Re: LYNX-DEV highlighting bug in color slang version

[Foteos Macrides]

Klaus Weide <address@hidden> wrote:
>On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, Laura Eaves wrote:
>> If you use color and see it all the time, it's a BUG.
>> Your URL only documents it as a feature.
>
>I tried to document "what is".  I didn't say it was good.
>I would call it a "known limitation", are you happier with that?
>
>> As for the problem occurring in other terminals and without -color,
>> does the problem occur even when not compiled with SLANG?
>> My reason for asking: highlight() in src/LYUtils.c contains the
>> following comment:
>> 
>>      if (flag == ON) { 
>>          /* makes some terminals work wrong because
>>           * they can't handle two attributes at the 
>>           * same time
>>           */
>>          /* start_bold();  */
>>          start_reverse();
>> #ifdef USE_SLANG
>>          start_underline ();
>> #endif /* USE_SLANG */
>>      } else {
>> 
>> If compiling with SLANG messes up some terminals even when not using color,
>> would a check for -color solve the problem? --
>
>I don't give too much value to *some* of the comments in the code.
>Some are *obviously* only of historical value and don't describe
>correctly the code that surrounds them... (especially in the WWW/Library
>part).

        The comment was written by Lou Montulli.  TD's pompous post
notwithstanding, Lou read widely on such matters, and many terminals
or emulaters intended to be supported by Lynx had problems with
combinations of attributes, regardless of what was in termcap/termlib.

        The #ifdef'ing for slang was added by John Davis as part of
his port of Lynx to use slang.  It does not take into account that
the underlining may already be on when reverse is turned on to
indicate the current link, and the subsequent turning off of both
reverse and underlining breaks the GridText.c logic for underlining
on page displays.  That bug applies whether or not color is being used.
The two ways to fix it are either to eliminate that #ifdef'ing for
slang, or to modify many files for passing around the me->underline
information from GridText.c along the lines of Laura's patch.  My
preference has always been to eliminate that #ifdef'ing, but I did
neither, and just let the bug ride.

        As far as recent claims of a homolous bug when curses is
used instead of slang are concerned, I thought I had fixed that long
ago by adding a nesting level index in HTML.c for emphasis tags.

                                Fote

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