[9fans] Webbrowser

[John Stalker <stalker@Math.Princeton.EDU>]

 From martin@familie-kielhorn.de:

>Hi,
>in Linux I do use links
>(http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibright/links/)
>as my standard browser...

Most of the responses to this were confused.  Links was originally
just a text browser. It now has a graphics mode which can do X,
but it is just as happy running with SVGALib, on the linux frame buffer,
or in various more arcane ways.  Take a look at the link for details.
I don't think the suggestion was to port the text mode, but only the
graphics mode.  My feeling, and yes I have looked at the links sources
in the past, is that this can definitely be done.  It would also be
a good thing.  Links is actually better than mozilla, konqueror, etc.
in many respects.  It is the browser I use most often even on machines
that have all of those installed.

 From Scott Schwartz <schwartz@bio.cse.psu.edu>

>Frankly, if web browsers interpreted any one of troff macros, ditroff,
>or dvi (with shell escapes removed), the world would be a better place,
>because then we could generate nicely typeset and nicely portable
>documents that could be widely and reliably displayed.  So my proposal is
>this: get someone else to teach mozilla to grok the formats listed above.
>The killer app is that you can then view good old unix manpages in a
>modern mode!

This comment confused me.  I already look at man pages, nicely hyperlinked,
in my web browser (usually links) all the time.  Not just for all three
free BSD's, but for plan9 as well.  In general, though, having dvi
web pages seems like a step in the wrong direction.  The original
idea of the web was that the writer of a page leaves the business
of how things are displayed up to the browser.  One shouldn't even assume
that the browser is visual, as anyone visually impaired can tell you.
Of course, if you need precise control over how things are formatted
then dvi is much better, which is why I write articles in TeX.  But
the web serves a different purpose most of the time, which is why xdvi
is a separate application which my browser invokes when I need it.

 From martin@familie-kielhorn.de again:

>I consider this project as solvable -- a whole web browser will probably
>be much more complicated, probably I will never manage to write my own
>portable web browser.

For what it's worth here is my opinion: Yes, it can be done.  Yes, it should
be done.  No, I am not going to do it.  Sorry.
--
John Stalker
Department of Mathematics
Princeton University
(609)258-6469