Re: Tables in text browsers...

On Fri, 25 Oct 1996, Dan Delaney wrote:

>    Why is it that none of the text browsers (Lynx and Charlotte come to 
> mind) support Tables? I see no reason why they shouldn't. Text can be 
> ....
> pixels. It could, however, use the percentage size specs.

Possibly. Code like this for text would probably not be very fast (as you 
have to do lots of parsing, effectively parsing the screen into 80th's 
(*IF* it's an 80 col wide screen).

I think it was simply "it's too hard to do for something I don't get paid 
for" issue.

>    Why doesn't Lynx support tables?

Lynx 'sort' of supports tables. It just organises the data vertically 
instead of cell by cell (each cell being a line).

With Lynx, you must also remember that development halted (or at least 
slowed down) for a while, in the middle of the 2.x's, and only started 
again when some people got behind it and pushed it along.

I think the fact that Lynx 2.6 recognises most of the HTML 3.0 and/or 3.2 
tags (can't remember which it is..) is fairly impressive itself!

I seem to remember seeing Fote's name crop up in the Lynx help stuff, so 
I guess he'd prolly know more about it.

Personally the only thing I really feel Lynx needs is an update to the 
way the help options are displayed. Mebbe a leaning towards something 
more like Pine/Pico, with the keys down the bottom.

Also something else in Lynx that'd be useful is the ability to select 
(and download) inline pictures as though they were a link. Very useful 
occasionly.

But you're right in that the tables issue needs to be addressed. Even 
simply using tabs could be effective for a table display. ?!?

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Received on Friday, 25 October 1996 12:01:57 UTC