Re: lynx-dev lynx2.8.3dev.5

[Vlad Harchev]

On Fri, 30 Jul 1999, Philip Webb wrote:

> at the risk of -- nay, with the intention of -- starting a debate,
> aren't we beginning to add too many esoteric features to Lynx,
> ie things a single user offers a patch for
> without satisfying a previously expressed want, long-felt or otherwise?

   Seems that such voting (whether to submit patch) should be performed during
initial patch submission (it will be difficult for Tom to remove feature that
got into released dev. version).
 
> also, should we not require that new features be accompanied
> by patches to Lynx documentation by the programmer or someone else,
> if the programmer's English is not upto it, as is sometimes the case?
> as things stand, features get added without advice how to use them.

  Seems documentaion for particular features should be placed into TODO list
(so that both authors and documentaion writers will be able to cooperate on
writing documentaion - since most times authors with bad english even don't
understand that documentaion notes they've written are completely unreadable
by native English speakers) - IMO it's better to release a patch with very 
brief documentaion, rather than delay it until complete documentaion for it 
will be written.

> also, are we ever prepared to remove a feature from Lynx?
> eg do we still want to include support for gopher & news
> and might there be a case for dropping traversal,
> given that it can get Lynx blackballed & is replaceable by wget?
> if we aren't prepared ever to drop things,
> should we not be more cautious about continuing to add them?

 IMO as long as feature can be turned off at compile time, it shouldn't be
removed from the source tree.
 Personally I object against removing 'news' from lynx - it's useful enough
(seems especially on the DOS platform - (in theory) you get almost complete
networking package with browser, newsreader, ftp).
 And lynx is not replacable with wget (I personally used it to download docs
from one site - when I used 'wget', I recieved garbage (without any letters -
only punctuation marks and digits) ).
 
>[...] 

 Best regards,
  -Vlad