Date: Mon, 01 Jan 2001 23:29:44 +0800
From: Walter Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: On Reconsideration Of Bobcat Vs. Net-Tamer
Previously, I wrote of "disappointment" regarding lack of sufficient
memory to conveniently use Bobcat as an alternate web browser in place
of Net-Tamer where Net-Tamer can't cut it on some websites. Nothing
has changed as to my understanding of the "exhausted" memory issue
between then and now. However, to be fair, I should indicate there are
workarounds in Bobcat that allow it to do what it otherwise would not
do.
While it's still true that Bobcat easily runs out of memory if you try
to select and display a webpage from a link on the current page you're
viewing -- that's to say you run out of memory when you view a webpage
and then attempt to choose a link on that page to yet another page --
Bobcat's "external" program execution options allow a number of scenarios
limited only by imagination. The author of Bobcat envisions and
describes how to implement, for example, a means to view a webpage that
Bobcat would not previously load due to exhausted memory by spawning a
second or child session of Bobcat where the URL from the last attempt
to load a webpage is extracted and called by the child session of
Bobcat with recycled memory. It's a kind of Rube Goldberg process.
But, it DOES work. In addition, Bobcat has a [D]ownload option that
allows you to simply download the HTML content of a webpage to a file
on disk without displaying that content. This has almost no impact
memory usage. You can then look at those files later in Bobcat without
the memory-sucking packet driver and terminal program running, or you
can use a separate HTML viewer/converter outside of Bobcat. You could
also call such viewer/converter software as an automatic external
program. Implementation is not easy, though. It will require reading
several documentation files and then writing plus debugging batch
files which will ultimately do the job of executing an external task.
So, I want it to be clear that, in my last posting, the disappointment
is not in the author of Bobcat and his efforts. It seems he has made
it a priority to solve the memory issue I've addressed here. My
disappointment is over the difficulty for writing a *GOOD* **DOS** web
browser for minimalist/legacy hardware. There's too much code and too
much functionality to cram into conventional memory. Thus, I
understand even better David Colston's problems in supporting a web
browser than I once did. Perhaps there's no way to have a reasonably
decent text-based DOS web browser for minimalist/legacy hardware
crammed into two executable modules that principally or only uses
conventional memory. That's the point to consider here. Bobcat is a
good web browser. But look at its size and how much memory it consumes
to do all that it does. Look at how large Arachne is and its present
requirement for both conventional and EMS/XMS memory in order to do
all that it can do at a reasonable pace. Microsoft and IBM did us all
some disservice over the many years they knew about "virtual memory"
in other operating systems but refused to implement an equivalent for
DOS. They came to the party, if you will, all too late.
When you think about it, there's possibly a single competitor to the
functionality of Net-Tamer with service to those running legacy
hardware. But that's not the primary goal of its creators -- E. G. the
software is made to run on an 80186 CPU in handheld computers which
means it can also run on 8086s 8088s and 80286s. That software -- a
purely commercial package -- is split across several executable
modules to achieve what Net-Tamer does in only TWO modules. Perhaps
this is the route David Colston should have taken years ago. Ah, but
hindsight is 20:20 and it may be too late to take advantage of it.
Walter Scott
<><><> News & Views, 24 Hours A Day, 7 Days A Week, Are The Net <><><>
NTReader v0.31(P)/Beta (Registered) in conjunction with Net-Tamer.
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