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000269_my_powerful 20 MHz i80386 PC with the deluxe 40 MB hard drive, I.msg
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connect to my local ISP using MS-DOS Kermit 3.14 PL3 and the SLIP8250
packet driver. I then telnet to my BSD/OS 2.0 UNIX shell account, usually
establishing several simultaneous sessions. From there, I read mail with
elm, USENET news with tin, and, most importantly, browse the Web with
Lynx--all at breakneck speed, _sans_ annoying pictures, and without ever
having to take my fingers off the home row keys (like to click a mouse).
Ah, MS-DOS Kermit and Lynx! Life doesn't get any better than that! Or
does it? If I could run Lynx on my PC--the _real_ Lynx for cursor-
addressable, character-cell, "curses-oriented" display devices, not some
TurboVision pretender--over a SLIP connection, I'd never ask Santa for
anything else ever again. Am I the only luser who sees the wisdom of
porting Lynx to MS-DOS and using it in tandem with Kermit and its built-in
TCP/IP? Is it simply not possible? Is there no curses for MS-DOS? If it
is possible, would the port be a huge undertaking? I read these
newsgroups regularly, and I've never seen anyone even mention what seems
to me the logical next step in the development of text-based Web
browsers: a Lynx for the little guy. What am I missing?
If there _were_ a Lynx for MS-DOS, complete with vi keys and local HTML
file viewing, I'd use it to solve a problem that has long plagued me at
work: how to provide employees with process documentation that combines
the power of hypertext with the ready accessiblity of our existing
UNIX-like (MKS Toolkit, actually) man pages. Imagine this: J. Random
Hacker is editing a simple awk script using vi. Because it's three
o'clock in the morning, she forgets the order of parameters to the
sub() function, so she types
:!man awk<Enter>/sub(<Enter>
and she's immediately staring at the answer to her question without having
abandoned her editing session or having reached beyond the bang (!) key.
Now imagine that, with a tap of the vi l (el) key, she's linked to the
regexp(3) man page because, instead of the traditional man utility, she's
actually running the Lynx/Kermit duo! And her man pages are HTML
documents!
If I'm preachin' to the choir, let me hear ya sing! Any and all comments
will be sincerely appreciated. TIA.
---
Jim Monty
monty@indirect.com
Tempe, Arizona USA