Re: [Lynx-dev] how to maximize client area???

[purslow]

050202 Chuck Martin wrote:
> This one was also supposed to go to the list, so I'm rereplying.

well, i deleted the 1st, thinking to let you have the last word, but ...
 
> Lynx is a web browser.  The defaults should be those
> that help those of us who use it as a web browser.

the issue isn't defaults, but options: they're quite different.

> Any other uses are the exception.
> Those exceptions can generally be accomodated by a little scripting
> using sed/awk/perl/shell/whatever-other-tools-you-may-find-useful.

are you seriously suggesting that people should learn Perl
in order to e-mail news articles to their friends ??

> Some of my reasons for preferring Lynx have already been stated
> by others who share my preference.  Others are my own reasons,
> which I won't go into at the moment.

i'ld love to know which Internet sites you & the others visit.
astronomy ?  archaelogy ?  Yahoo news ?  your local newspaper ?
just this week, i tried to access an article in Spectator (London),
but its free (still just) sign-up has a 'go' javascript button:
"hey, why don't you write to their IT people & complain?"
because i don't have time & it happens all the time,
so i stick to Firefox & copy/paste such items from there into Gvim & Mutt.

have you heard about tabs ?  they make it possible to run down an index,
send off for the stories, then read them in the order you choose,
great eg for Linux Today: Lynx has no such device.

> Lynx can't accomodate every specialized use someone may come up with
> and shouldn't try.  It's a web browser.
> Specialized uses can be easily scripted to suit your preferences.

you repeat yourself & i refer you to my question above:
what do you spend your day doing ?  real-life work ?  scholarship ?
or are you just a coder or sysadmin ?

> I find local help files much easier to use
> when I can see where the headers are.

well, i said i read them with Lynx, usually.

> This is one of my pet peeves.
> HTML was intended as a mark-up language, not a document layout language.

back around 1995, that was true.

> Web page authors should be providing information
> and let the end user decide what format is the most useful to him/her.

inevitably, they target the vast majority of users, who use GUI browsers.
they lay out their material carefully with colors, shapes, frames etc,
none of which comes thro' clearly in a purely text browser, however good.

> As others have pointed out, some of us use Lynx as our primary web browser.

again, i'ld love to hear what sorts of sites you visit.

>> i'm not the slightest interested in "understanding web pages".
> I, for one, like to understand what I'm looking at/reading.

understanding the technical divisions of the HTML structure
is quite different from understanding the content published by the author.

> If structure really is irrelevant,
> then the current defaults should be no problem, right?

no, the latter does not follow from the former:
current defaults emphasise an aspect of structure which is not important.
and as i said above, the issue is not defaults, but options.

> It isn't you.

ditto: again, nothing personal & another (smile).

> the vast majority of web page authors misunderstand the purpose of HTML,
> and try to make it do something it was never designed to do,
> which can only be done by abuse of elements such as TABLEs
> and superfluous graphics such as spacer.gif
> (a common "invisible" graphic used to position things).

everyone else is wrong & a tiny minority of Lynx users is right ... (sigh)

there was a nice little article referenced by Linux Today today/yesterday,
one of a series on what you can do with a terminal & CLI
-- yes, we have reached the point where some Linux users have to be told
that they don't have to do everything w a GUI interface -- ,
which outlined a simple lightweight tool the author had discovered,
a browser called Lynx, whose simple basic commands he admired.
readers' responses ?  "hey, why don't you mention Links or Elinks ?" etc.

perhaps you're just trying to be provocative & it's the end of my day,
so i'll indulge you with some quick rejoinders,
but please try to understand that most of us use software to do things
& don't have much time left over for programming, scripting or sysadmin.
i have enough trouble getting Open Office to handle fonts on Gentoo
without wanting to study HTML or learn Perl.  please, be realistic.

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