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by dr_monster 1218 days ago
Is there a way to collapse HN comments on lynx? I tried it but could not tell which comments were replies to others vs stand-alone comments.
1 comments

There may be a way to collapse comments, but I didn't try it yet. If there's no complete page refresh on click, it could be Javascript manipulating the DOM, and that may not work on lynx.

I couldn't tell which are replies versus standalone, since everything is left-indented. However, some comments are definitely replies if there's ">" for example, or abbreviated and curt. But I found this "contextual friction" let me be more forgiving in a way.

The comments all seem to float in the ether, utterances in the night. The extra effort to traverse to each comment--arrow, arrow, arrow, arrow--somehow made the whole thing like an exercise in deliberate consciousness: I was seeking after content, rather than having it just be laid out and scrollable.

I was also using the framebuffer. It didn't take much to fill the screen. Moving to the next page happens more often and is so manual; you almost want to wring meaning out of every screen.