So far as I can tell, MOPS does not have libraries for macTCP. I know forth, I like it and all, but I think I'm going with pascal on this one.
As far as graphics, I did create a small assembly language program that decompresses jpegs, dithers them, and then paints them to the screen. it did this with reasonable speed. Took a little less than a second on the images I did this on. Really compression on these images is not much of a problem, so long as you have an effecient decompressor. Dithering, also, is not that bad. In fact you can do a simple dithering that yields viewable results in O(N) space! (Though something like a true floyd-steinburg distribution is definitely more desirable). The only 'gotcha' I'm seeing right now is that "thnk pascal" does not do inline assembly. So when I use assembly for processing, I'm going to have to compile it into library form. I still haven't found out how to get my assembler to do this. If it can't, maybe I'll write an assembler. For the initial project though, I think I'm going to skip inline graphics. I'm still experimenting a bit and getting the feel for what order I'll do things in. As it stands now though, I think a text based version with basic html support will come first. I did a little bit of coding on it this weekend. I made some pascal objects that do http. They aren't complete, but I was able to bring down the text to websites and dump it to the screen (html code only, no rendering). I need to finish my post handler for it. After that, I'll review my notes, make a formal design, and then reimpliment an even better version. Then I'll move on to rendering. I've got lots of ideas for my rendering model, but I'll just have to play with the mac a bit more to pick the right one. I also performed a few experiments with writing various types of lexers and parsers in pascal. I was quite impressed with how well my little mac's hardware coped with that! Lexing and parsing are very cpu intensive tasks. Frankly, that worried me most about being able to display web pages. I thought I'd have to make a cheesey lexer/parser combo that kinda-sorta did the task at hand. From what I saw though, I think I will be able to do it right! But I digress. I think it is doable. I don't have any illusions of this being the "best" browsing platform around. i know it's going to be slower than modern computers running modern browsers. BUT, it does pose a challenge. It's an interesting project, and it could even be useful. I do think that I might be able to put together a decent browser. After my trials this weekend, I'm more confident of that. -Bob On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 12:24:38 +0200, Ryan Schmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Late reply on the topic of a System 6 web browser that someone said > they were working on. > > I too said some time ago that I wanted to work on a System 6 / compact > Mac web browser, but didn't get very far. In fact, I got as far as > downloading and reading about MOPS (the Forth programming environment), > getting a working installation of THINK Pascal 4.5a1, and downloading > some example code -- Apple's MacTCP examples, John Norstad's > NewsWatcher source, and Peter Lewis' MacTCP library. I decided that > while MOPS seemed to have a nice app framework, I didn't know Forth, > and the available libraries were for Pascal or sometimes C. And I > recalled Pascal apps from years past (Tex-Edit Plus for example) and > how much code goes into it. I gave up. > > I did have an idea though about how to do graphics. I'm fairly sure > that an 8 MHz 68000 CPU is not fast enough to draw web site graphics. > GIF and particularly JPEG graphics are compressed, and the > decompression would tax the processor. Most compact Macs don't even > have Color QuickDraw which would complicate matters, since 99.99% of > web graphics are color. The idea I had was that the web browser would > be required to act through a proxy server, and that the proxy server > would convert graphics to black and white, possibly even to a format > easier for an old Mac to read, like maybe PICT. The web browser would > thus be easier to code -- it would just have to use available OS > routines to display the PICT -- and would be faster, since the > strenuous decompression routines would be avoided. A modern server > should have no problem converting these graphics quickly enough that an > 8 MHz client connecting over a dial-up modem would not notice, and > coding up a script for the proxy server to do the image conversion > using GDLib or ImageMagick should be trivial. > > Perhaps the current author-to-be of the System 6 web browser project > would be interested in the above idea. I'm happy to talk about it > off-list too. > > -- > System6 is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... > > 123Inkjets.com <http://lowendmac.com/ad/123inkjets.html> > > Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> > > System 6 Heaven <http://www.euronet.nl/users/mvdk/system_6_heaven.html> > > System6 info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/system6.html> > --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; > Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/system6%40mail.maclaunch.com/> > > Using a Mac? 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