On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Klaus Weide wrote:
>[...]
> 2) The classification of lynx.cfg options that is used for the
> HTML generated from it, i.e. all the ".h1" added to lynx.cfg, is
> illogical, unsystematic, and often just plain wrong. Frankly, it
> would be better not to do this stuff at all rather than having
> the current state. It's rather meaningless, for example all kinds
> off things are called "internal behavior" that clearly aren't.
> # These settings control internal lynx behavior - the way it interacts with the
> # operating system and Internet. Modifying these settings will not change
> # the rendition of documents that you browse with lynx, but can change various
> # delays and resource utilization.
> Completely wrong for many options marked as "internal behavior".
> E.g., having the right *_proxy can make all the difference between
> being able to use lynx or not - that's a bit more than "change various
> delays and resource utilization". There isn't anything "internal"
> about it, this is about how to contact _external_ hosts.
> "Auxiliary Facilities" is meaningless, unhelpful, artificial.
> It doesn't help anyone who is looking for an option.
> OK, I haven't looked at it in detail very recently, so something
> may have changed. This was my impression when I first looked at
> it. Does anyone (other than the author, perhaps) find the lynx.cfg-
> generated HTML useful in its current state?
>
Probably these options would seem useless for technically educated person,
but I hoped that such classification would be helpful for novices. Just
imagine brave person that just installed lynx on Win* (grep is not available
there, and seems some PCs with Win* will be shipping without keyboard soon :)
or for some unix without previous experience with www technologies (gateways,
cookies) - and that person wishes to configure lynx (most probably colors).
For such person category "internal behaviour" should clearly indicate that
"no user servicable options inside". As for other categories - I think and
hope that their names and options belonging to them are rather meaningful (or
you have given more examples :). And I really think that even such
classification will help to configure lynx for novice lynx user - it's easy to
see WHAT can be changed at all in some category, rather than 'what X means',
'what Y means' as user can just by reading lynx.cfg over and over again.
Perhaps categories' descriptions should be tweaked to make things clearer, and
probably "internal behaviour" should be renamed "networking and misc.
options" - seems most of the settings are *proxy ones.
So, IMO it's better to have such classification than nothing.
I'm open to your (and others') suggestions on and corrections of
categorization of lynx.cfg options.
> Klaus
Best regards,
-Vlad
