On 1 Jan 03 at 13:53, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Reply to Sender: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>OK, the final topic is MTA, mail transport agent...while it >is true there are quite a number for DOS, I still vote for >NetMail DOS 2.12 by Marc Ressl...it is faster and easier >to setup than any other I've tried, which includes FDSMTPOP. >As for using stricly CORE.EXE, well...if you can do it, fine. Glenn, the funny thing is: For some (unknown) reason the battleship Arachne is better than most of those specialized programs. Years ago when we got a computer with a modem to our office and I wanted to find out if there is a way to connect to the internet without MS Windows (of course everybody told me: no way!) I downloaded a number of mail software packets. As e-mail and not WWW was my main interest, I started from that end: Pegasus mail got me immediately. But setting up the mail transport was a pain. Even with those rather well documented tools for beginners (eg. "E-mail within 30 minutes") it took me long frustrating nights. That time I also discovered Arachne 1.48, and installed it just for fun. I laughed loud when I saw at the very unserious ikons. Five minutes later I was online, up- and downloading all kind of things. And this is like it is still today. I have never used Arachne to read or compose mail. This is what PMail is for. But when I dial up with Arachne I always get a connection. And when I send outgoing mail I see a green bar on the status line. And number and size of incoming files. And I *know* what is happening. Time and again I reviewed new versions of smtp/pop3 software on the net and honestly tried to replace Arachne with something else. But all these programs on some day at some hour with a certain fat piece of mail used to stall, lock up or timeout and I could not find out why. So even on my PC386 which is more suitable for offline work than for browsing webpages I have still a copy of Arachne installed: for mail transport. >I think though that some of us may be missing the point >entirely of WHY Arachne was developed in the first place >back in 1996...xChaos had in mind a complete "Internet Suite" >for rather obsolete DOS computers. I think two things came together: Arachne is unique as DOS *graphical* browser. And Arachne is quite fascinating *toy* (or call it "Suite") that allows you to put together all kinds of internet and non-internet tools into one powerful and highly customizable interface, that is graphical, but keyboard based and therefore can be even faster than Windows. This toy is so addictive that even rather serious people start to use a terrible graphical text-editor to compose their daily e-mail. Or otherwise normal people start to dream of user-friendly Arachne GUI replacing Windows. As far as real internet use is considered, here is the internet "Suite" on my PC386: TELNET - text only from command line TRUMPET - online news reader, own non-graphical interface WGET - download with command line parameter, scripts FTP - text only from command line, scripts FDSMTPOP - mail transport, scripts TCPMAIL - mail transport, scripts PMAIL - news and mail reader, own non-graphical interface UKA - news and mail transport, scripts YARN - news and mail reader, own non-graphical interface XP - news and mail reader, own non-graphical interface All these applications *can* share the modem connection with Arachne. But none of them really needs the Arachne's graphical interface. It is just convenient to start them from Arachne. Arachne's raison d'etre, is access to graphical web pages, as the internet has become more and more graphical. Even though there is very little information in the graphical stuff, you need to proceed those icons and pictures in order to get through to the pages that still contain useful information. It is the same with JS. I have no idea how long Arachne can survive in this battle. But I am sure that even when the battle is lost and brave Arachne will be replaced by Links, Phoenix or others, there will be quite a few unreasonable sectarians who will continue to use her for - let us say - religious reasons. Regards Christof Lange P.S.: XChaos is not a sectarian and I think he feels very uncomfortable in the company of all those religious people. _______________________________________________ Christof Lange <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Prokopova 4, 130 00 Praha 3, Czech Republic phone: (+420) 222 78 06 73 / 222 78 20 02 http://www.volny.cz/cce.zizkov
