FreeLists / arachne / [arachne] Re: THE ARACHNE DEVELOPMENT DEBATE

[ewalt@xxxxxxxx]

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

Ray Andrews said:
>
>> As a user, I want whatever I have to do to use Arachne to change as
>> little as possible, consistent with what still has to be done to add
>> Java Script and SSL, and whatever other things may have to be done to
>> give Arachne substantially the same powers as the bloated Windows
>> browsers.
>
> What has to be done in that regard is for the others to adopt my
> source code, since only it has the efficiency  and free memory
> to make those upgrades possible in a 16 bit environment.


But is there a reason to restrict development to a 16 bit environment?
That, I think is the real question.


>MP, the developer of Arachne, was/is a genius, but a slob -- his code
> was not only unredable, it was riddled with errors and inefficiencies
> that eventualy caused it to colapse under it's own weight.
> I have lifted that weight. It's what Michael himself thought
> needed to be done:
>
> "It needs a complete rewrite"


Michael Polak had much more in mind than a rewrite of the existing
code to make it neater and more legible. Even I understand that and I'm
not a programmer. He envisioned a completely different and efficient
modular design, that he likened to a "flowerpot" concept, with the same
pot holding both DOS and UNIX versions. What that might have meant in
Michael's hands nobody knows.

Without SSL and Javascript support the state of the code just doesn't
matter. At least Michael got things done. His hyperactivity wasn't
neat but it was creative and productive in major ways. All we've gotten
from the team so far is minor bug fixes and various significant
enhancements--but no major upgrades that would make Arachne really
functional and usable in today's web environment. Sure, with a great
deal of ingenuity requiring editing the HTML of visited sites and other
desperate measures, workarounds can be found can be found for many
problems. But on the real front of functionality nothing is any better
now than with Michael's last official release many years ago.

Sam Ewalt





                  Arachne at FreeLists                  
-- Arachne, The Premier GPL Web Browser/Suite for DOS --