arachne-digest Monday, February 14 2000 Volume 01 : Number 995 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 17:14:51 -0800 From: Clarence Verge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: p.s. Local time trials Michael Polak wrote: > > Well, if I change F9 key to just "dump virtual screen", the results will > be same as in Netscape. But F9 is more than just "Refresh" in Netscape; it > should correct even broken virtual screens. In fact, after F9 key, virtual > screens are deallocated, and Arachne refreshes screen in no-virtual > screen mode... > > I can add some kind of Alt+F9 which would just dump virtual screen, > and don't refresh GUI or generate virtual screen again. > > You were simply comparing two different features, as F9 in Arachne is > currently not comparable to Netscape's View | Refresh function. Hello Michael; I was not using virtual screens so that extra delay was not in the result. My original report commented: Just doing a page down takes the same time in Arachne as the initial load - say 5.5 seconds - while Netscape does it in about a third of a second. That's 18 times faster ! So, let us ignore the "F9" function and look at the above case of page down. Don't waste all that time correcting broken virtual screens. To speed up the local interface, don't do ANY more than necessary on a page down/up. You are saying, in effect, that you don't trust the results of rendering so you are doing it again. Once is enough. Even on refresh. If the screen becomes corrupt, let the user make the decision to reload. And please, no altF9 unless you switch the functions. i.e. altF9 = current F9 function, New F9 function is FAST refresh. But you don't really need both. Just simplify the current function. Only my opinion of course.<G> - - Clarence Verge - -- - - Help stamp out FATWARE. As a start visit: http://home.arachne.cz/ - -- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 15:44:31 -0400 From: "L.D. Best" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: PPP Up! Glenn, Thank you!! I had set up to load epppd "high" and got the "can't load" message some time back. I quit because I was running out of tuits, round, square & rectalineal. Now I can save your message and try again later. I'm very busy now getting logistic & research done for trip to Wash DC this July. Gotta march, rally & protest just like when I was a kid. Only it will be my first trip to DC and the district is a bit short on approved camping sites. <G> l.d. ==== On Sat, 12 Feb 2000 17:33:31 -0500, Glenn McCorkle wrote: > <snip> > Something just occurred to me. > Are you loading EPPPD "high" with > Connection @lh epppd.exe>>PPP.LOG > If so, then you'll need to change this line > IP_Address PPP <snip> - -- Arachne V1.60;b1, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 16:12:58 -0400 From: "L.D. Best" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: new computers "with modem" RJ, Where did you buy the computer, and what did the information on the system say *precisely* ?? Did it say "complete with modem" or "internet ready" or ??? If it said "internet ready" then you're SOL cuz wintrash will connect and run on the internet. But if it said "complete with modem" they owe you a modem. A modem is a device that will allow any OS to do telecommunication. A "win modem" is not an modem; it is an OS specific hardware add-on that cannot work outside the OS it is designed for. Maybe sellers [and buyers] of computer systems will learn one day not to "go cheap." l.d. - -- Arachne V1.60;b1, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 18:27:01 -0500 From: "Glenn McCorkle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Arachne at http://angelfire.lycos.com/register.shtml On Sat, 12 Feb 2000 19:41:11 -0400, L.D. Best wrote: > Houston, we have a problem ... OH, S**T... what problem is that???<vbg> > I went to angelfire, and to the login page to get signed on. > The login page is shmtl. Arachne has no problem with shtml > Multiple attempts to log in resulted in error message, that I'd left > certain fields blank. I hadn't. > However, with the length of the form involved, when I click the "submit" > button, the top few fields don't show on the screen. Could this be a > problem with 1.60b1 ?? Or has angelfile.lycos.com changed their sign-in > page? No, that wasn't the problem. I found the incorrectly written section in their page. F4, delete bad code, F2 Worked fine to get my new page "up-and-running". For evidence of the fact that these types of problems are very easy to "work-around".... visit http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/glennmcc/ - -- Glenn McCorkle [EMAIL PROTECTED] North Jackson, Ohio, USA DOS prog. for QV cameras http://www.angelfire.com/id/glenndoom/qvplay.html Other stuff http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ Arachne, The Web Browser for DOS Open the 'DOOR' to the WWW. Keep the 'windows' closed. http://arachne.browser.org/ http://arachne.cz/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 18:41:44 -0500 From: "Glenn McCorkle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: PPP Up! On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 09:02:17 +0000, Charles Boisvert and Catherine Clinton wrote: > I think I'm missing something. > Does that mean that when EPPPD is loaded high you *can't* use a server > assigned IP address? Or how does Arachne gets the address if there's no > PPP.LOG? > Charles Like this: [tcp/ip] IP_Address BOOTP ;IP_Address n.n.n.n ... fixed IP address ;IP_Address PPP ... for PPP.EXE and PPPD.EXE (get address from PPP.LOG) ;IP_Address BOOTP ... WatTcp attepmts to use BOOTP protocol ;IP_Address %enviro% ... Minuet style (enviroment variable, like %MYIP%) ;IP_Address WATTCP ... use ONLY values from TCPconfig (variable "my_ip") - -- Glenn McCorkle [EMAIL PROTECTED] North Jackson, Ohio, USA DOS prog. for QV cameras http://www.angelfire.com/id/glenndoom/qvplay.html Other stuff http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ Arachne, The Web Browser for DOS Open the 'DOOR' to the WWW. Keep the 'windows' closed. http://arachne.browser.org/ http://arachne.cz/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 19:42:33 -0500 From: "Glenn McCorkle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/demos/1995/n/nlife.zip ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/demos/1993/0-9/2ndreal.zip ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 19:48:34 -0500 From: "Glenn McCorkle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Is this a bug ? On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 17:27:34 -0800, Clarence Verge wrote: >> And what does your arachne.cfg say? > This part ?? > [system] > Cache2TEMP Yes IIRC, The only advantage to "Cache2TEMP Yes" is if you also place your temp directory on a RamDisk. (you don't gain any increase in speed if it's on HDD) - -- Glenn McCorkle [EMAIL PROTECTED] North Jackson, Ohio, USA DOS prog. for QV cameras http://www.angelfire.com/id/glenndoom/qvplay.html Other stuff http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ Arachne, The Web Browser for DOS Open the 'DOOR' to the WWW. Keep the 'windows' closed. http://arachne.browser.org/ http://arachne.cz/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 19:54:00 -0500 From: "Glenn McCorkle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: OT Re: what is .pdf On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 17:57:39 -0800, Clarence Verge wrote: > Are you by any chance running a DOS extender like DOS4GW.exe ? > Maybe this thing needs to run in 32bit mode. :-(( That might be it. I _do_ have DOS4GW.EXE in c:\1common And my path statement includes c:\1common I'll remove c:\1common from my "path" and be right back. - ----- That's not it. (still worked fine) - -- Glenn McCorkle [EMAIL PROTECTED] North Jackson, Ohio, USA DOS prog. for QV cameras http://www.angelfire.com/id/glenndoom/qvplay.html Other stuff http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ Arachne, The Web Browser for DOS Open the 'DOOR' to the WWW. Keep the 'windows' closed. http://arachne.browser.org/ http://arachne.cz/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 20:01:14 -0500 From: "Glenn McCorkle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: p.s. Local time trials On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 17:14:51 -0800, Clarence Verge wrote: > Hello Michael; > I was not using virtual screens so that extra delay was not in the result. > My original report commented: > Just doing a page down takes the same time in Arachne as the initial load > - say 5.5 seconds - while Netscape does it in about a third of a second. > That's 18 times faster ! > So, let us ignore the "F9" function and look at the above case of page down. > Don't waste all that time correcting broken virtual screens. To speed up > the local interface, don't do ANY more than necessary on a page down/up. > You are saying, in effect, that you don't trust the results of rendering so > you are doing it again. Once is enough. Even on refresh. I _think_ I see what's happening here. With virtual screens "off"... only the currently visible portion of the page has been "rendered". Doing a page-down then causes the next visible portion of the screen to getr rendered. Page-up "re-renders" the first portion and a second page-down re-renders the second portion. IMHO, With no virtual screen to store the entire page in. I know of no other way that it _can_ be done. > If the screen becomes corrupt, let the user make the decision to reload. > And please, no altF9 unless you switch the functions. > i.e. altF9 = current F9 function, New F9 function is FAST refresh. > But you don't really need both. Just simplify the current function. > Only my opinion of course.<G> > - Clarence Verge > -- > - Help stamp out FATWARE. As a start visit: http://home.arachne.cz/ > -- - -- Glenn McCorkle [EMAIL PROTECTED] North Jackson, Ohio, USA DOS prog. for QV cameras http://www.angelfire.com/id/glenndoom/qvplay.html Other stuff http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ Arachne, The Web Browser for DOS Open the 'DOOR' to the WWW. Keep the 'windows' closed. http://arachne.browser.org/ http://arachne.cz/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 20:19:56 -0500 From: "Samuel W. Heywood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: ICQ for DOS On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 14:41:51, Dale Mentzer wrote: <snip> > Ok, Or, I got it installed, configured and connected (standalone) and > I know how to launch it from Arachne with an .ook file. Now, at the > risk of sounding woefully ignorant, what do you do with ICQ (please > no flames)? I know it is a chat program, but how do people use it? > Thanks. Hello Dale, When you start the program you are presented with a command line interface resembling the DOS command line prompt. Just type help. You will be presented with all the commands available to you and their syntaxi (pl. = syntaxes?) Send me a message and we'll talk about it. My ICQ number is 55475749. It doesn't matter whether I'm online at the time you send your message. The next time I come up on line with MICQ, I'll automatically receive your message. If we should ever both find ourselves on line at the same time, we can carry on a real-time dialogue. Sam Heywood - -- This mail was written by user of Arachne, the Ultimate Internet Client ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 04:24:18 +0030 From: "Sergei Kramar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: POP3 stops Hello listers, I have a problem when getting large e-mails (>10-15 kB) via POP3 protocol from my provider. First 2-3 kB are delivered quickly but the rest is transferred very slow: recieving 500-800 Bytes, pause about 20-30 sec, recieving next 500-800 Bytes, more longer pause, etc., up to break of POP3 connection. If I connect to POP3 server by TELNET via 110 port and give him RETR command manually, I receive e-mail of any size very quickly to my terminal. Outgoing e-mails upload without problems. HTTP and FTP download are working nomally also. Any ideas/comments? Thanks, Sergei. - -- This mail was written by user of Arachne, the Ultimate Internet Client - -- Arachne V1.50;s.r.c., NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://home.arachne.cz/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 20:33:17 -0500 From: Mark David Roth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Download looping. (was Is this a bug?) Did this originally have something to do with downloading an APM and it going into a loop and kept on repeatedly downloading it all over again? It just happened to me for the first time. I was trying to download TELNET.APM and it kept on doing it all over again. I finally pressed ESC and it saved part of the download as DOWNLOAD.TMP. What could be causing that? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 21:39:45 -0500 From: "Glenn McCorkle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: (back on topic) Re: OT Re: what is .pdf For everyone's convenience..... 1) get this file ftp://ftp.foolabs.com/pub/xpdf/xpdf-0.90-dos.zip (save it to disk as xpdfdos.zip) 2) make this directory c:\xpdfdos 3) unzip the file into c:\xpdfdos (pkunzip xpdfdos.zip c:\xpdfdos) [don't use the -d option in pkunzip to recreate the directory structure, the directory names in the zip file are too long for dos to handle] 4) add this line to mime.cfg file/.pdf TXT|@c:\\xpdfdos\\pdftotex.exe $1 $2 5) change the existing "application/pdf PDF" to read as follows application/pdf >TXT|@c:\\xpdfdos\\pdftotex.exe -q $1 $2 6) view PDF's converted to TXT in Arachne (modify the directory specifications to suit your own preferences) BTW, When I find time, I'll create PDFchoice.DGI interface. This will give the user a choice of what to do with the PDF. 1) save to disk 2) pdftotex (convert to text and view) 3) pdfimage (extract images and save them to disk) 4) pdfinfo (view info) 5) pdftops (convert to PostScript format) Uh, oh... #5 would then require PSchoice.DGI <vbg> L8r, I'm outa' here... - -- Glenn McCorkle [EMAIL PROTECTED] North Jackson, Ohio, USA DOS prog. for QV cameras http://www.angelfire.com/id/glenndoom/qvplay.html Other stuff http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ Arachne, The Web Browser for DOS Open the 'DOOR' to the WWW. Keep the 'windows' closed. http://arachne.browser.org/ http://arachne.cz/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 21:00:33 +0000 From: "Michael L. Dawley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Sound Blaster 16 On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 22:13:56 +0100 (MET), Bernie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I recomend that one goes to: > http://www.creative.com/support/files/download.asp > and download the things that are needed (luckily I'll need to log off the > Net - otherwise I would probably download a bunch of the utilites from > creative and never use them <g>) > //Bernie > http://bernie.arachne.cz/ DOS programs, Star Wars ... Bernie and All: I went there and downloaded sbbasic.exe (fits on one disk). I'm using WIN 98 on this computer, and it has drivers for the SB16 card, so I modified the installation as follows, and it's working: - --------------------- l. Placed sbbasic.exe in a download directory for setup use. 2. In DOS typed install. 3. Changed MS WIN 3.1 Path to NONE. 4. Had to say my boot disk was c:\ even though it's a:\ (For WIN 98 and Arachne to co-exist on this box, I have a boot disk for DOS with Arachne and Bobcat on the menu) 5. installation checked my card, and came up with these settings: Base I/O address: 220 MIDI Port address: 330 Interrupt setting: 5 Low DMA setting: 1 High DMA setting: 5 6. installation copied all the necessary Sound Blaster files to C:\SB16 7. installation gave lines it would add to autoexec.bat as follows: ---------- SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6 SET SOUND=C:\SB16 SET MIDI+SYNTH:1 MAP:E C:\SB16\DIAGNOSE /S C:\SB16\MIXERSET /P /Q ---------- 8. At this point, before installation would have made these changes to my c:\autoexec.bat, I ended the installation. 9. Made the changes to my a:\autoexec.bat (boot disk) using MS-DOS EDIT. 10.Rebooted. - --------------- Started Arachne 1.60, and went to: http://www.hometurf.com/xmas.html Sampled some of the .wav files, and Arachne quickly downloaded and played them. - --------------- However, when I tried to play some of the midi files, Arachne could not do so. Anyway, I'm happy that I got this far with it, and the card works normally in both WIN 98 and in Arachne 1.60, depending on which boot I use. Thanks, Michael L. Dawley Pearl, Mississippi - -- Compudyne 486DX4-100 -- DOS 6.22, WIN 98, Arachne 1.60 - -- Arachne V1.60;b1, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 18:43:15 From: "Dale Mentzer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: ICQ for DOS On 13 Feb 00 at 20:19, Samuel W. Heywood wrote: >>Hello Dale, >> >>When you start the program you are presented with a command line >>interface resembling the DOS command line prompt. Just type help. >>You will be presented with all the commands available to you and their >>syntaxi (pl. = syntaxes?) >> >>Send me a message and we'll talk about it. My ICQ number is 55475749. >>It doesn't matter whether I'm online at the time you send your message. The >>next time I come up on line with MICQ, I'll automatically receive your >>message. If we should ever both find ourselves on line at the same time, we >>can carry on a real-time dialogue. >> >>Sam Heywood Thanks Sam, my ICQ number is 64286265. That is the sort of information I was looking for. I will try to send you a message. Regards, Dale Mentzer Some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant. This mail written by a user of Arachne, the DOS Internet Client WWWWW World Wide Web Without Windows http://home.arachne.cz Arachne DOS Browser Home Page ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 22:14:53 -0800 From: Clarence Verge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Is this a bug ? Glenn McCorkle wrote: > > On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 17:27:34 -0800, Clarence Verge wrote: > > > [system] > > Cache2TEMP Yes > > IIRC, > The only advantage to "Cache2TEMP Yes" is if you also place your temp > directory on a RamDisk. > (you don't gain any increase in speed if it's on HDD) Quite right ! The config file was copied from my '486 system and I only changed the drive names. However, I will be eventually using it on a ramdisk even if just to cut down on the crap that gets saved. I had to do a lot of manual clean-up after those aborted .APM downloads. But thanks for pointing it out. <G> - - Clarence Verge - -- - - Help stamp out FATWARE. As a start visit: http://home.arachne.cz/ - -- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 22:49:28 -0800 From: Clarence Verge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: p.s. Local time trials Glenn McCorkle wrote: > > On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 17:14:51 -0800, Clarence Verge wrote: > > > I was not using virtual screens so that extra delay was not in the result. > > > Just doing a page down takes the same time in Arachne as the initial load > > - say 5.5 seconds - while Netscape does it in about a third of a second. > > That's 18 times faster ! > > > Don't waste all that time correcting broken virtual screens. To speed up > > the local interface, don't do ANY more than necessary on a page down/up. > > I _think_ I see what's happening here. > With virtual screens "off"... only the currently visible portion of the > page has been "rendered". > Doing a page-down then causes the next visible portion of the screen to > get rendered. Page-up "re-renders" the first portion and a second > page-down re-renders the second portion. > > IMHO, > With no virtual screen to store the entire page in. > I know of no other way that it _can_ be done. Interesting observation and conclusion Glenn; So, you are saying that Netscape renders the whole DOCUMENT faster than Arachne does one (NON-virtual) screen ? It's possible I suppose. That also presupposes that Arachne ignores stuff that's off screen (down the page). It certainly doesn't look that way mostimes. :-(( I just checked Arachne on the P90 with virtual screens enabled. It definitely is faster paging up and down that way. It seems to be about twice as fast as non-virtual screens using home.arachne.cz as the page. This is ignoring the extra time it takes to generate that virtual screen in the first place. But with virtual screens Arachne 1.6b1 on my P90 is still 3 times slower than Netscape 2.02 on my 33Mhz '486. (Page up/down times only being considered) - - Clarence Verge - -- - - Help stamp out FATWARE. As a start visit: http://home.arachne.cz/ - -- ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 23:46:33 -0500 From: Mark David Roth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Sound Blaster 16 > On Sat, 12 Feb 2000 21:19:14 +0000, Michael L. Dawley wrote: > Hello all, > I have a Sound Blaster 16 sound card, and wish to use it with > Arachne. I do not have the DOS driver for it. Right now, I have > it running in WIN 98 with the sb16.vdx driver that WIN 98 set up > for it. > Any help is appreciated. - -Glenn McCorkle replied: - - Is it a "real sound blaster"? - -Or is it some other manufacturers' "sound blaster compatible" card? - - If it's a real sound blaster. You won't need a driver. - -Just use the proper settings in your autoexec.bat - -These are the settings for mine. - -SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D3 T4 - -( ^^^ ^ ^ ^) - -( | | | |) - -( port | | |) - -( irq | |) - -( dma |) - -(I don't know what "T" is)<vbg> - - Whatever player program you use will look in your environment for - -these settings. I have drivers for Windows and DOS for a Sound Blaster Pro if ypou would like to try them. I never neded to use the DOS drivers. I don't know why they bother to make them. I also have programs for testing your card and diagnosing the settings. Plus a lot of extra programs and sound files. Let me know if you want them and I'll ZIP them to you. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2000 22:01:28 -0800 From: "Steve Evans" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Arachne load error I've been trying for months, off and on, to get past "Arachne load error". I seem to have gotten further than many new Arachne users. For now, it is version 1.50 (had the same trouble with version 1.49). Let me know if you think 1.60 has any real chance of faring better. I've tried it on two machines --one a 386 with 2 megs of RAM and the other a 486 with 8 megs RAM -- same symptoms on both. Using MS-DOS 6.22, no EMS, DOS loaded high. Before starting Arachne MEM shows 697k of conventional memory free and 6.9 MB XMS free. I have tried to configure it as simply as possible. Modem is a US Robotics internal set to port 1, irq 4. I tried setting slower speeds. I have tried substituting the actual port address in the Arachne.cfg, but it makes no difference --connection is usually successful anyway. I am using everything as the Arachne installation set up automatically. I have a Compuserve account and a Freewwweb account. I can connect to both. After dialing, it returns "Installed packet driver handler at vector 0x60". Then it tries to locate the start page. I have verified that both Compuserve and Freewweb are assigning a new IP. On exit from Arachne, the Arachne system variables all show values (MYIP, REMIP, NETMASK, PEERMRU -- though Freewwweb assigns 0.0.0.0 to NETMASK). I have been careful to clear the cache (F8) and either reboot or SET MYIP= before each redial while testing. MYIP always shows a new value. With Compuserve it is more successful. Arachne starts downloading the assigned start page. Sometimes it will finish. Usually it stalls, while the X-I logo keeps animating the lightning pattern. After a long wait, I will try pressing R to refresh, or G to enter another URL and the status line will change to "Connecting to home.arachne.cz [or whatever URL], port 80", stalled again with the X-I logo showing the multicolored spiral animation. Then I will try pressing G again for another URL. Status line changes to "Asking for domain name server for [whatever URL]" and the X-I logo animates the blue/green square pattern. Finally it times out, reads "Cannot locate computer [URL]" and goes to the Arachne Load Error screen "Cannot open connection/ Arachne was unable to load requested URL/ Possible reasons:" and none of the reasons or Arachne documentation is much help. But even if the start page finishes loading, any attempt to hyperlink or go to a new URL just stalls again in the same way. With Freewwweb, it dials, connects, "Installed packet driver . . ." and assigns IP. Then the status line reads "Asking domain name server for [start URL --doesn't matter which one I try]". Finally it times out, status "Cannot locate computer [URL] and goes to the same Arachne Load Error page. I have tried lengthening the time out, but it doesn't seem to matter. I have tried substituting an Arachne.cfg used successfully by another Freewwweb subscriber in my local Los Angeles metro area, but I get the very same symptoms. Before I post copy of my own Arachne.cfg or other details, I am hoping that one of you expert Arachnites will recognize these symptoms. Looks like a great program, and a perfect way to salvage several cast off DOS machines . . . if only I could get it to surf beyond the start page. And I was hoping to give up Compuserve in favor of Freewwweb. I have searched every Arachne help file and various installation notes posted on Compuserve forums and other web sites. I have lurked this mail list for some time hoping to spy some clue. Are Arachne-Digest discussions archived anywhere? Steve ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 03:14:46 -0500 From: "Rj" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: new computers "with modem" - ----- Original Message ----- From: L.D. Best <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2000 3:12 PM Subject: new computers "with modem" > RJ, > > Where did you buy the computer, and what did the information on the > system say *precisely* ?? Directly from Hewlett Packard's web site: You can order computer and customize it to your heart's content. The specs said exactly 56K modem; no mention of it being a win modem. I assumed I was getting a real modem! If I was fully informed I would have made shure I got a "real" modem. > If it said "internet ready" then you're SOL cuz wintrash will connect > and run on the internet. The words "internet ready" were never used. I must say that wintrash with a 500 mhz processor works quite splendidly. I could get used to it. What riles me up is the lack of choice. I *want* to be able to browse with Arachne. I perfer it unless those rare times when I need to actually buy something on the net. I miss my Pmail for Dos: it was easy on the eyes with a nice white on blue interface! It's actual mail transport system won't work under Windows. > But if it said "complete with modem" they owe you a modem. A modem is a > device that will allow any OS to do telecommunication. I think they do owe me one. A nice external one would do fine. Should I make some noise at HP? > A "win modem" is not an modem; it is an OS specific hardware add-on that > cannot work outside the OS it is designed for. I agree with you there Rj ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 08:09:17 +0000 From: "Edenyard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: What is .PDF (& XPDF) Yes - I had exactly the same problem as Clarence with XPDF. Silly directory names, wanting DPMI (what?), wanting GZIP.... Has anyone got 0.9 to work on DOS 5.0? What's the secret? I've been persevering with Ghostscript 5.1 for looking at these PDF abominations, but it's losing its grip and won't handle some files that have unknown characters or encryption. Also, it doesn't seem as though you can actually pan around and skip from page to page on the screen - although the laserjet printing function works quite well MOST of the time. But who wants to print out a 200-page data sheet just to read one paragraph.... It's high time that we had something for reading them - it's getting so that everyone publishes everything using them now. Ron. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 08:16:29 +0000 From: "Edenyard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mail Thanks to all who offered helpful hints about how to add real names to mail addresses - particularly to L.D., who sent a mini tutorial. Nice work, L.D.! One interesting thing came out of all this: If I add a mail address to the hotlist and use quotation marks around the real name, the hotlist screws up the entry and also the FOLLOWING entry - it seems as if some combination of " and < or > is mistaken for some sort of command. Has anyone else noticed this. It seems to cope if I leave out the quotation marks, though, so maybe I'll leave it like that.... Ron. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 10:43:36 +0100 (MET) From: Peter Ondraska <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: p.s. Local time trials On Sun, 13 Feb 2000, Clarence Verge wrote: > Glenn McCorkle wrote: > > > > On Sun, 13 Feb 2000 17:14:51 -0800, Clarence Verge wrote: > > > > > I was not using virtual screens so that extra delay was not in the result. > > > > > Just doing a page down takes the same time in Arachne as the initial load > > > - say 5.5 seconds - while Netscape does it in about a third of a second. > > > That's 18 times faster ! > > > > > Don't waste all that time correcting broken virtual screens. To speed up > > > the local interface, don't do ANY more than necessary on a page down/up. > > > > I _think_ I see what's happening here. > > With virtual screens "off"... only the currently visible portion of the > > page has been "rendered". > > Doing a page-down then causes the next visible portion of the screen to > > get rendered. Page-up "re-renders" the first portion and a second > > page-down re-renders the second portion. > > > > IMHO, > > With no virtual screen to store the entire page in. > > I know of no other way that it _can_ be done. > > Interesting observation and conclusion Glenn; > > So, you are saying that Netscape renders the whole DOCUMENT faster than > Arachne does one (NON-virtual) screen ? It's possible I suppose. > Suppose virtual screen is disabled. AFAIK, when Arachne downloads a page, it preprocesses it. This means it calculates the layout of text, images an such stuff. That's when it is saying "Adjusting images, tables and frames..." and "Loading page from disk" (if I remember it correctly). This is then stored in some temporary files (or mem). Later if you scroll the page it looks into this file and draws only what should be visible in current page position. Of course this is slower than dumping 1 large block from virtual screen to screen, because it needs to draw lines, images, text lines, rectangles and such things. Therefore Clarence, we should clear which of these 2 different processes you understand under "rendering" and want to compare with Netscape. Peter Ondraska aceman ------------------------------ End of arachne-digest V1 #995 *****************************
