Re: [Lynx-dev] downloading compressed pages

[Bela Lubkin]

russell bell wrote:

>       In the past, when a site gzipped its articles for download,
> lynx saved them gzipped.  lynx stopped, but I notice that in the /tmp
> directory the gzipped ones are gzipped there.  That's okay with me.
>       I notice that nytimes.com gzips most of its articles.  Few
> other sites do.  Are they using alternatives, such as xz or lz or bz2
> or ?  Or does no one care about us losers with little bandwidth?

I doubt NYT habitually sends out articles gzipped.  Instead, they
probably pay attention to the Accept-Encoding headers issued by the
browser.  If the browser says it likes files compressed with a certain
compressor, they have the option of sending them that way.

(I haven't checked actual wire behavior of NYT)

Look for PREFERRED_ENCODING in Lynx.cfg.  It can also specify bz2, which
would typically save a decent amount of bandwidth vs. gz.  Doesn't mean
any sites are going to comply with it, but it shouldn't hurt to have
both in the list.

The PREFERRED_ENCODING doc implies that you could add other formats
using external programs (e.g. xz).  But then offers only prefab keywords
for the header.  Source looks like the existing ones are all that will
work...

... and you can set this from the options menu, although it's one that
won't save unless you also change that elsewhere.

>Bela<