ARACHNE TODOLIST - PROPOSED SOFTWARE CHANGE DETAILS ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Item numbers refer to the 2DoList table. ITEM_52 XHTML and Further CSS Support I noticed that www.freedos.org now looks rather strange in Arachne 1.79. According to Jim Hall, that is because he changed the website to use XHTML+CSS, which Arachne apparently does not support. I must admit that I have not been aware of the lack of support for these features before, particularly because unlike Javascript, lack of CSS support will not result in the webpage being non-functional; it will just make it look somewhat cruder. Also, I thought that CSS is something that Arachne already supports, since there is this "Enable stylesheets (css/1.0)" option. Jim also pointed me to http://www.csszengarden.com/ , which is site that shall demonstrate the effects of CSS. Selecting a CSS file apparently does not change anything for Arachne, though. Now that I have been alerted of this problem, I noticed that many other websites seem to implement these features, too, so I think it should be added to the 2DoList. I do not know how hard it would be, but I suppose it would be a lot of work to incorporate this enhancement. It is probably a low priority task, though. Udo -- The DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project - http://www.drdosprojects.de ITEM_53 Indicate Loss of Connection When the modem connection to the internet is disrupted Arachne continues as if it were still connected, except it refuses to connect to requested links. The online log file does not register the disconnection until a manual hang-up command is issued. It seems to me that some visual indication of loss of connection should be exhibited and registered in the online log. ITEM_54 Avoid Outbox Renumbering When I am reviewing my Outbox before I upload my mail, I often wish to modify one of the messages. But when I save it back to the Outbox, it is renumbered and since it now has the latest number it goes to the end of the index. I would prefer that it stayed at the same position in the Outbox This could be achieved by keeping the same number as it had before, rather than allocating a new number after a modify. ITEM_55 Match Index Pages to Screen Resolution Why is it that the mail Index pages (Inbox, Outbox, Mail Folders) get narrower as I increase the resolution, rather than expanding to fill the width of the screen as most other pages do? ITEM_56 No error feedback e.g. FTP, GIF memory The FTP Upload seems to be totally devoid of any error message features. You click on the "Upload Now" button, and sometimes there is activity on the status line, and sometimes not, but it never tells you whether the action has been performed or whether it has failed. It appears that these problems were highlighted by bugs associated with Ray's 181~B5 core. GIF animation failure handler -- if you don't have enough memory, Ray's Core beeps, prints a helpful message on the status line advising you to increase your XMSforAllGifsKB, waits 5 seconds for you to read it and then continues. Comments on this:- - votes for: Bastiaan, Ray, John - votes against: Glennmcc (Too Windows-like) - John: OK, some query about Beeps and Pauses. - Bastiaan: Wait for key-press after error read by user. - Ray: proposes separate Diagnostic Core. ITEM_57 Support for Unicode UTF-8 I think that a big goal for our Arachne should be some basic support for Unicode coding (UTF-8) I know, it is quite difficult to build that in into the CORE.EXE. I suggest to write some kind of converter which could convert saved HTML pages from UTF-8 to your local coding. I try explain it in this diagram: downloaded page: is in the header the UTF-8 string? IF yes then { Save_Downloaded_page_to_disk; Run_the_UTFconv.EXE "download.htm" Display_the_download.htm } I have written some converters for Czech and Russian languages for converting from UTF-8 to local. I can make it universal but I need the mechanism in the main source of "save_to_disk -> call CONVERTER.EXE -> reload" If you are prepared to bypass XSWAP, it shouldn't be do difficult, the converter can be called via .DGI ITEM_58 DNS problem in WATTCP for DJBDNS (Can't use some Name Servers) Arachne uses the WATTCPLG.LIB TCP stack library file. WATTCP only knows the BIND protocol for communicating with a DNS and doesn't handle DJBDNS. Need to amend the source for WATTCP, re-generate the library .LIB file, then re-link CORE.EXE. UPDATE: Not all DJBDNS servers fail. Failures do not occur if the 'port' for DNS communication is changed from 997 (the old default built into the WATTCP library) to 1234 (an arbitrary choice over 1024).