Re: lynx-dev Lynx 2.7.1 and 2.8 refuse to render certain HTML documents

[Heather Stern]

I ate the fortune cookie first, then read what Michael Warner <address@hidden>
        wrote in response to 
Jason White <address@hidden> <address@hidden>:
> > When I attempt to read
> > http://lummi.stanford.edu/class/ps142k/WWW/casebook/casebook.htm (a site
> > which I found whilst searching for materials relevant to international
> > law), Lynx versions 2.7.1 and 2.8 both display the document as HTML source
> > instead of formatting it. I could not find any error near the beginning of
> > the file, judging from the HTML source as displayed by Lynx, except for
> > the absence of an SGML Document Type Declaration. However, many authors
> > fail to include such declarations in their web pages, and Lynx reads them
> > without difficulty. Thus, the problem must lie elsewhere. Is this
> > phenomenon the result of a bug in Lynx?
> 
> curiouser and curiouser... I (p)rinted the source to a local file and
> opened that file up with lynx, and it rendered (apparently) fine.

I notice the extension is .htm -- the site is probably using Apache with
a default configuration, .htm as a completely unknown extension, therefore
rendering as the final choice, text/plain.  (Common symptom of editing a
file on an MS-windows box for a UNIX server, losing that l on the end.)

The server having stated it wants text/plain, Lynx is honoring it...

I'd say this is a server misconfig, and the site's unix or Apache distribution
bug that its default config is broken, or maybe a bug in their sysadmin :) 
... but we could probably add a user override option to assume that URLs ending 
in .htm and .html should always be rendered.

  . | .   Heather Stern                  |         address@hidden
--->*<--- Starshine Technical Services - * - address@hidden
  ' | `   Sysadmin Support and Training  |        (800) 938-4078