Re: Downloading with Lynx on the WWW

[nparker@cie-2.uoregon.edu (Neil Parker)]

In article <3np08s$ghr@nexus.uiowa.edu> snelson@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu (Steven
Nelson) writes:
>Another big THANK YOU to Joe Kohn for SSII -Apr 95.  Most of my working
>knowledge of the www and lynx is from Joe's articles.  I tried Joe's 
>article on downloading with Lynx.  My .mime.types file is exactly as
>Joe published, so I tried Lynx with the URL for grind.isca
>
>lynx -show_cursor file://grind.isca.uiowa.edu/apple2
>
>Entries were correctly shown as text, directory, Shrinkit, or BinaryII.
>I picked out an arbitrary file like psclipart.shk and downloaded it
>with Proterm3.1 using zmodem.  Worked fine, except ... the file on the
>GS after downloading was called L302072.HTML, not psclipart.shk!  (GSshr-
>inkit could open the archive fine using 'show all files').
>
>So.... How does one download using lynx and preserve the file name?
>At least FTP or ncftp and sz have that advantage :)

When you got to the "Download" menu, you selected "Download using Zmodem,"
didn't you?  If so, that's the problem--lynx gives Zmodem (or Kermit, or
whatever) the name of its temporary file..."L302072.html" in this case.
Lynx must pass the downloading program the name of a file that actually
exists on your UNIX system, otherwise the downloading program won't be able
to figure out what's going on.  So why can't it just rename the temporary
file before invoking the downloader?  Because it can't afford to take the
chance that a file with the desired name already exists in the temporary
file directory.

If you select "Save to disk" from the Download menu, lynx will give you the
chance to give the file a more descriptive name than "L302072.html", and
will even suggest the original name from the FTP server.  Then you just
download the file with "sz" after you quit from lynx.

               - Neil Parker
--
Neil Parker, nparker@{cie-2,cie}.uoregon.edu, http://cie-2.uoregon.edu/~nparker

     "Evolution is vastly overrated."  -- Ambassador Delenn, _Babylon_5_