Re: [Lynx-dev] Lynx pre-processing

[Henry Nelson]

On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 03:01:07PM +0200, Rado S wrote:
> Sorry, I expected some other kind of preprocessing, _within_ lynx,
> much like "display_filter" or by mailcap in "mutt". :)

Mailcap is available to any program that utilizes it.  Lynx does.

The problem with mailcap, as I see it, is that different programs
handle the output of the "preprocessor" in different ways.  I stopped
using the one I have for PDF files since, while it works great in
Mutt, Lynx displays the output in one continuous stream.

Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can give us some help.  I think
it has to do with Lynx's history as being available to very limited
resource machines, i.e., it doesn't read the entire file into
memory, but rather reads/writes the temporary file on disk.  There
was a day when I was running a full mail, http and login server on
8MB of memory and 24MB of swap, and 30 people were using Lynx at
the same time! 

There are ways to replace the temporary file Lynx thinks it has
on disk with another, and then r)eload the file.  It's a bit
drastic, and really has nothing to do with Lynx use, so I don't
think I will go into that.

> > Don't forget that Lynx has evoked that last program (lynx or most
> > in the examples), so you have to exit that to get back to the
> > instance of lynx you started from.
> 
> That's exactly what I was looking for to avoid.

Yes, I can understand.  Mostly I _prefer_ this "feature" since I
can use the program of my choice, but it does seem a bit clumsy
to use Lynx itself as the pager, I admit.

> >                                          -- me, March 1999
> 
> Now I must know this: is the "me" == HN?

Yes.  Next year it will be ten years.  How things have changed in those
years!  Because of the capabilities of present day computers, Lynx
no longer is essential to daily life.  Both cpu cycles and memory size
have increased close to 1000-fold from when I first started using Lynx.
Graphic browsers have matured, too.  So have OSs.  I mean, why use Lynx
for graphic content when Adobe Reader and OpenOffice are out there?
(BTW, MSIE, at least, uses these in exactly the same way Lynx executes
its DOWNLOADER.)

__Henry