I am going to freeze Arachne development for some time (probably
few montsh) now. 1.66 seems to be usable enoughg, accoridng to first
users feedback. Well, there is this small problem with "AlltNameserver",
and I could aso add utility for automatic detection of PCI modems
someone has sent me, and Proxy Authentication (because today I have
just received some tips how it should be done). But entire process of
releasing 1.67 would take another few days (like making package,
uploading it, waiting for user feedback), and I am not going to do
it anytime soon - maybe in few weeks, like are release which will be
fill the long delay between now and really new version of Arachne.
Now, what are my plans for near future:
Arachne needs JavaScript and SSL support, that's obvious. It would help
more than minor bug fixes and updates (with exception of Cookie bug fix
- but correct Cookie handling is very cryptical when cobined with
intensive redirection on some sites - some analysis of what's wrong
with cookies where Arachne is having problems, like Yahoo mail, would be
very helful).
But Arachne also needs to be more stable and allow multiple sessions
via multithreading - in enviroments like Linux, this is a must ! This
means rewriting Arachne to get rid of all global variables, and use
passing of pointers to structures to all functions instead (object
oriented, or let's say component oriented programming).
So Arachne development is going to freeze for some time, while Arachne
is being rewritten to use more extensible data structures - I hope it
won't affect performance of Arachne on DOS systems. Meanwhile, work
on JavaScript and SSL will continue.
Now really new release of Arachne is planned until October.
Independent developers and contributors subcribed in arachne-development
mailing list (I don't mean Arachne Development Network, where I am
posting CC: of this) are welcome to think about following tasks:
1) porting of Insight to Linux, to allow running both from Arachne, or
as CGI script available from web. Insight is GPL-ed software, so anyone
can use resulting product as part of his own project, it is not
Arachne-restricted porting. It would be nice, if Insight for Linux can
use /var/spool/mail/username format, as well as pine's ~/mail/folder
format, so Arachne can use standard tools available in Linux, eg.
"fetchmail", instead of re-inventing wheel, like we had to do in DOS.
Offering universal version of Insight on Arachne Web server would allow
Arachne users to access any POP3 mailbox from anywhere in the world, and
it will be of course Arachne compatible - so there should be many
advantages compared to services like Yahoo! e-mail or Hotmail. This
service will be located somewhere like mail.arachne.cz and I think it
can become very popular. But Linux port of Insight is needed first !!!
2) writing equivalent of WWWMAN for Linux (preferably as convertor of ls
command output to html format - will be used as ls $1|ls2html>$2 in MIME.CFG)
It would be nice, if new WWWMAN is transparent also for FTP directory
listings, so local and remote directories look exactly the same way in
Arachne, and preferably both in Linux and DOS...
3) writing new version of Hotlist Manager, which would be able to manage
hotlist both localy, or as online CGI script (something like My Netscape
service, except this will be My Arachne, and won't require cookies, or
so - just simple login from any web browser, and it would of course
work automaticaly with Arachne). This may be extremely interesting for
embeded version of Arachne, which will have no or just very little
memory to store local date.
4) making very small, UMSDOS based "Arachne-only" Linux distribution,
which can be unzipped to DOS partitiona and launched from DOS. Maybe this
would be best start for many DOS users, and it would be also template
for Linux-based embeded systems... it would be also nice, to have
Linux+Arachne based bootable floppy, which would install Arachne to
RAM disk...
5) creating new "icons.html" file, describing functions of all new small
icons on Arachne toolbar (I think Glenn McCorkle said he started doing
that - I am not sure)
I will be busy working on changes in main executable (CORE.EXE in DOS),
implementing multihreading, and making all of documentations (with
exception of icons.html, which will be replaced by new version,
hopefuly) translatable using XML toolkit developed by Arachne Labs.
So 5 points mentioned above probaly won't interfere with what I am going
to do during next few months...
--
Michael Polak: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Arachne Labs: http://arachne.cz/
My mobile phone - up to 160 characters: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
