from Howard Schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
I got a lot of responses to the following when I sent it to the survpc
list, so it seemed reasonable to send it to the original as well:
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Do others have the feeling that arachne is starting its death stroll
these days, because of the frustration of one or 2 authors trying to
keep up with all the rapidly increasing amount of nutty web page
designs, languages, tools, and big-company specific do-dads?
The result is that, while arachne is great at what it does, it is
increasingly ineffective at dealing with more and more sites, filled
with real audio streaming something or other, graphic hot spots, etc.
etc. Probably modern, highlevel html source editors make html
authors not even know how to write simple, text-based coded. Instead,
necessary text is all put in GIFs, basic parts of the page are automatically
rendered, unnecessarily in XMP, TCL, dynamic cgi-scripts etc. etc. etc.
Strangely, the old Unix standby lynx still seems to be able to give
a decent rendering to most of the crazy new types of pages. Perhaps
this is because there are a lot more people maintaining lynx, it
is such a traditional part of all types of Unix, etc.
Really too bad, if true.
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(end of quote)
Was Arachne ever really going strong? Is its death stroll anything new? But
now, RAM is so cheap, there is no sense buying a new computer with less than
256 MB, computer users move on to bigger things. Why put up with Arachne's
clumsy scrolling and other comical flaws?
Lynx has the advantage of being open-source, ported to many Unixes and some
non-Unixes too. Newer versions show all images, including inline, as links,
downloadable or viewable on separate screen. How many people are working on
Arachne? Lynx is useful on those super-image-laden Web sites that are just too
slow in a graphic browser.
Didn't we hear some time last year that Arachne was going to be developed for
portable, handheld devices like palmtops and cell phones?
