ARACHNE TODOLIST - PROPOSED SOFTWARE CHANGE DETAILS ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Item numbers refer to the 2DoList table. ITEM_35 Wheel Button mouse support The problem with the wheel button still exist even in the newest 1.75 version. CTMOUSE, version 2.XX supports the mouse wheel, so Arachne should use the API from 2.XX for its wheel support (I'm not sure if the xChaos version of CTMOUSE uses the same API, I suspect it doesn't - its wheel support doesn't work for me anyway). Check http://cutemouse.sourceforge.net/ for details. ITEM_36 Back Arrow effects with Mail What I'm think of doing is to have core.exe automatically remove reffernce to an email from cache.idx and history.lst as-well-as delete the cached copy of the .HTM created by insight from the cache dir as soon as we hit the trash button. ITEM_38 Little Benefit from Fast Processor >> There is no 'noticable' speed increase between a P180 and >> a new P4 1.7 Ghz when auto download of images is turned-off. >> Pages which took 3 sec to 'render' on the P180, >> now take 2sec on the P4 1.7ghz > This was while running 100% on RamDrive. > The 'bottle neck' so to speak, has nothing to do with processor > speed. > IMO, > It is in the speed of the graphics chip which > sends our stuff to the monitor. That sounds like an opportunity to speed-up Arachne when browsing with auto download of images turned-off :-) During the several seconds after page download, while "Adjusting Images" "Generating Virtual Screen" etc. the only changes in the display are the progress indicators at the bottom of the screen. Perhaps these are being updated so frequently that most of the cpu time is being consumed unnecessarily? Whatever the detailed reason behind being slowed by the graphics card during the above period, it should be possible (though maybe difficult) to achieve a worthwhile speed improvement. Here is another example of the slow scrolling/flickering effect that I have described before: http://www.drdosprojects.de/forum/drp_forum/ hit F6 to display the page source, then start scrolling the screen to the right with the key. On my machine, after scrolling about 10% of the width of the virtual screen, scrolling suddenly becomes much slower, and the flickering effect kicks in. Also, Arachne starts to display "Refreshing screen" in the text bar at the bottom. This happens even if I scroll the screen back to the left border again. To me it seems like this is a problem with Arachne, not with my hardware. It looks like Arachne would suddenly disable the virtual screen feature until I reload the screen again. On my Pentium4, it takes 48 seconds to scroll the screen all the way to the right. The actual speed varies with the amount of text or graphics that is present on screen. IMHO, any "feature" of Arachne that makes a P4 look like an XT should be regarded as something that needs fixing ASAP. ITEM_39 Coping with non-DOS filenames Arachne should convert non-DOS filenames to something suitable for DOS, in its various flavours. Other problems arise from multiple dots ('.') in filenames. I can't remember if this was the cause of the problem, but I remember instances where a file download resulted in a missing file due to an unsuitable file name. > Sometimes a file with a space in its name goes into the cache. > It just happened to me when I received a message with an > attachment named "On deadline.rfc" (the name was in fact longer, > but I deleted it already and forgot). It was saved as > CACHE\ON DEADL.RFC", and it cannot be deleted by the standard > chache killer, SYSTEM\DGI\CLR.BAT, which tries to delete the > non-existing file CACHE\ON (and "File not found" is output to > the screen by COMMAND.COM). The remedy is to put double quotes, > like this: > > for %%f in (%2*.*) do del "%%f" > for %%f in (%2headers\*.*) do del "%%f" > for %%f in (%3*.*) do del "%%f" > > This works under DR-DOS 7.03+ and should also work under MS-DOS 7+. > I am not sure about older DOS versions. I'll try MS-DOS 6.22, > PC DOS 3.3, PC DOS 5.0 and DR DOS 6.0, if I find the suitable > floppies. ITEM_40 Base64 Encoded Email To summarize, there are problems at both ends: (1) Joe's mail server encodes plain text messages as base64, which is a bit unusual I guess, but allowed. (2) Insight is unable to process such a message directly, and Arachne users can see it only as an attachment. ITEM_41 Keystroke to move up a level in URL should make "up move'' in adres URL: for example from http://cgi.johncsparks.plus.com/arachne/todo.php to http://cgi.johncsparks.plus.com/arachne/ etc. I enhance concept taken from Opera 6+. ----------------------- Implemented (using mouse) in 1.81;GPL,386+ stable for DOS Release date: Feb 16, 2005:- Feb 03, 2005 Linking to the Arachne version number at the top of the screen will now take us 'Up one level' when we are viewing a remote file. (will still go to 'about.htm' if we are currently local) ______________________ ITEM_42 Hotkey Flexibility & Edit Commands Flexibility to modify the hot keys could be devised to handle all keyboard interpretation AND simultaneously modify the appropriate graphical pages (such as the hot key cheat sheet). Am I the only one out there who *hates* the Arachne editor's control keys? ... who can't remember that 'delete' is ^K + ^D + k ... or whatever it is? ... and wishes that one could just press the 'Del' key? ... and wishes that we just used the universaly standard editor keys? Some caution is needed with this kind of thing since if total freedom with key assignments were allowed, one could easily screw things up totally. An example of good user-programmability, is QEDIT. ITEM_43 Automatic log-off It has been suggested to me that an automatic log-off option after downloading email would be an advantage in Arachne. This would allow the user to leave the computer while the download was going on, knowing that it wouldn't incur wasted connection fees for dead time after the download was finished. I'm not sure how the control for it would be set up, as it is most likely something the user would want to set separately on each download. It could also be useful for downloading large files other than email.