Arachne Frequently Asked Questions
and some answers
by Michael, the author of ARACHNE
In 1996, the Internet was not well integrated with everyday computing at
all, and I had many ideas which I considered original; at the same time,
it looked like Microsoft wanted to have a total monopoly in all categories
of software - especially the general purpose software for end users. Major
web sites suddenly started to attract millions of visitors, while the web
pages of normal internet users had little chance to become popular without
advertising - it seemed like the Internet wouldn't be this wonderful free
place where people could share ideas and emotions [and it isn't, BTW ;-)].
I was simply a student with insufficient funds to upgrade my PC - if someone
had given me something more powerful than a 386 with 5 MB of RAM, I would
probably have installed Linux and spent the rest of my life trying to compile
Enlightenment windows manager ;-) !
Yes. Send an e-mail to
listserv@arachne.cz, saying either
"subscribe arachne" or "unsubscribe arachne". Once subscribed, you can post
messages direct to arachne@arachne.cz - address of the mailing list.
If you want to receive only official announcements, subscribe to
"arachne-announce" (arachne-announce@arachne.cz). If you want to join the
development of Arachne (especially Arachne for Linux), subscribe to "development"
(development@arachne.cz). There is an "arachne-digest" available -
it is the digest form of the main Arachne mailing list.
Yes. xChaos software licensed the full source code of Arachne to
Caldera UK. The people from
Caldera added animated GIFs and Novell dialer, changed the design of the
browser, implemented their own support for frames, and succeeded in compiling
all this as a 32 bit application, whilst Arachne is a 16 bit application.
Caldera doesn't have exclusive access to Arachne in any way, so you can choose
from two DOS browsers. xChaos software welcomes Caldera's DOS and Linux
activities.
We are currently porting Arachne
to Linux (first SVGALIB, later maybe also X11 or new graphical standard
called GGI), Once the port is completed, Arachne will be the first multi-platform
fullscreen graphical web browser. As web design is becoming more and more
fullscreen-oriented (see all those pages designed for resolution 800x600
or more), this is an interesting challenge for windowing enviroments generally:
will future Internet surfers prefer fullscreen, or windows based design ?
Once Arachne is rewritten to be more portable, it shouldn't be a problem
to compile it also on any other platform, if the platform is compatible with
DOS or Unix.
Development of DOS version of Arachne will continue even when Linux version
is finished.
Can anyone can tell me when SVGAlib will be able to use 800x600xHiColor mode
on my S3Virge chipset ? ;-)
Arachne for Linux should hopefully be available around the end of 1999.
The DOS version of Arachne will probably never be able to support binary
Java applets (<APPLET> tag), but it will support JavaScript
(<SCRIPT> tag) - we are working on it.
We are planning to add Hercules and full CGA support later, because it is
essential for compatibility with hand-held devices and Personal Digital
Assistants, which usually use monochrome graphics.
However, our ability to support nonstandard hardware is limited. We suggest
you buy (or perhaps even find in trashcan ;-) a working second-hand ISA SVGA
card with 512 or more KB of memory - Arachne looks pretty terrible on
monochromatic screens anyway, although Mel has used it on a Compaq 386 mono laptop.
You can check the experimental CGA support if you don't believe me.
There's a long list of methods how to speed Arachne up - that list is part
of the documentation distributed together with Arachne. Because the list
is quite long and confusing, let's summarize it: You need at least a 33 Mhz
processor to anything useful with Arachne. This usually means a 386 or 486
compatible CPU. You have to use some kind of disk cache (SMARTDRV, NWCACHE)
or run Arachne from some kind of virtual disk - "RAM disk". This totally
disqualifies PCs with less than 2 MB of memory - on such hardware, you can
use Arachne to occasionally view short HTML pages with few images, but don't
expect anything more. If you have only 2 MB, dedicate 512 KB for EMS or XMS,
512 KB for disk cache, and pray. If you want rather to read mail than view
web pages, you should maybe allocate as big RAM disk as you can, point your
%TEMP% enviroment variable to it and let Arachne "swap to disk" and cache
local objects to %TEMP% directory. Of course, it is optimal to have all three
accelerators: lot of free XMS, enabled disk cache and TEMP enviroment variable
pointing to RAMdisk.
Arachne eMail reader is simply not really usable without at least 4 MB of
memory used for heavy disk caching (1 MB DOS/1 MB XMS/1 MB disk cache/1 MB
for %TEMP% on RAMdisk). If you don't have 4 MB, you can try to use text mode
Pegasus mail for DOS to read and compress messages downloaded by Arachne.
Our dialer setup screen is not able to deal with some extremely non-standard
modem configurations. (for example, with modem on COM4 and with no COM3 device,
you may have to pretend it is on COM2 and manually select correct base address
and irq which belongs to your COM4; you can also try to manually enter your
parameters to ARACHNE.CFG)
xChaos software is not responsible for any included or recommended PPP dialer:
we only wrote user friendly HTML setup screens for the DOSPPPD. This DOS
port of Linux pppd seems to work on many typical DOS based PCs. Plug your
external modem to COM2 (mouse on COM1) or internal modem to COM3, irq 4 (mouse
on COM2), and "everything's gonna be all right".
Many problems are with Windows-specific internal devices - Winmodems.
They require specific drivers to be used, and if such a driver is not available
for DOS, you are lost. When buying an internal modem, always make sure that
it will be visible for your BIOS/DOS as third serial port - otherwise you
won't be able to use it with operating systems like Linux or DOS.
Some PPP implementations are more standard, some less standard. The DOSPPPD
dialer included in your Arachne package should be able to manage both PAP
and CHAP password authentication. But there can be other problems, eg. dynamical
assignment of DNS server. Arachne needs to know IP of at least one fixed
DNS server to run.
Another problem is, that the fact that MINITERM managed to tell your modem
to connect with your provider's modem doesn't automaticaly mean, that the
DOSPPPD will accept the same port settings as MINITERM dialer. They are two
different programs...
JPEGs images are very slow to decompress - well, there are some ultrafast
JPEG viewers, but usually viewing BMP is much faster than viewing JPEG. Imagine
that on PCs, which are not able to handle Virtual Screens, Arachne would
have to decompress all JPEGs each time you scroll the page! And even on PCs
with Virtual Screens enabled, Arachne would have to decompress JPEGs each
time you return to a previous or cached page.
If you prefer images in CACHE to be stored as GIFs, rather than BMPs, you
can do some changes to your MIME.CFG (you will find some tips how to do it
in this file). It will occupy less disk space, but it will be also much slower.
The image quality of GIFs may be better for 16 color modes - but you will
loose quality if you are using HiColor modes.
Maybe in future, Arachne will convert JPEGs "on the fly", while downloading them
- but they will be always converted to some faster image format.
It is part of Hotlist ! You add any mailto: type URLs to hotlist, either
when writing e-mail, or manually, or you can right-click the mailto: type
links before actually clicking "Add to hotlist" icon.
Merging of "bookmarks" and "addressbook" to one simple HTML file is my invention;
I believe that it may be useful to be able to very easily transfer your
"Personalized Internet" on floppy or by e-mail in single file.
Of course - if you don't want your Hotlist to look too messy, you have to
use the Hotlist Manager regularly...
In Czech, I prounounce Arachne as "ur-uch-nae", where "ch" sounds the same
ways as in German word "Ich" ("me") and "u" sounds the same way as in "under".
xChaos sounds like "iks-chu-os", with the same "ch" and "u".
But in English, most people usually pronounce Arachne as "A-rak-ne", where
"a" sounds the same way as in "bout" and "e" sounds the same way as in "eat".
xChaos is usually pronounced like "iks-keios". Scots like Mel can pronounce
the "ch" sound as in the Scottish word "loch", and they will get nearer to
the sound in Czech.
NAF - Network and Fiction is the network company running the web server
www.naf.cz. xChaos software was not able
to handle growing demand for support and information, so NAF became also
main distributor of Arachne in 1996-1998. Now Arachne has it's own web server,
and Arachne is again exclusively distributed by
xChaos software.
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