Summary of changes in Lynx v2.8.4

This list only summarizes some changes, for a detailed history of changes see the CHANGES file.

New features (some are compile-time options):

• integrate KAME patch for IPV6.
• integrate SSL patch as a configure option --with-ssl.
• add .po files to main distribution (including ja.po), remove stubs for files that were not implemented, use msgmerge to resync against the current lynx.pot
• add command-line options -cmd_log and -cmd_script, to provide a simple command logging and scripting facility.
• add option -stdin, which tells Lynx to read the startfile from standard input.
• implement backward-search, bind to "N".
• if more than one EXTERN command has been defined in lynx.cfg for a given name, allow the user to select one command from a popup menu.
• rename KEYMAP EXTERN to EXTERN_LINK, adding EXTERN_PAGE. Existing keymaps should work since EXTERN_LINK matches first. EXTERN_PAGE runs the external command on the current page. Map comma (,) to EXTERN_PAGE.
• implement left/right scrolling and line-wrap toggle using "{", "}" and "|" characters, respectively. This uses SVr4 curses/ncurses pads to make the whole screen treated as a viewport into a very wide screen. A popup menu is presented to select different viewport widths. Repeating the shift command increases the amount by which the screen is shifted.
• implement command-completion using popup menu for selection. Pressing tab twice in the prompt for command or URLs displays a sorted list of the choices.
• implement a simple parser for Lynx commands which are normally bound to keys using KEYMAP. This is bound to ":", so one may for instance type ":quit" to exit. The parser allows unique abbreviations, so ":q" is equivalent to ":quit".
• implement CHDIR (change directory) command.
• improve TRST (table) rendering by handling several cases of nested tables (see below).

Other enhancements:

• improve HTML interpretation:
  • modify parsing of "<script>...</script>" to allow "<!--...-->" comments. Though the HTML 4.0 spec is fairly clear, other browsers (and some webpages) assume that "</" does not have to be escaped when it appears in a script which is commented to avoid confusion with older browsers.
  • fix parsing of "<>" in javascript which caused premature </script>" (Debian #65151).
  • modify logic that removed all blanks from HREFs, instead reducing newlines and tabs to spaces and trimming leading/trailing blanks. Though they do not belong there, it is more likely that the HREF will work with embedded blanks retained
  • modify handling of empty values for radio and checkbox fields to avoid sending "on" as the value
  • use count of anchors on the current line to correct length required to show links as numbers (Debian #68542).
  • add experimental support for bibp: URLs as described in http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-cameron-tatu-bibp-02.txt,
  • improve TEXTAREA handling:
    • add -trim_input_fields command-line option and corresponding TRIM_INPUT_FIELDS to lynx.cfg to suppress trimming of TEXT and TEXTAREA fields in forms.
    • consolidate scattered calls to editor with common function, fixing terminal modes when editing TEXTAREA.
  • improve TABLE handling:
    • allow TRST code to handle nested tables (table within a table). This does not address two special cases: (a) when TABLE is inside PRE, and (b) when there is a TAB inside a TABLE.
    • enable <BR> and <P> in TRSTables.
    • add experimental configure option --enable-nested-tables, for nested-table support.
    • add runtime toggle for EXP_NESTED_TABLES, bind this to "~".
• improvements to character sets and display:
  • allow video attributes such as bold and reverse to be combined with colors.
  • add -display-charset command-line option, and additionally allow autodetection of the charset on the systems which support this (e.g., OS/2 EMX and Linux). This provides a way to switch the display charset other than via the Options form.
• improvements to color-style:
  • make the styles of menu border, background, entry, number, active-entry and scroll indicator configurable.
  • change the upper-left corner of the screen to implement next/previous arrows that one can click on with the mouse.
  • enable showing the region between mark and point in the edit areas in a configurable style.
  • add visible feedback for special case of inactive current text area which may exist with -tna.
  • add "typeless" notion to color style logic (see CHANGES for details).
  • implement styles in "dynamic areas" of documents, i.e., active text-edit fields.
• improve interaction with user:
  • allow the user to quit a menu by mouse-clicking outside the menu.
  • add a new edit-action LYE_STOP which temporarily suppresses -tna in response to a given character.
  • enable interrupting Lynx by any char bound to interrupt.
  • implement an action NEXT_DOC, which undoes PREV_DOC (bound to left-arrow key.
  • enable pasting an URL into Lynx (similar to 'g'), and improve the code to copy an URL from Lynx.
  • add an optional TRUE/FALSE flag to EXTERNAL settings in lynx.cfg. When TRUE, then activating (using arrow-right for example) a link whose URL matches the type specified by the EXTERNAL prefix field is the same as pressing ".".
  • add HIDDEN_LINK_MARKER entry to lynx.cfg, allowing user to specify string to mark hidden links. This makes hidden links visible, so they will not be listed as hidden in the "l" page. If the marker string with is empty, the old behaviour is restored
  • modify search rules for lynx.cfg and lynx.lss to look in the same directory as the parent file (when processing includes), or the directory of the default config file
  • implement edit-history for mail URLs.
  • truncate very wide popup menu entries to prevent wrapping.
  • workaround for staircased messages, e.g., displayed when running xli as an external viewer.
  • add ENABLE_LYNXRC setting to lynx.cfg, which allows one to modify the list of values which are visible on the Options form which can be saved to the .lynxrc file
  • add FORW_RL and BACK_LL actions to edit-bindings support to allow cursor forward and backward respectively to move to the next/previous link if done at the end of the edit-field.
  • add error checking to report problems downloading or copying a file.
  • modify key mappings so the keymap file overrides the terminfo/termcap description rather than the reverse.
  • treat ".Z", ".gz" and ".bz2" suffixes similarly (there were some cases where ".bz2" files were overlooked).
• improve interaction with other programs:
  • tolerate leading whitespace in mailcap entries
  • filter the list of mime types sent in "Accept:" header for GET, to eliminate repeated or shadowed types.
  • change mime type for bzip2 files to bzip2, x-bzip2
  • implement "%s", "%t", "%{charset}" and "%{encoding}" substitutions for mailcap.
  • in passive ftp mode use the IP address from the server's response for the data connection, rather than doing another lookup of the hostname.
  • handle a "215 Windows2000" response from "SYST" command
• improve cookie support:
  • modify cookie path prefix-comparison to ignore a trailing slash, e.g., /group/sftvnews/ versus /group/sftvnews (workaround for visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sftvnews)
  • cookie "path=" should be a prefix of the request-URI path, do not truncate request-URI path in LYSetCookie().
• improvements to debug/traces:
  • add command-line option -trace-mask to specify optional traces. Defined these categories: 1=SGML, 2=color-style, 4=TRST.
  • add traces for argument parsing, as well as an environment variable LYNX_TRACE which has the effect of the -trace option.
  • add configure --enable-vertrace option, to put __FILE__ and __LINE__ into trace log.

New sample files:

• add bright-blue.lss color style configuration.
• add mailto-form.pl script to illustrate handling mailto URLs.

New ports:

• U/Win

Improvements to existing ports:

OS/2 EMX

• enable automatic switching of display charsets
• allow changing size of Lynx window at runtime. Example:

  
                  !mode 110,30;exit
  
  

• implement -blink option for OS/2 EMX and ncurses, merged with equivalent slang code.
• add a configure check for video library, needed to link with slang.
• replace some WIN_EX ifdef's by CAN_CUT_AND_PASTE. Enable cut and paste on OS/2. For example, in the keymap file:

  
                  setkey "\200\4"     LAC:DO_NOTHING:PASTE    # S-insert
                  setkey "^(kIC)"     LAC:DO_NOTHING:PASTE    # S-insert
  
  

OS390

• logic for multi-bookmark names (A-Z) to work with EBCDIC.

Unix

• improved configure script checks for ncurses versus curses.
• add a configure check for napms(), use this if available to support subsecond delay times for INFOSECS, MESSAGESECS, ALERTSECS.
• reorder initialization logic for slang configuration avoiding premature reference to $TERM, especially when Lynx is running in dump mode, e.g., via cron.

VMS

• interpret ftp server type for VMS if a URL is given with "/~name", as a Unix-style server. This works for the following, at least:

  
                  VMS V6.2 AlphaServer 2100 4/233 MadGoat System type.
  
  

Win32 & MS-DOS

• add a cleanup handler, since UNIX-style signal handlers do not work on win32.
• workaround for broken <sys/stat.h> definitions in cygwin. permissions[] array in LYLocal.c because cygwin (mis)implements the
• add DIRED support to makefile.bcb
• modify makefile.msc and makefile.bcb, add commented-out lines for building with winsock2.
• modify makefile.bcb, add commented-out lines for building with color-styles.
• avoid prepending a drive letter when saving files via the PRINT command on DOS systems.
• speed up local directory access for DJGPP by setting _djstat_flags.

As well as security-related changes:

• make subdirectory for more-secure temporary files as needed, and ensure that the umask is set to allow execution permissions on the subdirectory.
• set restriction for the CHDIR command so it is not normally enabled in anonymous mode
• improve check for LYNX_TEMP_SPACE by ensuring that the directory actually exists; attempt to create the directory if it does not, e.g., ~/tmp/.

And finally:

• A lot of bug fixes
• A lot of documentation changes.
• A lot of dead code removed

Valid HTML! Re-validate