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LYNX-DEV beware: 2-7 ambush
From: |
Philip Webb |
Subject: |
LYNX-DEV beware: 2-7 ambush |
Date: |
Mon, 10 Feb 1997 12:55:47 -0500 (EST) |
visiting Financial Times (London) & the Toronto Star this morning as usual,
using my brand-new 2-7, i encountered a nasty little problem:
headings were not spaced properly & stories' paragraphs were run together.
2-6 presented no problems with the same pages;
the source showed nothing bizarre.
then something came back from the hazy past: when i compiled 2-7
there was a line something about double break tags or something ...
i searched thro' lynx.cfg (asking for br gets every other line,
so i had to do it page by page).
yup, there it was:
# If COLLAPSE_BR_TAGS is set FALSE, Lynx will not collapse serial BR tags.
# Note that the valid way to insert extra blank lines in HTML is via a PRE
# block with only newlines in the block.
# The default is defined in userdefs.h, and can be overridden here.
#
#COLLAPSE_BR_TAGS:TRUE
so i replaced the last line with COLLAPSE_BR_TAGS:FALSE ,
tried the pages again & all was ok, as with 2-6.
the source revealed that indeed the writers had used <br><br> at those places
so what's the problem? -- several things:
(1) this is new to 2-7: i can't find it in lynx.cfg for 2-6.
why is it not flagged as new?
(2) clearly at least 2 serious & generally well-written newspapers
use <br><br> habitually instead of <p> :
why would anyone want to make 2-7 LESS able than 2-6
to cope with diversity on the WWW ?
there's hardly anything pernicious about the practice, after all.
(3) the 2-7 lynx.cfg above says
the valid way to insert extra blank lines in HTML is
via a PRE block with only newlines in the block :
what is the authority for this statement?
i have checked under HTML 2.0 in the 2-7 Help
& also in the Beginner's Guide to HTML
& can find no mention of treating <br><br> as if it were <br> .
taking them literally is the natural & rational thing to do.
(4) has there been any demand for this change expressed in Lynx-Dev?
has there even been discussion of it, more than briefly & long ago?
(5) at least if someone believing they had HTML 2.0 authority decided to do it
why did they not leave the old 2-6 practice as the default?
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- LYNX-DEV beware: 2-7 ambush,
Philip Webb <=