Re: [Lynx-dev] latest mac edition of Lynx?

[Bela Lubkin]

Karen Lewellen wrote:

> So again, that you are not  actively engaged in running Lynx on your mac
> with a braille display means that your contribution is not going to help
> Andrew.

Karen,

You didn't mention braille at all in the original question.  You can
hardly fault Travis for not having answered most helpfully towards that
goal.

Now you've also introduced '2011 MacBook Pro', which undoubtedly also
means some rather out of date version of Mac OS.  In which case the
question your friend probably needs answered is, rather, 'What is the
newest or best version of Lynx I can get for INSERT NAME OF ANCIENT MAC
OS HERE?'

Or, furthermore, add: 'which is built in such a manner that it plays
nicely with assistive tools like a braille output device'.  And THAT
question is a deep question because different assistive software will
have different capabilities for receiving input.  The capability they
need to deal with Lynx is simple ASCII input from a shell-oriented
program.  This is a capability I would naturally expect any Linux
assistive software to have; and rather less likely on Windows; and I
don't venture to guess about Mac, except that it will be somewhere
between the two extremes.

=====

The state of open source software on Macs is and always has been utterly
disastrous, as far as I can tell.  There are a bewildering number of
competing 'comprehensive' repositories of ported software: MacPorts,
Homebrew, Fink, and probably 2-3 others at lower tiers.  It is(*)
generally the case that if you go looking for a particular piece of open
software for the Mac, it will be available in one or more of those
repositories; frequently at different version levels.  If you need a
particular version, you're likely forced to a particular porting suite.
But then if you need something that isn't in that suite (or isn't up to
date in that suite, or is built with the such-and-such hooks, or just
doesn't quite work right), you probably need another one.  And they
clash like all get out.  I've been told by techie Mac users that the
different porting suites *don't* clash; and then I've had any Mac I ever
tried that on, catch fire.  Figuratively, more or less.

All of which means: if Andrew is doing serious complex work on his
ancient Mac, it is fairly likely that he already has one of these
porting suites.  It probably has Lynx in it, so he just has to type
'fink install lynx' or whatever the actual invocation is for that suite.
But, even that is quite tenuous because it's pretty likely that the
porting suites have by now given up on whatever old Mac OS he's running.

The *other* choice is to download the Lynx source, type './configure;
make'; and hope for the best.  It ought to build, assuming he has the
Mac development system 'xcode' installed.  On current versions of Mac
OS, if you try to run one of the command line development tools like
`make`, and Xcode isn't installed, it will guide you through that
installation.  I don't know about older releases.  It is also quite
likely that Apple in all their walledgardnitude will no longer *offer*
the Xcode for that old OS, and the current one won't install.

This mingled forest and swamp of disasters *can* be navigated through.
But it will not be as easy as just asking 'what version of Lynx'.

>Bela<

(*)My own interactions with Macs are sporadic over the years.  My info
about open source porting environments is mostly out of date.  But I
doubt things have improved much.  Perhaps there is a new, awesome,
all-encompassing porting suite -- so now there would be 4 major
competitors which you would somehow have to balance on a system in order
to get all the pieces you want.....

PS: a likely much easier question is: 'where can I get any sort of
version of Lynx, old or new, which runs on Mac OS version XYZ?'  Various
sorts of small independent builds exist.  They are probably not much
maintained, especially as builds for older OSes, so will be whatever old
version was last built compatibly with that OS release -- which should
be sufficient *at least* for a proof of concept setup.