Re: LYNX-DEV Let me turn off <CENTER>, PLEASE!!!

[David Combs]

> From address@hidden Sun Dec  8 11:26:57 1996
> Date: Sun, 8 Dec 1996 14:07:41 -0500 (EST)
> X-Personal_name: Alex Eulenberg
> From: address@hidden
> 
> Hello developers! I'm a die-hard Lynx user, running Lynx through Telnet to 
> a Unix host. Besides the fact that Mosaic version 1 
> barely runs on my Mac SE, I prefer Lynx because of the way it FILTERS 
> OUT bad markup. One pet peeve of mine is over-centering. See for example
> 
> http://www.lef.org/lef/
> 
> Practically all the pages on this site have gratuitous centering. What is 
> worse, not all of it appears to be intentional. Entire documents have 
> centered paragraphs, apparently because the markup person used 
> <CENTER>Heading<CENTER> instead of <CENTER>Heading</CENTER>. Sites such 
> as these are legion.
> 
> Until version 2.5, Lynx did not recognize centering tags. Seeing that
> Lynx already has a special purpose for centering (i.e. to designate 1st
> level headings), I would really like to get Lynx to IGNORE all HTML center
> tags again. I do not want to go back to 2.4 because that version 
> did not recognize paragraphs as containers, resulting in excessive lie 
> breaks.
> 
> Please include a switch in the next version that would allow
> me to turn off recognition of the <CENTER> tag and the <ALIGN=CENTER>

The word "switch" implies to me setting it once and for all for a given
"surf the web for an hour or so" run.

Perhaps there are SOME pages that CORRECTLY use CENTER.  Something like
this proposed option might be better set up as something easier than
a "switch" to turn on and off for a particular document you might
happen to "surf onto".

Now, BOTH trn and less allow you to set/reset a switch WHILE RUNNING
the program, by simply typing "-" as the first character (or maybe
it is a command itself, I don't know).  Anyway, it is super easy
to type in, and best of all, it doesn't clear the screen to display
a bunch of options, etc.

People have mentioned reserving ":" for "long" option names.
Good idea.  But maybe do it JUST like vi/ex does, and require
for setting a MODE, that you say ":SET x" -- reason for that
is that it leaves you the option of having full-fledged
COMMANDS, eg the way emacs does via "mx-cmdName".  Two birds
with one character used-up.

Whether it be like vi/ex, with only "set x" and "set nox",
or have explicit unset command, ":unset x" -- I don't care
(best solution: add "unset" to vi!) (smiley)

---

I do hope we go to multiple-char command-names BEFORE we
use up all keyboard keys, control-keys, etc, for single-char cmds!

Just my opinion.

PS: It seems to me that there are two philosophys-of-use for lynx:
1: run lynx over and over; separate runs.  You see something
     you want to display differently, or something you want
     to DO a little differently (ie, you come to a site you
     want to do a -crawl for), simply RUN LYNX AGAIN FROM SCRATCH.

2: see lynx as a world to be and stay "in", and while browsing,
   never leave it; do everything from it (except egreps, mkdirs,
   etc); sort of like the way many people use emacs.

My point of view is always via "2".  I believe many long-term
   lynx users and developers (Fote, etc?) see it more via "1".

I think that maybe this viewpoint-difference is worth considering
   as we look at ideas and their responses...

IMVHO only.

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