Re: lynx-dev Lynx 2.7.1 and 2.8 refuse to render certain HTML documents

[Jason F. McBrayer]

>>>>> "HS" == Heather Stern <address@hidden> writes:

HS> The server having stated it wants text/plain, Lynx is honoring it...

As it should.

HS> I'd say this is a server misconfig, and the site's unix or Apache
HS> distribution bug that its default config is broken, or maybe a bug
HS> in their sysadmin :) ... but we could probably add a user override
HS> option to assume that URLs ending in .htm and .html should always
HS> be rendered.

That would be a very bad thing to do.  There are constant complaints
on comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html about the fact that MSIE does
that.  In any case, file names, URLs, and file types are three
separate things, and we shouldn't do anything that would conflate the
three any more than absolutely necessary.  Using file extensions for
file typing is an abomination, and since the web has a perfectly
satisfactory alternative (mime types), we should do file typing the
right way.  It _is_ reasonable to assume that the server is
misconfigured, but that's a matter for the sysmonster, not for Lynx to
handle, since Lynx can't know what was really intended.  For example,
a site might send some HTML files as text/plain as sample code that is
meant to be viewed unrendered for educational purposes; trying to
outsmart the server would break that.

-- 
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Jason F. McBrayer              address@hidden |
| The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill   |   
| forever.                    R.W. Chambers _The King in Yellow_ |