arachne-digest Monday, June 11 2001 Volume 01 : Number 1549 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 12:02:13 -0400 (EDT) From: "Thomas Mueller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Arachne dying, lynx in good health? from Bernie: << >Was Arachne ever really going strong? In it's market it is still the number 1 option. The market in this case is CLI-mode graphical browser. >> Competition is not strong in DOS. What else is there? Net-Tamer? Anything happening with New Deal browser? Anything happening with Caldera/Lineo Embrowser? Low prices on RAM and many-GB hard drives are not the way to keep up the DOS market. Does anybody know if DOS can access USB devices like the USB Iomega Zip drive through BIOS support? I could ask the same question re IEEE 1394 (FireWire), though I don't think Iomega makes a FireWire Zip drive. Is it possible to make a DOS-bootable CD? If you turn off images in Arachne, that defeats the purpose of a graphical browser, though that is preferable to a long wait on an image-laden Web page. You can still turn images back on when desired. << Clumsy scrolling? It has never been clumsy for me. Internet Explorer on the other hand is awful in this regard. It isn't any better on this Duron 750MHz (incidently with 256MB) than my old machine. I use Arachne for these reasons: 1. For my OS of choice (DOS, CLI Linux is also an option for me) 2. Fast when starting up 3. "Banner-resistent", instead of adding *more* banners (Opera), you get less with Arachne (if you have a registered version). >> On the public library Internet computers here, Internet Explorer 4, running under Windows NT Workstation 4, scrolls quite smoothly. That is my only experience with MSIE. Library computers are much newer/faster than my current computer, though I don't know the exact MHz, RAM, etc; Internet connection is high-speed. I think Opera is also banner-resistant if you register and pay. > BTW: Did you notice that QV has come out in a new version, and it's also > being ported to Linux (CLI of course, no X needed). What is QV, and where do I find it? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 21:27:29 +0200 From: "Or Botton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: where did all the good floppy disks go? Actually, I agree with Thomas. Ever since my 486, ALL my computers who came with a Floppy drive managed to ruin the diskettes after afew uses, or what I wrote to the diskette using one computer wouldnt be read by another, even if it was from the same age. I remember that I once replaced the drive because of this - and it remained the same. I remember someone I know mentioning something about how latly the reliability of floppy-drives got dropped up to amazing levels. I've also seen this happening way too much in public places. Maybe the drives really are not as reliable as they were used to be? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 20:06:29 +0000 From: "Mel Evans, Registered Arachne User" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: OT the Sunday Salsa Hi Gangue, Guys 'n Gals Sunday Salsa time again. No caravanning this weekend, I'm actually sitting here on Standby and Callout for work, so we were'nt able to get away anywhere. So far no call-out yet, so things have been quiet over the weekend. For those who don't know, I work for ScottishPower, the national electricity supplier for Central Scotland and beyond. Foot and Mouth continues to drag on, another case this morning in an area so far untouched, although it was seeming to slow down recently. Mr Blair announced some new Cabinet changes for his new Government after Thursday's election. Mr Hague (opposition leader) resigned to give someone else a chance, as he put it! The shocking thing is that only about 58% of the population bothered to vote, so Mr Blair has succeeded with less than 1 vote in 4 being cast for his manifesto! That could be taken to mean that 3/4 voters didn't want him? Statistics really can prove anything you want them to prove. Is Arachne on a mission to death? Bernie tells me that around 35 people each week visit the CZ homesite by way of my arachne4dos site here in the UK, so that's about a third of my callers are interested enough to visit further. If a third of them download 'rach from the CZ site, then that's around ten each week. IF a third of those keep and use it, then we are adding about 160 new users a year from my old scruffy (needs updated) site! SO it's not a deluge, and it won't keep Michael in peanut butter sandwiches, but it does show that there is a demand or interest in a DOS based browser, small though it may be. Arachne is NEVER but *NEVER* going to compete with Nutcrap or Exploder or even Hopera, but it is providing an alternative for a lot of people one way or the other. Uncle Bill Gates meantime continues on a mega$ trail with his latest offering. Now he not only sells you car with three round wheels and one that's nearly round, but he's going to charge you in advance for you to bring the car in to have the (more) nearly round wheel replaced with a slightly better one. Hmmmmmm! how many cars (autos) would he sell if this was his product, and not software? Enough meanders for this week! "Tis better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all!" So give your neighbour a hug, yeah the six foot hairy biker with the stainless steel chain round his neck. And the Gals can too VBG *8>) Take care all, I love y'all Regards Mel from the land of the Haggis and the Heather - -- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser - http://arachne.cz/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 15:15:12 -0500 From: "L.D. Best" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Arachne dying, lynx in good health? Heck, Glenn ... It was only 39 pages for me when I checked just now [hiDef] and it scrolled just fine. [Of course I have virt screen set for 25000] <G> Don't blame the webmaster on that particular page, or a number of the NOAA pages. They keep everything for the day & for past 24 hours on the "first page" as they should on most of their important pages like this set. The Warnings page can be scary on some days, going on and on and on ... even if it's just for Ohio. But doing a string search for my county can make it faster. Query: When Arachne searches for a string on a page, that's done in the text, right?? So even if I didn't have "enough" RAM for virt page, I should still be able to F-7 for WARREN and Arachne would then display the portion of the page where WARREN appears ... or am I mistaken? l.d. ==== On Sat, 09 Jun 2001 22:42:35 -0400, Glenn McCorkle wrote: > On Sat, 9 Jun 2001 04:25:51 -0400 (EDT), Thomas Mueller wrote: > <snip> >> Even on a relatively simple but long page like >> http://iwin.nws.noaa.gov/iwin/ky/climate.html >> vertical scrolling with Arachne is slow and clumsy. Or substitute your state >> (2 letter abbreviation) for ky; this is for the USA, and other people who want >> US weather reports. > You call that "a page" (singular) ??????? > That's not "a page". It's 56 pages long ! :(( - -- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 15:44:30 -0500 From: "L.D. Best" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Dynamic font size Or, I think I'm confused. I have Arachne set for hires, but often will go to lowers resolutions [using - sign] because of a page design. When I do that, the font gets larger on my screen. Since lower resolution has fewer pixels available on a page, it just makes sense that a 5 pixel wide letter would take up more screen space at lower resolution than at higher resolution. Admittedly, I'm not set up like some of the guys to actually change the base resolution "on the fly" to check things out. But since the font style and size are set by the page code itself [unless you're lazy like me and allow users' defaults to determin base size], I don't know how Arachne would make any font smaller at lower resolutions. Hey!! Someone explain all this, please? l.d. ==== On Sun, 10 Jun 2001 00:36:48 +0200, Or Botton wrote: > I've recently figured something while trying to setup a RAMDrive-based > autoloading diskette of Arachne to use in my office. > I was going to use it on a 386 that was there unused, and i've > configured that version of Arachne to start at 640x480 (the video card is > so old, cant even reach 800x600). > And then it hit me - when using low-res, I always wandered why the > pages look so "big", while in Netscape it somehow looked fine. > Thats because Arachne always use the same font sizes for diffrent > screen resolutions. > If, for example, Arachne will use smaller font sized when using > 640x480, instead of using the same fonts that were used on 1024x800, > then the page itself would render alot more readable and comfortable > to use. > I sepose I have some mistakes and wrong assumptions in this letter, > but basicly I hope that you understand the idea... > What do you think? - -- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 16:01:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Steve <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: OT the Sunday Salsa On Sun, 10 Jun 2001, Mel Evans, Registered Arachne User wrote: > Mr Blair announced some new Cabinet changes for his new Government after > Thursday's election. Mr Hague (opposition leader) resigned to give > someone else a chance, as he put it! The shocking thing is that only > about 58% of the population bothered to vote, so Mr Blair has succeeded > with less than 1 vote in 4 being cast for his manifesto! That could be > taken to mean that 3/4 voters didn't want him? Statistics really can > prove anything you want them to prove. I believe the greatest "landslide" election for US President in recent decades was Mr. Reagan's re-election, in which he garnered the vote of 28% of registered voters. 25% is considered typical. - Steve (whose photo is still in the places it's always been) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 13:34:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Tony Butka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Linux Question? On Thu, 07 Jun 2001 05:15:31 -0400 (EDT), Thomas Mueller wrote: >Did you ever try running Arachne in OS/2 Warp Server for e-business VDM? When >I ran Arachne in OS/2 Warp 4 VDM, it was much slower than under DR-DOS 7.03. >Downloading with D No, but its an interesting idea. Mostly I haven't because OS/2 has such a great set of networking/internet tools that I got spoiled. If you ever want to try an install of OS/2 again, you can get help from our user group, either via the e-mail or chat. Just go to http://www.scoug.com. While multi-boot partitioning is sort of an art form, you can also check out a couple of articles that I did on Partition Magic. Later, Tony Butka ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 00:53:33 +0300 From: Cristian Burneci <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Arachne dying, lynx in good health? Mesajul original a fost trimis de "Clarence Verge" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> la data de Sat, 09 Jun 2001 04:12:14 EDT > > What can I say. The video drivers are crap and nothing will ever be done > about them because some people believe that "C" is a useful programming > language for such things. > > The reason I say the HTML may be marginal is because I also tried the > page with A1.66 and it was incapable of rendering the tables correctly > at all. I didn't bother with A1.70 because I feel it is too slow to be > useful. > > Maybe some negativity will generate some activity ?? > > > DOS users are not left out! > > Try http://www.rahul.net/dkaufman/ > > > - Clarence Verge > - Back to using Arachne V1.62 .... Don't blame the C language for that! The reason for the "lazyness" of the video drivers is that programming a driver for a given OS can be tricky in its nature. Especially when the OS was never designed to use that type of hardware. They often prefer to offer a stable and versatile driver, capable of working with many applications, instead of a fast but unstable and susceptible to crash at any moment one (and AFAIK nobody has complained about Arachne locking any video card). Also the limited amount of memory at Arachne disposal prevents her for playing all sorts of tricks with the video card. In absence of the virtual screen, scrolling may be is as simple as "clear screen, increment starting row and redisplay the screen". To redisplay the screen may mean to reuse the " generally display screen " routine for the tighteness of the code and to save programming time. "C" can't be blamed here. Blame the programmers using C the same way they're using BASIC or Pascal or other programming languages totally unfitted for doing things which are in close connection to the hardware. For the past five years I have been programming nothing else applications for 8 bit microcontrollers - tiny monsters with 1 to 8 kbytes of on-chip flash memory and only 128 to 512 bytes of SRAM. The only languages to be used here - assembler and C. Sometimes they're playing with BASIC - small 1-2 kbytes interpreters - or flavours of Forth, but not for serious purposes. Any other language would have big runtime routines with sophisticated ways of detecting errors - simply they don't fit in. Carefully using pointers and optimizing tricks 20 to 30 kbytes of C source may result in 5-6 kbytes of binary code. And this by using no other compiler but the well-known GCC, which has a port for the Atmel AVR RISC micros (it suffices to download a recent snapshot of GCC and binutils from CVS or the one of the GNU sites and do a "configure --target=avr" then "make" and "make install". Under Linux, of course). The big diference between PC programs and embedded microcontroller applications - when encountering an error the PC programs either warn the user and stop, either crash. The embedded applications have to find a way of dealing with the error themselves, or, in the rare cases of a crash, a special circuit named watchdog should reboot. In this particular case the program should continue from where it was prior to the crash. And C does it - -- Cristian Burneci DHP Technology SRL Bucharest, Romania ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 0:33:39 +0800 From: "J. J. Young" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Lynx and Graphics Sam assured me: >> As I generally go images off I really ought to give Lynx a try. >> How much HDD space does it require? >The download for Doug Kaufman's recent Lynx386 for DOS version is >a zip file of 1,455,601 bytes. This is version 2.8.4, dev.14. It >does SSL and it does https very nicely. Unarchived, this version will >take up 2,399,066 bytes of HDD space. Thanks! As "payment" here's some info on the CD-ROM of photos recently processed for me by Klick (a UK firm, http://www.klickphoto.com). They have small high street stores all over the country, offering copying of old prints, trimming, framing etc as well as the processing. The CD option was on special offer, and with processing and printing 39 6x4" shots off a 36exp 35mm film the total was under U$8.00 equivalent. The prints were fine; the scans onto CD less successful, but still worth having for the ones that were usable and the time saving obtained. The film was Konica, whereas the CD was a Fujifilm product. The shop staff were able to give only limited info on what the CD would contain, so I was pleased to find high res, medium res and thumbnails, all in separate directories, but unfortunately each version of the image bearing the same name. However, I was most displeased to find that, although the directories were visible, none of the files were to Win3.1x and DOS file managers and graphics apps! Can anyone explain why this might be? Needless to say, the viewer software is Win9x/NT. I emailed the company but have yet to receive a reply. On a borrowed laptop, I found the photoviewer software wouldn't transfer the high res images to HDD en masse. Going to My Computer allowed them to be copied across. All images were in JPEG format. High res were 1536x1024 pixels, ranging in size from 290kB to 745kB; 18.4MB for 39 shots. The larger filesizes were for grainy shots where the flash had failed: the largest good shot was 560kB. I transferred 31 shots to floppies; average filesize 459kB, 13.9MB total. Medium resolution were 768x512 pixels, ranging from 115 - 224kB; 178kB average; 6.8MB for 39 shots. The thumbnails were 120x80 pixels, 7 - 8kB each. I found no advantage in using the hi-res images for sampling down to say 360x240 for Web use. This is a convenient size, about 30kB as a JPEG. They are missing a trick not offering it as an option. The level of JPEG compression didn't lead to any noticeable degradation when re-saving as JPEG at a sensible compression level. There was some lint contamination on one of the first shots, but not on the print. Some automated color balance "optimization" had been applied, which rendered some of the scans unusable. Maybe they would be better with Fuji film. As stated, the prints were fine. One advantage of the scans is the greater area covered of the film: cropping for the prints might lose 3% or more. Try cropping a 300 pixel wide sample from an image and then see if you would be happy to lose a 10 pixel strip. This occurred on one of the prints, effectively spoiling it. I'd like to see a comparison with the output from a digital camera, taking a shot at the same time. I should be able to arrange this some time. Apart from the speed of results, I'll stick with film and spend the money on taking more shots, and remembering to leave the cropping to software. I use a Minox compact camera, and was interested to see a highly-rated Samsung of similar size, with 4x zoom. Regards, Jake On my current mission to evaluate the space exploration program of the Kindom of Padua, I have obtained two representative snaps. Should you wish to evaluate them, you will be faced with a 48kB download and 250kB in cache after conversion. http://www.wymondhamleics.freeserve.co.uk/test/1.jpg http://www.wymondhamleics.freeserve.co.uk/test/2.jpg 1.jpg is resampled to much smaller size from the complete image. 2.jpg is a section of the hi res scan. It has been saved with higher compression than the original, so is slightly degraded. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 19:42:08 -0500 From: Clarence Verge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Arachne dying, lynx in good health? Cristian Burneci wrote: > > Mesajul original a fost trimis de "Clarence Verge" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > la data de Sat, 09 Jun 2001 04:12:14 EDT > > > What can I say. The video drivers are crap and nothing will ever be done > > about them because some people believe that "C" is a useful programming > > language for such things. > > Don't blame the C language for that! > <Snipped argument> > And C does it What can I say ? I tried to write something but I then felt it would pixx off too many so I deleted it. <G> There isn't much point arguing, because MOST "C" programmers refuse to believe their code could be less than ideal. The only thing that really matters is results, and EVEN THEN, when it is SHOWN that the ASM routine runs 3 to 10 times faster and is 5 to 10 times smaller, they ask "Who cares ? Get a new computer !" That's the problem. :( - - Clarence Verge - -- - - Help stamp out FATWARE. As a start visit: http://home.arachne.cz/ - - The internet is infected - Windows is a VIRUS !! - -- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 19:54:20 -0500 From: Clarence Verge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Lynx and Graphics [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > The download for Doug Kaufman's recent Lynx386 for DOS version is > a zip file of 1,455,601 bytes. This is version 2.8.4, dev.14. It > does SSL and it does https very nicely. Unarchived, this version will > take up 2,399,066 bytes of HDD space. As you will not find any need > for some of the files you can delete them. Without knowing how much of this space is taken up by these useless files, I will still comment that it seems awfully big for what is basically a text based browser. <g> - - Clarence Verge - -- - - Help stamp out FATWARE. As a start visit: http://home.arachne.cz/ - - The internet is infected - Windows is a VIRUS !! - -- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 20:38:06 -0400 From: "Dev Teelucksingh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Introduction to C programming link Useful link for the beginning C programmer (like me!) and for budding Arachne DGI developers Introduction to C programming http://www.cit.ac.nz/smac/cprogram/ Dev Anand Teelucksingh Interesting DOS programs at http://www.opus.co.tt/dave Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society at http://www.ttcsweb.org - -- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser -- - -- http://arachne.cz/ -- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2001 20:38:45 -0400 From: "Dev Teelucksingh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Other interesting site : iMatrix ; Could Arachne use this? I thought this site might be useful : http://www.imatix.com/ They have the Xitami open source web server but they list other projects. Could Arachne use SMT? Libero v2.32 You never knew programs could be built like this! Write the top-level logic as a readable state diagram and press the button! Libero generates code in C++, C, Java, PHP, Basic, COBOL, Perl,... Open Source software. The top HTML preprocessor. Generates pages, headers, footers, contents, cross-links,... Industrialise your Htmlpp v4.2a HTML production! Open Source software. SMT v2.80 Component-based multithreading for telecomms and internet development in C; this powerful engine drives the Xitami web server. Open Source software. SFL v2.10 The Standard Function Library for C/C++ developers: over 450 functions covering all domains. Portability and power. Open Source software. Dev Anand Teelucksingh Interesting DOS programs at http://www.opus.co.tt/dave Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society at http://www.ttcsweb.org - -- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser -- - -- http://arachne.cz/ -- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Jun 01 16:53:55 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Howard Schwartz) Subject: size of dos Lynx > The download for Doug Kaufman's recent Lynx386 for DOS version is > a zip file of 1,455,601 bytes. This is version 2.8.4, dev.14. It > does SSL and it does https very nicely. Unarchived, this version will > take up 2,399,066 bytes of HDD space. As you will not find any need The hard disk space the lynx distribution takes up can be considerably reduced, because it includes various ``unix'' like programs that you may already have such ad sed, tr, cat, mv, etc. I also have a much more efficient and smaller way of implimenting maito: mail than the lynx distribution does. In sum, there are quite a few bytes that can go bye bye, with a little tweaking and deleting here and there. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 10 Jun 01 16:59:14 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Howard Schwartz) Subject: Re: where did all the good floppy disks go? > Perhaps my imagination, but this is now the second or third > manufacturer of floppy diskettes I have tried, with no success. > My floppy disk drive will not read them. Especially bad if I > decide to save a small download to a floppy rather than the > hard drive. To all out there: will the AT users of the world > unite and demand a decent floppy disk?? Or is Superdrive/Iomega > zip drive the only way to go? Help. I have had the sad fact confirmed that in our new gigabyte age, quality control for floppy disk manufacturers has dropped so low that 20 to 30% bad disks coming off the line is not unusual. Personally, some manufacturers seem a little better than other (3M). These days, I run scandisk and a physical scan for bad clusters on any floppy I want to take from home to the office and still have my data OK. I also have collected a few utilities that repair floppies. It is not at all unusual for me to find bad clusters on ``brand new'' disks. It would be nice to get some inside info. on who is still making a decent attempt to produce decent floppies. Howard Schwartz - ------------------------------- theo "at" ncal.verio.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 2:46:57 +0800 From: "J. J. Young" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: where did all the good floppy disks go? >It would be nice to get some inside info. on who is still making >a decent attempt to produce decent floppies. I use the Select brand, made in Belgium. Occasionally I wish I'd scandisked *new* floppies before use, and I've had a box that's not been formatted, but they must be over 95% OK. But not the "100% certified and tested" it states on the box... Jake ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 03:14:15 +0300 From: Or Botton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Dynamic font size Basicly, the idea is that the definition of how many pixels to use per size is changeable: For example, if "Font Size 3" is 90x90 pixels (i'm just trowing numbers here for the example. Ignore the obvious mistakes) when you're on 800x600, then when you switch to 640x480, "Font Size 3" is re-defined to use the font file that has fonts at the size of 70x70 pixels. At the same time, Font Size 4 is now using the 90x90 one. By changing the entire font-size set definition for each resolution mode, you can make the sites to still appear fully readable under each resolution, and quite similiar. Try this one: Go to a site on 800x600. Drop down on the fly to 640x480. You'll see how the site suddenly looks "bigger". Thats the problem - IIRC, the original idea of HTML was that sites will look the same on whatever system and browser you're using. Now, obviously things have changed for the worse since then, but the ability to adapt sites to current resolution is one of the items. Now, concider this: Michael wants to port Arachne to handheld devices. A good idea, obviously. But - have you ever tried to use Arachne on the resolution of 320x200? Try it. That should let you feel like Guliver in the Land of Giants. :) Fonts are HUGE, pics are also. Arachne will have to learn how to get fonts that will be better fitting for its current res, and maybe even (in extreme cases) resize images to fit when your res let you only see 15% of the web page in its normal, untouched form.. :) "L.D. Best" wrote: > Admittedly, I'm not set up like some of the guys to actually change the > base resolution "on the fly" to check things out. But since the font > style and size are set by the page code itself [unless you're lazy like > me and allow users' defaults to determin base size], I don't know how > Arachne would make any font smaller at lower resolutions. > > Hey!! Someone explain all this, please? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 11:1:47 +0800 From: "J. J. Young" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Dynamic font size Arachne uses pictures for the fonts, not a description. So, if you use one size smaller scaling (same screen resolution) you substitute the set one size smaller except for font size=1 which will have to be the same as size=2. There isn't the wide range of sizing available with True Type Fonts. An improvement would be if Arachne's default font size more closely matched the average Window's browser font. There are enough discrepancies in Arachne's fonts (especially italics) for them to become quite tiring to read (IMHO). A possibility would be to add some anti- aliasing to smoothe the font outlines. Jake ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 16:25:14 +0300 From: Or Botton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Dynamic font size Another solution that would, however, cause Arachne to increase in size, is to add afew more font sets below and above the current "scale" of fonts. That is, having something like propnn1.fnt up to propnn8.fnt. And then, according to the resolution use, select the appropriate files for the resolution used. For example, Font Size 1 definition will mean using propnn1.fnt when on 640x480, propnn2.fnt when in 800x600, propnn3.fnt when in 1024x800... and etc'. Same goes to Font size 6 - which will be propnn6.fnt when in 640x480, propnn7.fnt when in 800x600, and propnn8.fnt when in 1024x800. Thus, the fonts will be bigger or smaller for each resolution, by this still looking readable to the user. Here's a graphical demonstration with some ASCII art. If this is the current font-scale: Availble font-file sizes: [1---2---3---4---5---6] FontSize definition used: [1---2---3---4---5---6] As you can see, its fixed to use the same thing no matter on which resolution. However, when using a dynamic font size definition: For 640x480: Availble font-file sizes: [1---2---3---4---5---6---7---8] FontSize definition used: [1---2---3---4---5---6 ] For 800x600: Availble font-file sizes: [1---2---3---4---5---6---7---8] FontSize definition used: [ 1---2---3---4---5---6 ] For 1024x800: Availble font-file sizes: [1---2---3---4---5---6---7---8] FontSize definition used: [ 1---2---3---4---5---6] The pointer to the file to use simply change according the resolution. Its not the best solution - making more font files with bigger and smaller font sizes, by this generating more space... ofcourse, the best method would be to use sizeable font, like TTF or Vector based. But Arachne so far doesnt support it. I think that this system could be a nice "quick and dirty" solution... "J. J. Young" wrote: > > Arachne uses pictures for the fonts, not a description. > So, if you use one size smaller scaling (same screen > resolution) you substitute the set one size smaller > except for font size=1 which will have to be the same > as size=2. There isn't the wide range of sizing available > with True Type Fonts. An improvement would be if Arachne's > default font size more closely matched the average Window's > browser font. There are enough discrepancies in Arachne's > fonts (especially italics) for them to become quite tiring > to read (IMHO). A possibility would be to add some anti- > aliasing to smoothe the font outlines. > > Jake ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 16:55:31 +0800 From: "J. J. Young" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Dynamic font size Or wrote >Another solution that would, however, cause Arachne to increase >in size, is to add afew more font sets below and above the current >"scale" of fonts. <snipped> Exactly! My own partial solution for my own machine was to make my own fontset combining Arial and Times New Roman to closely mimic the basefont size of a Windows browser and the step size between other font sizes. In some ways I preferred it, because <h1> was smaller, but <font size="1"> was bigger than with Windows, but font sizes 3 and 2 were very close to Windows, so pages were rendered as hoped for (forgetting the fluid design principle). Having a mix of the two font faces also gives variety to the page design. But looking closely at the fonts (or even not very closely), italic was awful and the spacing between letters wasn't right etc., and I find it more tiring to read Arachne pages. The only solution seemed to be editing each character by hand, but I never did it. Maybe one day! Regards, Jake ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 12:18:20 -0500 From: "Samuel W. Heywood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Lynx and Graphics On Sun, 10 Jun 2001 19:54:20 -0500, Clarence Verge wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> The download for Doug Kaufman's recent Lynx386 for DOS version is >> a zip file of 1,455,601 bytes. This is version 2.8.4, dev.14. It >> does SSL and it does https very nicely. Unarchived, this version will >> take up 2,399,066 bytes of HDD space. As you will not find any need >> for some of the files you can delete them. > Without knowing how much of this space is taken up by these useless files, > I will still comment that it seems awfully big for what is basically a text > based browser. <g> Yes, it does seem rather big for for what is basically a text browser. Despite its large size, 716,304 bytes for the main Lynx386 executable, it deals with memory quite well. I use this browser very frequently to access mainly textual information pages such as on-line FAQs, DOCs, news stories, and weather reports. Also I use Lynx386 to access and use on-line mail-order forms on https pages. Lynx386 never crashes on me. I sure wish SSL would be incorporated into Arachne. In some countries the use of the encryption algorithms are severely restricted by law. I don't know if developers in the Czech Republic would be faced with having to overcome legal obstacles if they wanted to write programs for SSL. Sam Heywood - -- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser - http://arachne.cz/ ------------------------------ End of arachne-digest V1 #1549 ******************************
