Re: does elinks have a show hidden links option?
On Thu, 14 Dec 2017, Karen Lewellen wrote:
Hi Davidson,
Let me try to answer your good questions in context.
I am not a user of elinks, so I can present no direct solution to
your problem here. Nonetheless, I have a comment or two, which I
hope will be understood in accordance with the constructive spirit
in which I offer them.
Actually, your question is a good one, and lets me provide some
context for my own goals.
First comment: Is there prior context to this question? I see none
on this mailing list. Just FYI.
If you are asking why I broached the issue here, it is because
e-links, links, and lynx, are discussed here as all are part of
Debian distributions.
Of course. This question of mine arose from my own failure to read
your email carefully. In particular, I neglected to pay attention to
information you provided in the subject line.
I apologise for my ineptitude.
Given the development background of many here as well, if a back
door exists to my goals my hope is that someone will know it, or
confirm that it does not exist.
I completely agree that debian-user is a promising forum in which to
investigate the issue.
does elinks have a way to change the character set display?
Second comment: You have not, as far as I can tell, fully described
here the context that motivates you to seek to change the character
set. In other words, what is the specific problem you experience
(on paypal's website, I gather) that makes you want to change the
character set?
Having failed to read the subject line, I confused myself here,
again. So embarrassing.
Granted I am sure I was not overly detailed, sometimes when working
against a personal deadline, and or writing from my office, I aim
for the simplest question to solve the goal.
You were sufficiently informative, and got straight to the point. I,
on the other hand, was too dumb to read the subject line.
My first question was if e-links has a way to display hidden links.
that I feel might solve the problem. However I base that assumption
on my use of a browser that does provide this option lynx.
Now to answer your question.
A few months back Paypal changed the method of displaying
information in some communications, and on the site.
For example, while my e-mails discussing master debit card
transactions are still presented in my mail reader, which is pine,
an option with shellworld, who provides my direct contact with Linux
based programs.
We have alpine too, but I am not personally fond of Alpine.
I have (quite happily) used both pine and alpine, but it has been a
long time since I had access to a working instance of pine.
Back to the issue. Some e-mails from paypal, say the ones telling
me that I have earned cash back, appear to be blank text wise again
at least in pine. Once I checked with alpine, finding the text could
be read.
So it sounds like paypal is sends you html email. Apparently alpine
does a better job of rendering it. Got it.
Now, I suspect that the default character set for each program is
different. I admit that some other term may better explain what I
mean, for example, another term related to display, but I am using
character set as a way to explain what I mean.
Okay.
Here is how all that relates to the website.
I received a money request from a friend. Because paypal only
allows me to access my accounts using elinks,
Incidentally, I assume you have already tried changing the user-agent
header in lynx, to see whether paypal is merely blacklisting lynx by
its user-agent header? (As I know you well know, this is an
infuriatingly common practice.)
Because paypal only allows me to access my accounts using elinks, I
find a way to both read the e-mail in elinks and reach my account.
I will explain how that is done if important, but I do not feel it
is where the problem is concerned.
Okay. Fine by me.
The email has a pay now link which is one I can select from the
keyboard. I am taken to a page where I can log in to pay, and I do
so. However, while the page is labeled at the top suggesting I
could make a payment, the section of the page where such information
would appear is well garbled. I have the same experience if I try
reading so called secured messages on the site too. whatever is
being displayed is not appearing, perhaps the coding is dynamic, I
do not know.
So using elinks, you traverse three documents:
1. view email (document 1)
2. follow pay-now link, which loads a log-in page (document 2)
3. after log-in, a payment-page is loaded (document 3)
The third document is where the trouble arises, when elinks fails to
render some form or link on that page.
If it were me, I would want to save the problematic document (the
payment page), so that I could examine it at my leisure, using
whatever tools suited my purposes.
I understand that paypal won't communicate with you if you use
lynx.
But you could use elinks to obtain the payment-page, *save that page*,
and then view it in lynx. Once viewing the page in lynx, you could
check whether the show-hidden-links function of lynx reveals anything
interesting.
Granted, this is not a total solution. But it might provide some clues
that lead to one or, if it opens up no possibilities, it might at
least rule some possiblities out (which is a kind of progress, even if
a disappointing kind).
I guess what I'm suggesting is that in elinks, after you arrive at
step 3 (as described above), you
A. use elinks's "save-as" action[1] to save a copy of the payment-page, and then
B. open that page in lynx, and then
C. use lynx's show-hidden-links function to see whatever that reveals.
If elinks has a display hidden inks option the way lynx does,
perhaps the information would appear. If there are ways to choose
other character sets, perhaps I can match the same one Alpine uses,
or try some options, and thereby also display the content...and make
my payment.
I want to give you a chance to read these details before considering the
other information in your e-mail.
Thank you for the detailed information. Very interesting.
Frankly the people solving the problem should be Paypal,
Absolutely agreed.
but they have stated that even with paid staff in charge of
accessibility, no one in Customer service knows anything about
accommodations.
Truly Orwellian, needless to say.
Thanks,
Karen
1. Regarding the "save-as" action, I'm assuming that this page lists
an accurate listing of available elinks actions:
http://elinks.or.cz/documentation/html/elinkskeys.5.html
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