Re: lynx-dev (patch) - show list of statusline messages from history page

[Klaus Weide]

On Mon, 19 Apr 1999, Leonid Pauzner wrote:

> * HTAlert, HTUserMsg and HTInfoMsg statusline messages now stored in a cyrcled
>   buffer and accessible from the History Page as LYNXMESSAGES:/ link.
>   This allow us to decrease the messages delay in lynx.cfg when we feel
>   messages too annoying, but have a nice history list for diagnostic purposes.
>   Idea belongs to Bela Lubkin. Buffer of 40 lines long. - LP

I hope you don't mind if I comment on another piece of code I haven't
tried yet... :)

1. There are basically thre ways to generate pseudo-documents (auxiliary
screens, or whatever they should be called):
A. Generate HTML in textual form, write it to temp file, then read in
   temp file and treat as text/html.  Involves SGML.c with all its gory
   details.
   Examples: many, you must have used one :)
B. Generate HTML in textual form, pass directly to (normally) SGML.c
   (mostly via HTStreamStack).
   Examples: LYHandleCookies(), LYLoadKeymap()
C. Generate HTML structures (text, elements, attributes) on the fly, pass
   directly to HTStructured object (i.e. HTML.c functions), bypassing
   SGML.c.
   Examples: files in WWW subdirectory (look for .c files having
     #define PUTC(c) (*targetClass.put_character)(target, c)
   or similar)

Disadvantages for A: overhead of creating/writing/reading file, file
space needed.  (May be good for things that don't have to be recreated
every time).

Disadvantages for A and B: Unnecessary tranformation of
     content -> flat text form
and back again.  That includes also escaping characters that need it.
(Your code seems to be wrong for any messages that contain '&' and '<'
characters, you'd have to escape those for using method A.)

Otoh, possible disadvantages for C:
- A brief look didn't reveal any source file in the src directory
 using it, only under WWW.  But these days the separation between
those two directories seems to have broken pretty much anyway (files
under WWW can include heder files from the src directory, which
used to not be the case), so that shouldn't be significant.
- Character translation may not work right, maybe (I don't know
for sure either way).  Well in this cases the only variable text
that may need translation is in text, not in attributes, so one
could set the "document charset" up with a META if necessary
(which should work with all three methods) - if that should be
needed for localized messages.

So my wish, as you can guess by now, is that this should be done
using method C.  Especially for *this* kind of thing - if one
wants to see messages that ralate to disk access problems, like
some directory set wrong or disk full, one may not be able to
see them because the temp file can not be created.

>      BeginInternalPage(fp0, HISTORY_PAGE_TITLE, HISTORY_PAGE_HELP);
> 
> +    fprintf(fp0, "<tr align=right> <a href=\"LYNXMESSAGES:\">[%s]</a> 
> </tr>\n",
> +                            gettext("Your recent statusline messages"));
> +

This is the very first link on the History Page.  I'd prefer it to
be at the bottom, otherwise things like ^H, 'd' become a bit more
inconvenient.

Actually one shouldn't have to go to the history page in order do see
past messages.  (And among other things, it won't work if the history
file cannot be written, see above.)  The normal approach would be to
sacrifice yet another key, not that I want to recommend it.  But I
guess 'g LYNXMESSAGES:' should work.  (Good candidate for a jump
file shortcut...)


   Klaus