Re: LYNX-DEV user agent?

[Michael Sokolov]

   Wayne Buttles <address@hidden> wrote:
> > The people who have the authority over the codeset on sol.slcc.edu
> > don't want you to be able to change the user agent string permanently.
>
> As I remember it, Fote is the reason it was never implemented.
>
> http://www.flora.org/lynx-dev/html/month0797/msg00460.html
   
   Scott McGee <address@hidden> wrote:
> Be carefull in your speculating. Fote _WAS_ the person in charge of the
> codeset on sol.slcc.edu when that decision was made, and Fote was the one
> who spoke loudest on not saving it. Fote was the one who primarily
> advocated not changing the user agent string, but allowed that it might
> be needed temporarily. He was insistant that we should not consider any
> persistant change of that.
   
   I have read Fote's posting that Wayne has referred me to, and I see that
Fote was against this not because it goes against the Ten Commandments of
Lynx, but solely because of legal bullshit. Since we should overthrow this
shitty government anyway, that is of zero concern to me. On the other hand,
I have some reservations of my own about making my version of Lynx save the
user agent string.
   
   First of all, let me point it out that making Lynx permanently look like
Netscrap is a Bad Idea. Not because of legal crap, but because this defeats
the purpose of user agent identification. One of the Ten Commandments of
Lynx is to be independent. Certainly Lynx should try to cope with the
bullshit that various assholes on the WWW throw at it, but it must not make
this a higher priority than doing The Right Thing when others are doing so
too. It is certainly true that many assholes use the user agent string to
insult Lynx users, but someone may actually use it the way it has been
intended to be used: to HELP certain browsers like Lynx by serving them a
special version of the page with all graphics, frames, JavaScript, and
other shit removed. If Lynx disguised itself as Netscrap the Good Samaritan
above would be out of luck. I am not sure of Fote's position on this
matter, but I consider it a Commandment that Lynx should place a higher
priority on Good Samaritans than on assholes.
   
   Nonetheless, the very first Commandment of free software is that all key
decisions must be made by the users, so I cannot base my judgment of the
above paragraph. I consider ARTIFICIAL FEATURE BLOCKING to be one of the
greatest sins, regardless of what the feature is. However, consider the
following. Although software must not PREVENT users from doing anything, it
certainly may and should ADVISE them against doing certain actions. To my
knowledge, Lynx does not take any steps to prevent users from changing the
user agent string to anything they want in userdefs.h. If this is the case,
then not saving this string in .lynxrc is not blocking, but advice. .lynxrc
has always been intended only for convenience-type settings. For more
serious settings, there are userdefs.h and lynx.cfg. The user agent string
is a serious setting and should not be taken lightly, therefore .lynxrc is
not the right place for it.
   
   The above is the conclusion I have come up with after a half of an hour
of heartache. You are more than welcome to discuss it with me.
   
   Sincerely,
   Michael Sokolov
   Phone: 440-449-0299
   ARPA Internet SMTP mail: address@hidden