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Re: possible in lynx file download?


Thank you , Wes, for the very complete and helpful explanation.

You seem to know a lot about this.
I hope you don't mind if I continue to pick your brain on this subject... (-: 


On Mar 31, 2013, at 7:49 PM, wes wrote:


hi rick.
But when I try downloading the MD5SUMS file from the same directory, I get a few lines of HTML pre-pended to the downloaded file. 

lines like the following?
<!-- X-URL: http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.7/powerpc/iso-cd/MD5SUMS --> 
<!-- Date: Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:34:12 GMT -->
<!-- Last-Modified: Sun, 24 Feb 2013 00:31:23 GMT -->
<BASE HREF="http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.7/powerpc/iso-cd/MD5SUMS "> 



Yes, exactly.
As you probably figured out, I'm using the "d" command not the "<cr>" option to start the download.
So my next question is: Why does it do this when downloading MD5SUM, but *not* when downloading the ".iso" file? Does it recognize a difference between the two formats (binary vs a text) and invoke a corresponding difference in treatment for download?
And the next-next question: The text file is not an html text file. This is a difference that it could also recognize, one would think. It seems reasonable to me that a non-html file should be treated just like a binary file for download purposes. Am I missing something? 





Has anybody else seen this behavior?


well, i just noticed it now, retracing your steps.


Is this a bug in Lynx?


i do not believe so.  afaict, lynx adds those lines for generally
sensible reasons, as explained here:

http://lynx.isc.org/current/lynx2-8-8/lynx_help/Lynx_users_guide.html#RemoteSource
So it's a feature (hence, not a bug) when downloading html text files. Is it, then, a bug when that feature gets applied indiscriminately to all text files, even those that don't contain html? 




as mentioned there, if you really want to, you can disable this
behavior by adding

PREPEND_BASE_TO_SOURCE:FALSE

to your lynx.cfg.
I'd prefer, of course, if it automatically knew the difference and acted correctly in all cases. But if that's not possible, I guess having a config option to disable the behavior is the next best thing.
For what it's worth, I've never known any browser other than lynx that behaves this way. Is there something special about the design of lynx that makes this desirable? 

Thanks!

Rick
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