On Tue, 30 May 2000, Ralf Quint wrote: > Hello there, > > I' involved in the FreeDOS Project (www.freedos.org) and, among other > things, maintain the German FreeDOS Mirror (members.tripod.de/FreeDOS/). As > we refer to your browser as one of the few (still) running on DOS, i was > recently asked why we switched recently to the use of PNG graphics instead > of the old GIF format. > One of the arguments was that the "old style" browser don't support PNG. > Unfortunately ,i didn't have the time to give Arachne a try myself (I'm > living actually in the USA and get my Internet connection through a > dedicated cable modem), and your FAQ didn't mention anything about the > supported graphics formats. Well, there are more information than FAQ on my web site, but anyway, Arachne supports PNG images by calling DOS version of png2bmp for any inline PNG image. It works fine, and I support JPEGs in a same way, only GIFs are hardcoded to Arachne. But there is one problem: djpeg.exe exists even in 16bit version (but I distribute 32bit version as default), while png2bmp.exe was compiled only for 386: reason is probably that it is libpng based, and compiled using DJGPP. Also only latest versions of Arachne (1.6x) include png2bmp plugin; it is possible to add it even to older version of Arachne, but few people know how to do it, some people prefere older releases as smaller and faster than 1.6x product line, and older versions included only certain jpng2bmp.exe as PNG plugin, and that old plugin supported only cca 1 or 2 types of PNG images... > I would appreciate it, if you could tell me wether you support already PNG > or if not, if you would consider supporting it in the near future. The main > issue with GIF, at least here in the USA, is that UNISYS pursues more and > more it's policy to charge web sites for the use of GIF graphics (at a > hefty $10000 a pop). I know about it, but I think that act of civil disobedience (=continuing usdage of GIFs) is better strategy than slow replacement of GIF. I think there will be time for "Burn all GIFs day" some one or two years later... until know, each web site which still uses GIFs unlicensed is in fact showing solidarity with others. Arachne support of PNG is very limited by the fact, that they are first converted to BMPs; this prevents Arachne from using full potential of PNG format, like alpha channels. I would prefere to keep PNG issue open until there is some really good public domain PNG code available, which would work even on 16bit DOSes (I am planning to release Arachne package for 16bit HP-LX palmtops, which are very popular, and in this package, 32bit png2bmp won't work for obvious reasons). I think that simple, small, word-length independent PNG decompression code is definitely needed first of all. There are many low end platforms, not only 16bit DOS, but for example this internet-enabled 80 Mhz Z80, which is 8bit, and for which Arachne should be also available one day. (Give me small 16bit version of png2bmp.exe, which will be happy with 640 KB of DOS memory, and I will eventualy replace graphics on Arachne website by PNGs... ;-) -- http://arachne.cz/ (Arachne WWW browser for DOS+Linux / Webhosting / MP3streaming)
