Lynx 2.7.1 for OS/2

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Installation
• Getting Help
• Bugs
• License

Introduction

Hello and welcome to Lynx 2.7.1 for OS/2. This is a port of Lynx 2.7.1 from the Lynx-Dev sources (Unix and VMS). It should be fairly complete, but it hasn't been tested very thoroughly. Be sure to read the included README file, which is more general than this file, which applies only to the OS/2 port.

Why Lynx?

Lynx is a full featured text-oriented browser for the World Wide Web. Though the trend in recent years has been towards graphical browsers, there are still many good reasons for using Lynx. Lynx can be used to format WWW output for users with special needs, such as the visually impaired. Lynx is also much faster than any other browser out there, and is good for doing quick lookups on URLs from a newsreader, for example. Lynx lets you cut through the style and get right to the substance.

Why port Lynx 2.7.1 to OS/2?

As you may know, there already is a Lynx port for OS/2: Lynx/2, ported by Derek J. Decker. Actually, ported is too weak of a term, since Lynx/2 has so many enhancements it's hard to know where to start listing them. Let me say up front that this port is not intended to supersede Lynx/2. Hardcore OS/2 Lynxers will want to have both. Lynx/2 has a lot of things this port doesn't have, most importantly: better table support, user-selectable colors, and support for Java applets. Lynx/2 is a lot less rough around the edges, takes account of things like FAT-compatible filenames, for example, and is easier to install.

However, Lynx/2 is based on the Lynx 2.4 codebase. Lynx 2.7.1 has a lot of things that Lynx 2.4 didn't. You can get a feel for these new features by looking at the help files included with this package. The highlights include frame support, some table support, lots of user-customizable settings for things like comment handling, and fairly thorough support for HTML 3.0 and HTML 3.2. Lynx/2 has some of these things added in (tables and frames, notably). I needed a text-mode browser that would do HTML 3.2, though, and that's one area where Lynx 2.7.1 is ahead of Lynx/2.

Another feature of this port is that it works in an xterm under XFree86-OS/2 as well as in an OS/2 fullscreen or windowed session. This is important to me because of the shortage of browsers that run under XFree86-OS/2. Lynx/2 doesn't run under XFree86-OS/2 because it uses direct VIO calls, while this Lynx 2.7.1 port uses only ANSI routines for screen writes. So if you're an XFree86 user, you may want to use Lynx/2 on your PM desktop, and Lynx 2.7.1 on your XFree86 desktop. Lynx 2.7.1 can also be displayed on an attached terminal.

Installation

Hardware and Software Requirements

Hardware

• An IBM-compatible PC capable of running OS/2 2.1 or later with TCP/IP
• In effect, a 386sx or better with at least 8 MB of RAM.

Software

• OS/2 2.1 or later (I think...should definitely be OK on Warp 3 or later).
• An HPFS partition, as I haven't made any allowances for FAT filenames. Actually, FAT might work, but you won't have any online help.
• IBM TCP/IP 2.0 or later (?) Warp 3 IAK, Warp Connect, and Warp 4 all fit the bill.
• EMX runtime 0.9c or later.
• GNU File Utilities. You need at least 'cp', and I'm not sure what all else.

Installation Procedure

This is probably a little harder than it needs to be right now. I'll try to make it as straightforward as possible.

1. Unzip the Lynx 2.7.1 package into a directory. You've probably already done this.
2. If you haven't installed the EMX runtime or the GNU file utils, now is a good time. If you don't have the GNU Fileutils and don't want to install them, copy the file lcp.exe to cp.exe in the same directory as your lynx.exe.
3. Copy lynx.exe to somewhere on your path, or to its own directory . Put lynx.cfg somewhere; if lynx has its own directory put it there. Don't use x:/MPTN/ETC (your ETC directory) if you have Lynx/2 installed, or you will have conflicts. You need to put the helpfiles somewhere, too. If lynx has its own directory, put their directories under it.
4. Unzip the terminfo zipfile to its own directory somewhere.
5. Set some environment variables in your config.sys:
   • set HOME=x:/pathname (where you want personal configuration files, signature files, etc to go)
   • set TMP=x:/tmpspace (a temporary directory)
   • set TERMINFO=x:/terminfo_path (where you unzipped the terminfo files)
   • set TERM=something (where something is a terminal type supported by terminfo and hopefully also termcaps: "ansi" is a reasonable if unaesthetic value.)
   • set WWW_HOME=scheme://some.random.url/ (the URL you want Lynx to load on startup.)
   • set LYNX_CONFIG=x:/pathname/lynx.cfg (Path where you put lynx.cfg).
6. Edit your lynx.cfg file to suit your needs. Some things in here must be changed to suit your configuration (especially your domain, and the location to helpfiles, etc.).
7. Reboot to activate your environment variables; make a desktop object for lynx.exe if you wish. Alternatively, instead of modifying config.sys, you can make a lynx.cmd file containing all of the environment variable settings and running lynx.exe.
8. Happy Lynxing!

Getting Help

The best place to start looking for help is in the Lynx help files. If you have Lynx set up correctly, you can browse them just by hitting 'h' or '?'. If not, try looking at them with WebExplorer.

Lots of good information is available from Lynx Links. I may have more specific information about Lynx for OS/2 available from my Lynx page. If you're totally stuck, you can email me, but please don't send me any general Lynx questions, etc; just problems, suggestions, or compliments regarding the OS/2 port.

Bugs

These are the bugs I know about:

• In some places, absolute paths starting with '\' or '/' work. In others, they don't. Relative paths and absolute paths starting with drive letters should always work. References to the home directory as "~" don't seem to work, either.
• Removal of bookmark entries doesn't work. Use 'e' to edit your bookmarks page instead until I find and fix this.
• Earlier bugs relating to the PageUp/PageDown/Home/End keys and to unreadable colours have been fixed with the inclusion of a new set of terminfo files. DIRED support has been compiled out, since it didn't work and no one asked to have it fixed.

If anyone finds any other bugs, let me know. In particular, I may well have missed any number of places where Unix-like pathnames are expected.

License

Lynx is distributed under the GNU Public License, which you should read. There is no warranty, as described in the license agreement. Source code for Lynx is available from lynx.browser.org (use the Lynx 2.7.1 release code), while patches for compiling Lynx under OS/2 are included in this package. If you want to recompile Lynx for OS/2, you will need to find the OS/2 ncurses port. I got it from here, but I'm not responsible for the ncurses port. If you can't get it from the original source, you can try here but don't count on that file to always be there.