Re: [Lynx-dev] changing lynx default homepage from the comand line?

[Bela Lubkin]

Karen Lewellen wrote:

> folks,
>   i. do. not. want. to. make. this. change. in lynx.cfg...at all!
> How hard is that to understand?
> I  asked for *command line* not all the ways I might screw up another 
> person's setup.

You have received a variety of alternative suggestions because there IS
NO WAY to do precisely what you're asking to do, with Lynx as it exists.

My suggestion to edit lynx.cfg does not affect other users.  It affects
only your own shell account, so will not 'screw up another person's
setup'.

Making an alias does not affect other users.

There are many possible ways to do *approximately* what you want; but you
to be willing to actually *use* those ways.  'I want this to behave
differently, but I am not willing to change anything' doesn't lead to
success.

===

Stepping back for a moment, I'm not sure if we're even clear on what you
want.  Your original subject line asks about changing 'lynx default
homepage from the command line'.  The most trivial thing is to run:

$ lynx url-of-desired-homepage

i.e. `lynx https://www.xyz.abc`

This 'changes' the default by specifying the desired page.  But you have
to type it every time.  Are you prepared to type it every time?  That
seems to meet the 'on the command line' request.

But maybe you meant that you want to run a Lynx command which
permanently sets it, like `lynx --set-new-homepage https://www.xyz.abc`,
after which just running `lynx` with no arguments would go there.

That does not directly exist.  There is no Lynx command-line option
which saves-for-later your new desired default page.

What *does* exist is changing the value in lynx.cfg.  In your own
private copy of lynx.cfg -- which will not affect other users.

But then you have to specify the *use* of that private lynx.cfg, each
time you run Lynx.  So it's a different hassle.  This can be fixed by
making an alias -- which is another thing which goes into your private
files and doesn't affect other users.  'alias' is one of several
choices: depending which shell you are using, you could instead use a
shell function, or a small shell script.  One way or another, you would
have to slightly redefine what happens when you type 'lynx'.

===

As it stands, your request is like saying: I want this radio to play
this show for me, which is on at 3:30pm every day.  But I do not ever
want to have to touch it: I will not change the station, I will not
program a timer, I will not speak voice commands to it, I just want it
to intuit my desire.  -- Some day you may have a radio which does that
(and I suspect you'll find it rather creepy) -- but the one you have
today doesn't do any of those things.  You have to *do something* to
tell it what you want.  You have to do it each day at 3:30pm, because it
doesn't have a 'always jump to this station and start playing, at this
time each day' feature.

Editing lynx.cfg, making aliases, etc. -- these are the ways you tell
Lynx (and a Unix-like shell system) what you want.  If you won't do some
version of those things, it won't do what you want.  It can't.

>Bela<