On Wed, 26 Jan 2000, Veljko Miljanic wrote:
>
> > 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
>
> I woud like to help you with development of Arachne. As am I already
> programming in asm for about 3 or 4 years(usualy graphic) I am sure that I
> am capable of doing something like that. But I must worn you that doing
> web browser in pure asm would be hardly possible because:
> - Hardly enyone could program JPEG poutines in pure asm(and just to say
> that worst thing with arachne is that it does not have internal support
> for jpegs).
I know.
> - It would be wery hard to do shell from asm 32bit code in dos(for
> calling external programs such as irc, ftp or jpg to bmp converter)
But Arachne doesn't really shell - it exits from CORE.EXE to ARACHNE.BAT
level ;-)
> - Development of something like that should be too long and the hole
> code wouldnt gain more than 1% of speed comparing to 90% of asm + C code.
> Just to say that the almost no one is still doing demo coding in asm
> expect in 4kb intros. In my contru 90% of demo coders does not include
> anything of asm routines in their code(I am probably the last one here
> wich works in pure asm) so the demos are not optimized such as you think.
Ok, so maybe I simply don't understand it . I wrote incorrectly "pure
ASM". I meant "heavily optimized C with lot of ASM stuff".
> What I suggest is that Arachne would be rewriten in C 32bit code(wattcom
> c with pmode/w) and only html rendering should be done in pure
> asm(withouth jpeg decompreson).
The problem is that namely HTML rendeing is very complicated and my
knowledge of ASM is poor. But to start, someone may wish to write some
kind of ultra fast HTML tag analysis (I am currently doing switch based on
first letter, and then multiple strcmp() - but maybe it would be faster to
use some hash table or lexical analysing automat), and fast - and netscape
copmatible - analysis HTML tag arguments.
> Also it would be nice to support smooth scrolling on all machines with
> vesa. Vesa 2.0 and some implementations of vesa 1.2 are capable of doing
> hardvare scrolling. All 486 machines should pefectly scroll in 16bit
> modes and 386s in 8 bit. Only problem with this is that the holl screen
> must be scrolled so you do not have space for url and pop up menues(at
> least not all time).
So I think I will keep current virtual screens with software scrolling.
(I am sure there must be way to accelerate it, as there are pretty fast
demos which use same modes as Arachne...).
> BTW: Arachne 1.6b have some bug with system font. It changes some of cfg
> files from time to time(last time I noticed it after I installed
> irc.apm) so font simply dissapears(for example you cant see the url ...)
> after you restart Arachne.
I will check it.
--
http://home.arachne.cz/ (homepage of Arachne, www browser for DOS & Linux)
