Re: lynx-dev Lynx is dying !?

[Philip Webb]

980727 Pascal Rigaux wrote:
> First of all, this mail isn't a flame at lynx which is my prefered browser.
> All i want is some comments, ideas, (flames).  If you think something
> is wrong/nasty/stupid/naive/incomplete tell me.  That's what i want.

no doubt everyone who responds will do so in a parliamentary manner:
there's been a great improvement on lynx-dev in recent months.
 
> For browsing on the net you need incremental rendering,
> caching of the html source, background downloading.

incremental rendering is in 2-8-1dev.nn, isn't it?
caching was the subject of a recent debate,
which i unofficially moderated & intend to review when i get to it;
background downloading seems to be handled adequately by  wget ,
which you can use as an external device with Lynx.

> most lynx users only use it for local files

i use it daily to read the international press:
i suspect your impression here is a long way from the truth.
 
> I've looked through nearly all the lynx-dev mailing list ( 40 Mb )
> searching for words like `render, incremental'.

one problem if you're searching for subjects is
that people are very remiss at giving accurate subjects to their messages
& threads often change direction without a change of subject.

-- Jacob Poon's heart-felt complaint 9612 somewhat abbreviated --
>> Caching issue is just one of many Lynx annoyances users have to deal with,
>> but it doesn't seem to require as many major changes to the sources.
>> it seemed the only reason it hasn't been implemented is
>> because certain key developers loathe any close resemblance
>> to a broken GUI browser or GUI environmental ideas.
>> my suggestions for changing history list behaviours
>> and the need for NEXT_DOC command were 2 GUI ideas
>> that never seemed to be taken seriously,
>> even though I provided reasons without referring to graphical browsers.

the reference here & elsewhere in JP's remarks is presumably
to one former developer, who contributed a great deal to early Lynx,
but had serious personal problems
when his baby started to grow up & get involved with other people.
that problem seems today to have been resolved.
 
>> Combined with certain developers' insentivities to users' environments
>> eg the assumption that every user should be a C expert,
>> who should use nothing less than a 64-bit machine
>> and some Unix variant called 'The real OS' ... they finally begin
>> to drop some of their elitist attitudes towards Lynx users.

ditto
 
> If something as easy as NEXT_DOC hasn't been implemented yet,

what is NEXT_DOC ??  it hasn't been mentioned on lynx-dev for a long time.
 
> any addition is impossible or it'll break a lot of other features.
> Lynx is able to manage a lot of different architectures.
> It also started long ago and the html specifications have evolved.

i don't see any sign that Lynx can't add new features,
tho' there's probably good reason to clean up parts of the code.

> it means that lynx should fork between people wanting
> to keep it the smaller it can and people wanting more.
> The conclusion: if you want more than lynx you must rewrite it.
-- very big snip of planned reorganisation of Lynx --
 
any division of effort really would be disastrous.
the giant problem facing all of us who want Lynx to go on succeeding
is the very serious lack of time on the part of competent programmers.

> So that's the project i want to start.
> A friend of mine wants to do the emacs part.
> Another one is interested by the RENDERER, so am i.

i'm sure everyone will want to encourage your efforts,
but don't try to do it off in a corner somewhere:
keep lynx-dev fully informed about your progress & problems
& you may find there's more help & support around than you think.
you probably won't reorganise Lynx this side of AD 2100,
but you may well improve some of its features & code.

lynx-dev is an international community of volunteers,
ie everyone who wants to be involved has to try to contribute
whatever s/he can in the way of skill/time/enthusiasm;
that's especially true for actual code-writing.
 
> I'm not good at all at writing.
> I'm french and my english is not great.
 
you're too modest ...

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