LYNX-DEV Development code ac-28 comments

[Hiram Lester, Jr.]

Ok, I finally got a chance to try out the development code on a platform
other than Win32. :)  Here are some comments.

1. If ncurses is found, it should be used as a default instead of curses. 
My reasoning is that autoconfigure is supposed to make it easier, but on
the bazillion Linux systems which have ncurses installed as their default
curses, you MUST use 'configure --with-screen=ncurses' to get a valid
build.  I tried this on two different Linux distributions with various
results.  Using just 'configure' on a recent Red Hat system here at school
(with ncurses 1.9.9e) bombed during the 'configure' (which was fine). 
Using just 'configure' on Slackware 3.1 at home (with ncurses 1.9.9e, now
4.1) went all the way through the configure, and compiled until it got to
the linking phase and then bombed out.  A *LOT* of wasted time on that
one.

2. I built a non-styles version on the Red Hat system and the colors were
really strange.  I presume that is the bug mentioned previously with wrong
colors on 1.9.9e and that if I had built a non-styles version on my
Slackware system after upgrading it to 4.1 I wouldn't have seen this.

3. I finally built a color-styles version after being dissatisfied with
the above... and since I wanted to try it...  What can I say, but "Nifty!"
This is definitely cool!

4. There should be a way to disable color and use the mono styles if the
termcap says it's a color terminal, but it's really not.  I think the
vt100 one on linux defaulted to color.  Maybe there is one for mono only?
Also, is there anyway to enable color if it's not in the termcap?  I'm
thinking that the answer may be no since the termcap would also tell how
to use those colors...

5. Also, I experienced a duplicatable crash at www.tv1.com on both
binaries I tried (both done with 'configure --with-screen=ncurses
--with-color-style=ncurses').  I was unable to duplicate the crash with
trace mode on.  I went to 'member listings' and it loaded the page and
sometime during the rendering process it core dumped.  When I turned trace
mode on, it displayed the first line or two and just stopped.

6. Speaking of trace mode, when I turned on trace logging with '-tlog', it
still spit out some of the color-styles stuff to the screen even though it
didn't spit out all the rest of the trace stuff.

7. Also, the recent discussion of popups with fotemods also applies to
this.  Popups do not disappear as they should after selecting an item.
Again, this was with both ncurses 1.9.9e and 4.1.

Anyway, those are my comments and observations.  Keep up the good work.
It's looking really cool!

   +------------------------------------+-------------------------------+
   | Hiram W. Lester, Jr.               | E-Mail: address@hidden    |
   | Computer Science                   | Home page:                    |
   | Middle Tennessee State University  |   http://pobox.com/~hwlester/ |
   +------------------------------------+-------------------------------+

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