/cshrc , which is described in the man pages.
thanx both (smile): you learn a lot around lynx-dev ...
 
>> having manually done  setenv WWW_HOME  (ie blanked it out),
> The correct way to do this is  unsetenv WWW_HOME .
> There is a difference between an environment variable not existing
> and it existing with a null value.

well blow me down etc, yes that's true, tho' why on earth i don't know.

so having sorted out those preliminaries,
i have been able to tackle the original problem,
which was to have a better default STARTFILE for ordinary users,
who may find l.b.o. down for some reason.
i hope the warning for anonymous sites is ok (Henry?):
if  lynx.cfg  offers  > 1  STARTFILE , Lynx uses the last one found,
so this is failsafe, if the sysadmin forgets to comment out the regular line.

*** old/lynx.cfg Fri Mar  5 14:47:43 1999
--- new/lynx.cfg Fri Apr  2 14:53:49 1999
***************
*** 33,47 ****
  #       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ or whatever is appropriate on your system
  #and now your own tweaks.
  
  #
! # STARTFILE is the default URL if none is specified on the command line
! # or via a WWW_HOME environment variable.
! # Note:  these files can be remote (http://www.w3.org/default.html)
! # or local (file://localhost/PATH_TO/FILENAME
! #  replace PATH_TO with the complete path to FILENAME
! #  use Unix SHELL syntax and include the device on VMS systems)
! #
! STARTFILE:http://lynx.browser.org/
  
  # HELPFILE must be defined as a URL and must have a
  # complete path if local:
--- 33,54 ----
  #       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ or whatever is appropriate on your system
  #and now your own tweaks.
  
+ # STARTFILE is the default starting URL if none is specified
+ #   on the command line or via a WWW_HOME environment variable;
+ #   Lynx will refuse to start without a starting URL of some kind.
+ # STARTFILE can be remote, e.g. http://www.w3.org/default.html ,
+ #                or local, e.g. file://localhost/PATH_TO/FILENAME ,
+ #           where PATH_TO is replaced with the complete path to FILENAME
+ #           using Unix shell syntax and including the device on VMS.
+ # The default offered for ordinary users is their current directory:
+ STARTFILE:.
  #
! # *** NBB *** System administrators with ANONYMOUS USERS !!!
! #   set STARTFILE to a REMOTE FILE by uncommenting the next line:
! #STARTFILE:http://lynx.browser.org/
! #   and commenting out the default offered above;
! #   you may, of course, choose to replace `lynx.browser.org'
! #   with another remote/local file which you know to be safe.
  
  # HELPFILE must be defined as a URL and must have a
  # complete path if local:

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