Please see below ...
Joe.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Polak [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2002 9:24 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: news about 1.71 ? and more notes...
>
------ snip ------
> I suggest keeping Arachne to be fullscreen-oriented, themizable via
> skins (xmms/winamp class of applications). On single task OSes,
> multi-tab (not multiwindow) GUI would be available, on multitask OSes,
>
[Joe da Silva]
Multi-tab is a great idea! One thing I like with
MSIE (and other browsers) is the ability to
right-click on a link and select the "open in
new window" option. When I finish browsing
with the new window, I close it and I'm back
where I started, with the original web page.
Most often, I maximize all windows anyway,
so a "multi-tab" equivalent to this would be
just as good! Of course, it would be nice to
be able to download something in one tab
(or window) and continue browsing in another
(but perhaps this would be too difficult with
plain DOS?).
> multiple copies of application (even owned by the same user) must be
> able to run. This may be supported either on Flowerpot or on Arachne
> level. Maybe Flowerpot should stay resident as daemon on let's say
> Linux, so all Flowerpot-based apps (I expect simple games to appear
> soon) can share flowerpot services ?
>
> Eg., imagine fullscreen networked game, which would include button for
> starting and terminating PPP connection like Arachne does. This is
> completely different in DOS and in Linux (and of course in Windows),
> although dial on deman may be available.
>
> We may want:
>
> - Flowerpot to stay resident in DOS, and eg. be able to connect with
> Arachne sitting on top of it, and continue while some other Flowerpot
> based app is launched.
>
> - Flowerpot to detect existing connection (eg. packet in autoexec, or
>
[Joe da Silva]
Yuk! Trying to interpret anything in "autoexec.bat"
is a very bad idea. DOS internet applications can
expect to interface to either a packet driver API
(ie. if the app. incorporates the TCP/IP stack, like
Arachne 1.xx) or a specific TCP/IP driver API. So,
Arachne 2.xx should be able to detect an existing
connection via the packet driver (or whatever) API.
The absence of such an API would indicate an
"offline" status, of course. The only function for
"autoexec.bat" would be, perhaps, to set some
environment variables for Arachne.
> existing newtwork interface in Linux), and pass connection status to
> appliation. In Linux, we want Flowerpot-apps to share status while at
> least one such app is running (like KDE, GNOME or Mozilla project does -
> expcept that we want to do it in a very simple and lightweight manner),
> while in DOS, we need basicaly the same without multitasking - launching
> external application should be flowerpot-aware, which basicaly means
> using either lock files or TSR - lock files solution would be more
> robust, but TSR more flexible. Basically, we should write TSR WATTCP,
>
[Joe da Silva]
Hmmm ... If you are considering a TCP/IP TSR,
what about the Trumpet TCP/IP stack for DOS
(see "http://www.trumpet.com.au/dosapps/";, I'm
told the "ntcpdrv.zip" version works best)? Perhaps
this would save some work (if suitable)?
> but I abandoned this idea already long time ago, so simple status
> passing (like my-ip.bat file does) and shared config may be enough.
>
[Joe da Silva]
Don't forget BOOTP, which is supported by both
EPPPD (DOSPPPD) and LSPPP (BTW, the LCP
problems have now been fixed, although the new
version has not yet been released).
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