[arachne] Arachne used every day

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On 13 Jun 06 at 2:03, Arachne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>Reply to Sender: mailto:judytanner@xxxxxxx
>Reply to List: mailto:arachne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>Dear Friends of Arachne,
>
>I would like to note that I use DOS and Arachne every day while writing art=
>icles and books, sending and receiving e-mail, browsing and researching via=
> the internet, doing my accounting, running my statistical analyses, creati=
>ng graphics, maintaining my data bases, and generally doing everything that=
> one can do on computers.
>
>Yes, I also use Puppy Linux 2, a remarkably fast and efficient flavor of Li=

[...]

1. In our office at at home I run DOS applications on different 
machines to do real work: 

- Word processing: MS-Word 6.0 for DOS

- Databases: Foxbase 2.10 and Agenda 

- Spreadsheet: Quattro pro 5

- Mail client: Pegasus 3.5 with quite a number of
  plug-ins for internationalization and MIME support
  (mail transport with Arachne and UKA-PPP)
  
- WWW browser: Arachne with many customizations mainly
  concerning internationalization, link database, and 
  mail transport

- Edit web pages (local text editor and database application, 
  awk-skripts and Arachne (with CSS support and SSI add-on) 
  
- Graphics: Neopaint, Imagick, GWS DOS

- File manager: Norton Commander and Dos Navigator

- Program manager: MS DOS Shell 

2. These programs are accompanied by a large number of conversion
utilities and scripts so that I do not need to start Linux or 
W98 more than once or twice a week to do the following: 

- print or convert MS-Excel files

- burn multisession CDs

- edit Music scores

- look at websites that Arachne is not able to display properly

3. During the last 2-3 years I have realized two tendencies: 

- DOS software becomes very similar to Linux ;-) Conversion 
programs and a few Linux applications have been ported to 
DOS, GNU applications have become available for DOS. The DOS 
ports are sometimes even easier to use than the Linux version, 
because the hardware and configuration problems have alredy been 
solved by the programmers. So paradoxically I began to think 
more much more Linux-like, but use Linux less frequently 
than before. 

- Newer hardware can be helpful (USB memory sticks that can 
hold the complete set applications or any working files 
needed to be present), older laptops becoming affordable etc. 
More often, however, newer hardware tends to be fatal (mainly on 
laptops, where it you cannot be replaced). Eg. soundcards 
beyond the soundblaster compatibility are unusuable in DOS or
in older Linux. But even this tendency will kill Linux much
earlier than DOS, I suppose. 

4. What about web browsing? Arachne is the _only_ graphical browser 
for DOS. If you want to run applications for real work in DOS,
Arachne is crucially important. And thanks to the keyboard oriented 
interface and customization working with Arachne is still 
effective at present. 

I am afraid that in future working with Arachne will not be any 
more effective. Web design is undergoing some changes which afford
more than debugging and maintaining: 

- Javascript: I have the impression (because I use only Arachne?)
that this will not be the main issue. Web designers have alternatives
for JS and use them. 

- CSS: The web databases and publishing systems make abundant use of
style sheets. This is good, because Arachne supports CSS, but this
turns out to be very bad, because Arachne's CSS support cannot cope
with the bloat growing in that area. Already now, more than 50
percent of websites I try to open ought be three columns, but
Arachne displays them hardly better than Lynx. Arachne reads one 
linked style-sheet, whereas those websites contain two or three 
more, the result often being white text on white background etc. 

- Internationalization: UTF-8 encoding will be standard soon on all
non-English websites. 

Christof Lange

________________________________________________________________

Ceskobratrska cirkev evangelicka - Betlemska kaple na Zizkove
Prokopova 4/216, 130 00 Praha  3, Czech Republic
Tel. (+420) 222 78 06 73 / 222 78 20 02 / 603 18 87 53
http://www.volny.cz/cce.zizkov

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

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