Michael Polak wrote:
>
> I was thinking about what Dave have written on Browserwatch about Arachne,
> and I think he exagerates. Arachne is still too slow and jerky for older
> DOS machines, like old laptops or so.
>
> I am working on Linux port, which should be faster thanks of liner access
> to memory above 1 MB. 32bit DOS port is possible, and should be faster
> too.
>
> But: what about browser written completely in ASM ? I can't do that, I
> must warn you. But I can provide group which would start doing something
> like that with lot of know how. I can make the HTML rendering code of
> Arachne open sourced, like Mozilla is.
>
> But what I need is group of really good ASM coders, authors of those
> fantastic 4 KB and 64 KB demos and intros. They would do the coding of
> new, open sourced (or maybe not, whatever they will like) "Arachne II"
> browser. I think we can use lot of code used in Arachne - WATTCP library,
> for example. What is needed is:
>
> 1) 32bit ASM coding. I can't do that.
> 2) rewriting of my HTML algorithms in pure, optimized ASM
> 3) ultra fast GIF, JPEG and PNG routines, and faster graphics library
Yes, Michael, what those geniuses can do with 4k of ASM code IS fantastic.
BUT almost ANY asm code is dazzling compared to "C" in terms of speed.
Those demos were written in 16 bit code so you can see that 16 bits is
plenty if the code is written in ASM.
32 bits DOES help with the memory management but ASM can add so much speed
to the time sensitive parts of 16 bit Arachne that going to 32 bits would
be unnecessary. (IMHO)
- Clarence Verge
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