Re: [Lynx-dev] Request for comments on a couple changes

[Thomas Dickey]

On Sun, Aug 02, 2015 at 01:57:44PM -0700, Andy Valencia wrote:
> ---------------
> Hi,
> 
> I've started working on the Debian package for Lynx.
> There's a couple of changes which have come up from
> user reports, wanted to see what the Lynx devs think:
> 
> 1. Proxy configuration is confusing
> 
> User set an HTTP proxy, but then discovered this did not
> apply to HTTPS.  The man page does not touch on HTTPS, so
> at a minimum I will add a concrete example for proxying
> HTTPS.

actually, in the user guide (the man page points there for details)
 
> 2. Proxy environment variables differ from, e.g., w3m
> 
> The environment variable for w3m is HTTP_PROXY, for Lynx
> it's http_proxy.  I'm inclined to leave this alone.

same here: the lowercase is used pervasively, except on Windows
which attempts to match environment variables ignoring case --
and documents them as uppercase.

> 3. No command switch for proxying
> 
> Links has -http-proxy <host:port> (and similar for
> other protocols).  It could be added, presumably with
> priority over environment variables.

It could (there are a lot of command-line options - I see 147,
but nowhere near as many as entries in lynx.cfg - 242 -- and the
two are not 100% overlap).

However - neither of the suggested options is likely to be used often
enough to clutter up the command-line, and the sole anticipated user seems
to want only this functionality from lynx.  So those should be simply new
items in lynx.cfg (and the user can learn how to configure that).
 
> 4. Proxy function critical
> 
> If you want/need to proxy but get the config wrong, you
> just go out un-proxied.  When you're proxying into Tor
> or such, this could be Bad.  I suggested a --must-proxy
> command switch to cause non-proxied network connections
> to fail.

see comment above
 
> 5. REFERER_WITH_QUERY defaults to DROP
> 
> Ironically, this default setting causes summit.debconf.org
> to fail.  Defaulting to PARTIAL would make SSO logins
> work in the summit.debconf.org part of the world.  This one
> definitely needs a comment from somebody with a "big picture"
> view of the function.

probably this would come from somone at debconf.org

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <address@hidden>
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

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