Re: lynx-dev lynx: url form "aol://4344:932.foo.bar.1234.5678/"

[Heather Stern]

I ate the fortune cookie first, then read what brian j. pardy wrote:
> 
> David Combs wrote:
> > Anyway, there is this www.megastories.com, pretty good
> > news-articles on world events, unwashed dresses, etc --
> > but you click on certain items, and get "badly formed addrss"
> > or some such error message from Lynx.
> > 
> > Doing L you can see more.
> > 
> > (items [39] and [40])

Looking at source I see two aol: addresses, several local pages ending in
htm, and at least one CGI form with an action ending in .dll.  Looks like
the owner is an MSwin user.  (Not intended to be disparaging, just an
observation.)

> > Now I know that "aol://<digits>" is an insane (or is it?)
> > url -- but from what I read in the newspaper, AOL houses
> > 50% of the users of the internet.
> > 
> > PERHAPS, if aol has LOTS of good content, and I don't
> > know that, except for this one site, then should we
> > special-case their url?
> 
> IIRC, those are URLs that the AOL web browser interprets, and then uses to
> tell the AOL client software to open up certain areas on the service. I
> don't think there is any way to access them without using AOL's system
> client.

Specifically, it is either the numeric ID of an AOL internal object (usually
a message board, from what I've seen inside the service), or it could be
"aol:1722.keyword" to go to a keyword.  Their builtin linkage of course 
works for this (and in fact, if you type a standard URL at their Keyword 
dialog, it will do the right thing and make a web connection).

Unless you're on a platform where we can spawn AOL as a helper app, 

                http://1722.foobar.fkfkfkf.baz
        is an America Online link; you must use the AOL client to view it.

or perhaps to show [AOL] instead of [LINK] in cases where "link" would show,
is probably the best we can do.   It may be worthwhile to ask AOL what the
protocol for asking their client to take the URL off our hands is;  then we
could tell MSwin and Mac users that Lynx fully supports AOL links when AOL
is their ISP.

> > QUESTION: what do "the big (bad) two" do with such
> > a url?

Not work, unless the ISP they are connecting through is AOL.  (I never
experimented, but if you have one of the Two running, and AOL running 
seperately/not as the ISP, would it correctly call upon the AOL client?)

> The big bad one with a Linux port tries to parse it as if 'aol:' is a
> domain, and prepends http:// to the beginning of it, then fails miserably.

Sounds like a bug to me.... protocol:[//]systemID:numeral/area right?  I
bet if you do a tcpdump or local equivalent, it tries www.aol.com on port 
1722, or whatever wild number is part of the object ID :)

Maybe AOL should run an ad server or a redirect-to-www.aol.com on their 
port 1722.  If they can use TCPwrappers it could probably twist all 
non-standard ports...

> > Likewise, does compuserv(e) also have such a scheme?
> 
> I have no idea.

If they do it isn't visible from their website.  Of course, AOL's used to
be and isn't now (a lot of things seem to be at dynamic.aol.com though).

Compuserve forums appear to be properly accessible with lynx, with many
but not all things ALT tagged properly.  But I can't tell if their 
web-visible forums are tied to Compuserve's inside service or not.

Neither service has a client for my current platform [I also use Linux, and
have FreeBSD at work] that I could use to check in more detail.

> > Queston: should these be hard-coded into lynx, or
> > via some mapping-facility (of someone can figure
> > out what a better-looking address might be that
> > goes to the same place)?
> 
> I don't believe there's any way to translate an aol:// address to anything
> else, but I could be wrong.

We could just drop them off at www.aol.com, and let them try to wander around
from there.  But it would be making a special case out of them, and *not* to
a positive light since www.aol.com is lynx-ugly...  &#149; all over the place,
lots of [INLINE]s since they don't ALT tag their graphics even if only 
ALT="" to get rid of them.  I've seperately copied this to address@hidden 
though, and perhaps we'll see if they have something useful to add.  
(Seperately, because the first response will probably be a form letter, and
I don't want that junking up the list.)

  . | .     Heather Stern                 |     address@hidden
--->*<---   Ricoh Silicon Valley, ADC   - * -   address@hidden
  ' | `     System Administrator          |