Talk:Lynx (web browser)/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Untitled

It appears that up until 2006, Google's bot that searched for information was based on lynx. See http://www.adsensebits.com/node/24 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Isotonic (talk • contribs) 17:14, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

How about XHTML support in lynx?

It does (but there are different flavors of XHTML...) Tedickey 19:13, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Added another link

Found out Browser.org's got it's own section on Lynx... MonstaPro 01:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

lynx.browser.org was a project page around 1996, but has not been a part of lynx development since then Tedickey 19:13, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

free open source

I added free open source to the description of the Lynx as this is a "feature" of the program. It isn't advocating, it is descriptive. You will find the same on Links, which I did not place there. Pharmboy (talk) 16:43, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The license is already cited in the infobox; interpreting free/open source is a different matter, since it is not purely descriptive, but citing a particular slice of advocacy. Tedickey (talk) 16:50, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
does this mean I should go edit out all the software that uses the phrase "free open-source" in the introduction? I know that sounds smart ass, but I'm serious and not trying to provoke here. By that logic, no software should mention that fact in the intro. I would disagree and say that "free open source" isn't a license (it isn't, by the way...) and that it IS a feature, meaning the source is available. This applies to more than GPL anyway, as any BSD license is free open source as well. This isn't political (I'm on a windows box right now...) its factual. I use many OS's, mainly MS, btw. As a side note, you might take a look at someone's previous contributions before you make such strong statements regarding "pushing your political views". I have plenty of edits on wikipedia, almost none are software or computer related. Pharmboy (talk) 16:54, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Reverting 2nd time

As a point of reference:

All make references to their licensing and/or source status in the introduction and it is not considered "pushing political views" or "advocacy". Adding the phrase "free open-source" is purely descriptive and provides the view information regarding the availability and price of source code material. It offers no opinion regarding proprietary software, nor advocates anything. If you want to WP:3RR I suppose you can, but there is entirely too much precedent on this. It should be pretty obvious that the edit has no political purpose. Pharmboy (talk) 17:10, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

editing Wikipedia

This article shouldn't really encourage people to edit Wikipedia with Lynx, since (unless something has changed radically between versions 2.8.3pre.6 and 2.8.6) the interface for editing long paragraphs in a form has significant usability problems, and unless the configuration is exactly right, non-ASCII characters can be messed up... AnonMoos (talk) 17:56, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't see anything recent in the edit history for this topic which would prompt an unrelated comment like this. Some clues might help Tedickey (talk) 20:11, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
I really don't know what you're trying to complain about; it says right there in the "Usage" section: "Despite its text-only nature and age, it can still be used to effectively browse much of the modern web, including performing interactive tasks like editing Wikipedia." AnonMoos (talk) 01:50, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
Sure it "can be used", which is a neutral statement, applies equally to a number of browsers. By the way, comments about 2.8.3 (2000-04-17) sound less than neutral (given that its peers of the same general age have problems as well). For a knowledgable user, it's no impediment, of course. Tedickey (talk) 11:17, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

DOSLYNX (sic)

That refers to the original port of Lynx, named "DosLynx" (see fdisk.com, etc). From the description, it doesn't appear that it used a memory extender, and for that reason was not much used after the introduction of the DJGPP-based port. TEDickey (talk) 09:21, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Relation to Lynx?

This page says "Not to be confused with Links (web browser)". So what is the relation between the two? Is there any? Some servers mention them together and say something like "use Lynx to browse the Web or Links if you want frames". EpicTim (talk) 13:38, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

lynx.isc.org not down, but forbidden?

I thought the 403 Forbidden error was given to everyone, after which I placed all lynx.isc.org links as deadlinks. -Mardus (talk) 13:59, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
Most oddly, the page is accessible through Anonymouse... -Mardus (talk) 14:05, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Anonymouse? mabdul 17:21, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
Yes, anonymouse.org (what is nearly an open proxy). -Mardus (talk) 18:54, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
Here it works also without any anonymizer. Maybe this is a problem of your ISP/web browser sending obscure HTTP tags. mabdul 09:21, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
Tried with all browsers; the result is always the same for some reason. -Mardus (talk) 21:55, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
It's ip-address specific (someone asked this week about the same problem, on the lynx mailing list). TEDickey (talk) 21:58, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

publisher

ISC hosts Lynx, but does not affect its content. The Lynx Developer's Group is more likely to be the "publisher" in this regard. TEDickey (talk) 14:47, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I believe that was supposed to be a distinction between "publisher" and "work". At least it is the way I get the WP:CS1 § Work and publisher. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 14:54, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
I mentioned this because the cite as written does not imply that the Lynx Developers were the authors of the copyheader, and given only the publisher (ISC) is misleading TEDickey (talk) 14:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
With titles clearly showing the origin of the files this hardly can mislead someone. Though providing additional metadata is always a good idea. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 18:31, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Referring to the guideline Wikipedia:CS1#How_the_templates_work, generally authors are listed. The guideline for Lynx is to refer to the Lynx Developer's Group when citing the work as a whole (see this for instance, and this) TEDickey (talk) 18:23, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
"Lynx Developer's Group" isn't what supposed to be the content of "author" field. How about adding "|work=Lynx" to these citation templates? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 18:30, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
I don't see anything in that section regarding works by groups (perhaps there's a more appropriate section of the guidelines), so it's unclear what's the proper style. However, a link back to this topic doesn't seem like an improvement. As it is distributed (and packaged), however, the recommendation has always been to refer to the group (which was the point of showing how the group name is in use). By the way, ISC hosts other groups (I seem to recall NetBSD is or used to be), for which there is probably ample precedent TEDickey (talk) 18:43, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
A link to the same page is rendered in bold face (eg. talk:Lynx (web browser) as opposed to talk:Lynx), making the connection between the citation and the article topic more evident. P.S.: ISC hosts dhclient and (IIRC) bind. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 18:59, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
BIND is a product as such of ISC, not an example of hosting. The projects that ISC is developing (in contrast to hosting) are shown here. TEDickey (talk) 19:14, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Well, I was wrong about dhclient and bind. What about "|work=Lynx"? Alternatives? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:08, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Looking around (as I've done in other topics), I don't see that the guidelines address specifically a group of authors (which is what "Lynx Developers Group" is). The "work=" clause doesn't seem to fit, since the citation is left with the implication that it was a work done for or by ISC, which is not the case. TEDickey (talk) 20:19, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
If the source provides no author, as is common with newswire reporting and the internal pages of company websites, and the organizational author would be the same as the work/site/periodical, or the publisher, use:

|author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.-->
— WP:CS1 § How the templates work italics added

Thus most appropriate variant seems to be:
"COPYHEADER for Lynx 2.8.7". Lynx. ISC. 2006-10-02. Retrieved 2012-01-13.
As ISC is really the publisher (as stated at Official website) and work is Lynx. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:26, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Doesn't apply. See CHANGES and AUTHORS. The source provides authors, who have been not complaining over the past 15 years in their collective term "Lynx Developers Group". The work is not by ISC TEDickey (talk) 20:28, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
this might be helpful as well TEDickey (talk) 20:29, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
The work is not by ISC indeed. ISC is the work publisher ("Lynx software distribution site hosted by the Internet Software Consortium"). The author of the text is unknown. May be this would be more helpful:
"COPYHEADER for Lynx 2.8.7". Lynx official website. ISC. 2006-10-02. Retrieved 2012-01-13.
What do You think about it? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:34, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
The source you just cited lists a maintainer, who according to the metrics page is the author of about half of Lynx. The maintainer wrote the page that you're citing, as could be determined by going back to the patch that updated COPYHEADER. The metrics and authors files are part of every version of Lynx over the past several years. Doesn't look anonymous in any way, since the work is clearly marked, and none of the individuals listed declares a relationship with ISC. TEDickey (talk) 20:43, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Exactly. It's like a journal article: the author is John Doe, who may or may not be related to the Publisher Inc. which prints the journal. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:50, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
no. By the way, COPYHEADER is gpg-signed. There are very few anonymous contributions to lynx, as you can see by the metrics file. Perhaps you should discuss your opinion of this on the lynx-dev mailing list, as suggested in the documentation. TEDickey (talk) 20:59, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Also, you should take the time to study the definitions for "hosted" and "published". They are distinct, and the latter does not apply to the relationship between the Lynx Developers Group and ISC TEDickey (talk) 21:24, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
here is a page noting that NetBSD is hosted at ISC, and (like Lynx), its content is managed by others than ISC TEDickey (talk) 21:52, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
As noted here, that is part of a hosting facility provided by ISC known as "hosted@ISC". here is a page that gives a better view of it. TEDickey (talk) 21:56, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
In other contexts, the "publisher" of the pages would be the website and/or the organization that runs the website. For Lynx, that is "Lynx Developers Group" TEDickey (talk) 21:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
ISC's history mentions Lynx, and (unlike the other projects mentioned), does not link to lynx.isc.org (see here). TEDickey (talk) 22:01, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
OK, feel free to edit that. Or you want me to do that? But please, write it to work, publisher is better left empty then. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 23:53, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
hmm - something like |authors=Lynx Developers Group |work='Lynx official website' (and omitting publisher) seems what I'm suggesting TEDickey (talk) 00:33, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

most graphic web browsers allow images to be disabled

This is tagged because there is no authoritative WP:RS for the comment (presumably it is simple(r) to find anonymous/uninformed comments, but those would not be WP:RS). For what it's worth, most google hits on the phrase are copies of this topic TEDickey (talk) 11:48, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

weak source used for "most graphic browsers"

The given source gives partial information for some of the most commonly-used browsers. If the statement that it is intended to support were amended to correspond with the source, that would be an improvement. It is unlikely that the original statement can be sourced, since there would be very few sources available TEDickey (talk) 13:39, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Agree on that. I used this source to show that most popular browsers can do that, but frankly I would prefer to remove the part of the sentence after m dash, as it seems to be of exactly zero value to the article, while it demands a proper explanation of several concerns: the graphic browser with graphics disabled and so on. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 13:52, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
But if it's removed, then the same anon-IP (or twin) will like re-add it TEDickey (talk) 14:05, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure that the high probability of anonymous user adding irrelevant information in the article is a good reason to keep this irrelevant information. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 14:17, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

BTW, the statement that most graphical browsers support disabling images is simply not true: those that don't support outnumber the supporting browsers by far. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 14:24, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Article structure

I would like to raise a concern about the article's structure: the features and use cases for the browser are split all over the article, making it a big mess. May be we could somehow refactor it to bring some sanity? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 13:56, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

An outline would be helpful. For sourcing, I don't recall any useful history-of-Lynx pages that could be used for this, since most focus on one aspect or another TEDickey (talk) 14:07, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
I envision the following structure:
  1. History
  2. Features
    1. Configurability
    2. Privacy
    3. Accessibility
  3. Supported platforms
Regarding the sourcing: we don't actually need to have a source dedicated to the history. We just need to collect and source the facts about the Lynx's history in a single section, which is quite different, IMHO. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 14:22, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
That looks okay TEDickey (talk) 14:58, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I started restructuring the article. As it falls out, a section devoted to use cases is unavoidable; as far as accessibility features are a side effect of text browser features, I'm now considering the proper parent for this section: Features or Use cases. Any comments? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 13:47, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

There are probably a large number of use cases, which seems to me to involve a lot of work. Features, with a few use cases (a mix) might be a better way to proceed TEDickey (talk) 13:52, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Definitely the number of possible Lynx uses is close to infinite. I just didn't find a good way to incorporate some information in Features section. Also I would like to add the information on using Lynx for managing HTML-formatted mail in console-based mail clients, which is probably a great share of Lynx usage occasions that is hard to insert to Features... — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 14:05, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
I think that if you've identified some common use-cases, then a small number of illustrative sections would be helpful to the reader. For instance, using it to view mail via mutt I agree will have some sources TEDickey (talk) 14:24, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Then I would leave the Use cases section as is until the text from there is fully absorbed into the rest of article. I actually intend to prepare this article for WP:GAN, so I hope to complete the needed changes (for removing the Use cases section) in a couple of days or so. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 14:31, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Archiving

I would like to include {{talk header}} and set up automatic archiving (30d period) here. Any objections? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 14:08, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

not really (though there is not a lot of discussion) TEDickey (talk) 17:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Those are nice features for future development. As a side effect, archiving hides stale discussions which helps to avoid irritating zombie threads. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 00:09, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Possible sources

using access technology TEDickey (talk) 17:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Re: lynx-dev Licensing Lynx TEDickey (talk) 18:07, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I was searching for good sources. Too many entries about lynx and accessibility, but most are either site-specific or WP:SPS. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 00:11, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
no problem TEDickey (talk) 00:27, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I also included two write-ups by Gregory J. Rosmaita, though these are WP:SPS. Does anyone know some more reliable sources that could be used to substitute these. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 11:27, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Lloyd Rasmussen's name led me here to this search seems to have some useful sources TEDickey (talk) 12:58, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Dumping potentially useful Lynx links for possible future reuse:

and these two, being obvious WP:SPS, are those survived from the major movement most of internet users interested in technology witnessed in the late 90-s:

Some are better, some are worse. Comments? — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 20:11, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Agree, some are better, some are worse (regarding the amount of attention they give to lynx). I'd start by selecting a few of the strongest sources and summarizing their chief points about lynx versus the topic. TEDickey (talk) 01:00, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Sure. I just need some time to devote to it. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 01:04, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Accessibility

The special features in "Accessibility" refer to BLynx (which is either a fork or repackaging). Ordinary lynx is easier to adapt to these special features than other browsers due to its simplified screen layout and minor details (such as the way it manages the cursor position) TEDickey (talk) 10:49, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

As I got it, BLYNX is more of a now defunct documentation project. II am in problem with good sources about using lynx for accessibility purposes: as far as setting PC up for blind users is a perquisite for browsing, not much of the information is available on the web. I would also note, that I hit several times the problem of a major source of documentation being just gone with a big university project that was re-organized to focus some parent issue (eg. formally correct web design, or computer accessibility for wider range of problems). Overall, searching for high quality sources seems to need quite a lot of continuous effort that I just have no time for. That said, I have never dealt with any kind of accessibility issues, so I have no idea about where and how I can search for the sources on the question and what is the general threshold of reliability in this field. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 12:30, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Browsing consists of (ref)

Here is a place to start (there are several aspects to numbering):

TEDickey (talk) 18:08, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Merge

We have a stub on ALynx (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) that is there since April 2005. On one hand, the ALynx browser is mildly distinct topic that is too closely related to Lynx, so describing it separately just doesn't make sense. On the other hand, all it has is a couple of primary references in External links, so merging it here will make the quality of this article a bit lower. So, I would kindly ask for comments. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 19:54, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

In other words, you get only a comment about an early port. By the way, the comments about the OS/2 port don't refer to the first port (which as I recall had some table support, but the source was never made available). TEDickey (talk) 21:07, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
As I get it, the ALynx is a second Amiga fork of Lynx. IIRC, current Lynx builds and runs on Amiga, which was the reason nobody picked ALynx up when the maintainer married. Anyway, this merge is not supposed to change the article dramatically, as IMHO the focused platforms should be Unix-like OSs (Linux, OSX, OpenBSD) and OpenVMS, as nobody else seems to use Lynx much these days. Even FreeDOS people prefere Arachne. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 23:11, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
"Focused" doesn't reflect the history of the topic. It was ported widely; that's part of the general interest. TEDickey (talk) 00:38, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
My idea was that we should mention the platforms, but shouldn't describe them in much detail. Though the fact that Lynx was forked more times then probably any other software is significant, I believe that the current use should take precedence over historical use, as well as main distribution's platforms should take precedence over forks. Still it would be nice to document all forks in some kind of timeline... — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 08:49, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

OS/2 Icon

My comment above was overlooked - the icon shown is from Lynx/2, which was a different fork. The existing OS/2 port is from the regular version (via Lynx 2.7.1 versus a fork from 2.4). Lynx/2 was reported to have reasonably good table layout, and some support for Java applets. However much of that is mailing-list or newsgroup discussion. Lynx/2's source was never made public (notwithstanding the GPL which applied to Lynx 2.4). TEDickey (talk) 00:38, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

demo

It will be useful to find ( or create ) a telnet server ( or SSH server ) with Lynx available. With no login ( if possible ) , because the goal is to demonstrate Lynx for public without installation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.55.255.41 (talk) 13:10, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

The merge

Done with the merge. ALynx was too much of a stub, and really belonged on this page anyway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CharmlessCoin (talk • contribs) 14:59, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Accuracy Dispute

Something is wrong with this article, though I'm not knowledgeable enough about the subject to tell what. It claims that Lynx was first released in 1992, but is based on a version of a web browser from 1994. This cannot possibly be right, and needs some clarification. 108.213.200.251 (talk) 15:15, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

It is right, as the statement about libwww of 1994 applies to the current version of Lynx, not to the initial release. I clarified the text. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 16:14, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. I appreciate it. 108.213.200.251 (talk) 18:45, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

Wat

"Similarly, Lynx also supports browsing histories [...] which can raise privacy concerns."

To normal people? Or just crazies. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.144.57.10 (talk) 04:16, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Editing Wikipedia with Lynx

Not sure we should be encouraging people to do that, since it gave bad results in some specific cases in the past (especially with UTF-8)... AnonMoos (talk) 20:37, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

As usual, focusing on WP:RS rather than offering advice is what editors should be doing TEDickey (talk) 21:06, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

online demo

Some ( telnet ) links to servers , where lynx browser is running for visitors , should be listed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.55.255.41 (talk) 14:21, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Correcting some inaccuracies

From - Lou Montulli

I saw some errors in the article but I'm not sure if I should correct them given my close association with the Lynx project. (I'm one of the original developers)

Michael Grobe and Charles Rezac were not students at the university, they were full time employees at the KU Academic Computing Center, which is part of the university system. Micheal was my boss and Charles was a coworker. I was a student employed by the ACC during that time. Michael and Charles worked with me on product feature direction and helped to get me a position at the ACC that payed me for some of the hours I was spending developing Lynx. I was the only programmer at KU on the project. (Until we launched the DosLynx project, and added Garrett Blythe)

"In 1993, Montulli added an Internet interface and released a new version (2.0) of the browser." This doesn't really make sense. I added HTML and HTTP support to Lynx in the 2.0 version, which made lynx compatible with WWW pages. This didn't change the interface at all since Lynx was already a hypertext browser, it added a new underlying transport and page encoding language. I would recommend changing it to say "Montulli added HTML and HTTP support in lynx 2.0 making lynx compatible with the World Wide Web project"

Montulli (talk) 19:04, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

promotional edits for MacOS

The given source for platforms-supported does not mention MacOS. Unix-like covers the sourced list of platforms. 19:56, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Broken website link?

Hi,

the website link [1] produces a "Access Denied - Sucuri Website Firewall" page. Is this correct?

I've found this other website [2] which I don't know if it's the official one or what...

Hope someone is better informed. :)

Best regards!

riveravaldez (talk) 08:19, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

"Thomas Dickey" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Thomas Dickey has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 November 2 § Thomas Dickey until a consensus is reached. Arp242 (talk) 11:02, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

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