Re: Adding the "links" text mode web browser to the base system

[Alan Barrett <apb%cequrux.com@localhost>]

On Mon, 02 Nov 2009, der Mouse wrote:
> > Nevertheless, I think that there is an obvious gap in the base
> > system for an application that is capable of downloading and
> > rendering simple HTML documents in a text-only environment.
>
> This is true.
>
> There are many other gaps, too - for example, there is no Lisp engine;
> there is no picture editor; there is no spreadsheet; there is no
> screen-sharing program (a la remote desktop, vnc, etc).

I wouldn't consider most of those to be gaps in the base system,
because having them available in pkgsrc is sufficient.  A web
browser is in a different class from most of those things, because
it may be needed before the system is fully installed.  In fact,
my suggestion of adding a web browser to base was triggered by a
problem somebody reported where an installation went wrong and they
wanted to download working *.tgz sets to fix the installation, and
using the ftp(1) application as a web browser to find working *.tgz
sets was painfully difficult.

--apb (Alan Barrett)