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Re: LYNX-DEV Local Lynx for DOS or Win3.1?
From: |
Jim Dennis |
Subject: |
Re: LYNX-DEV Local Lynx for DOS or Win3.1? |
Date: |
Mon, 08 Sep 1997 16:28:39 -0700 |
> I hope you can help me.
> I am a Netscape user who does not believe that "Netscape enhanced"
> should not automatically mean "Lynx crippled." Very little annoys
> me more than a site which is clearly designed with the starry-eyed
> assumptions of high-speed modem, screamingly fast processor, and
> cutting-edge graphical browser. (I spent too long trying to use Lynx
> to maneuver my way through poorly designed sites - can you tell?)
That is a laudable point of view.
On the flip side (as someone who does use Lynx as my
primary browser) I have to comment that sites which are
agressively Lynx unfriendly -- usually don't have any
information (content) of interest to me. Most of the
really "snazzy" sites are all market drivel -- and my
browser acts as a filter for all of that. However I'm
primarily a Unix enthusiast and writer -- so I have a fairly
limited range of needs from the web -- and the people who
are most likely to provide for those needs are, co-incidentally
the ones who are most likely to understand the distinctions
between "content markup" and "cosmetic markup."
> I dabble in web page design ( http://www.marymt.edu/~modlang/ - in case
> you are interested), and I try to make these pages text-only friendly.
> It would be easier if I could get a copy of Lynx that I could run on
> my PC - a 486DX2, 66MHz, DOS 6.2, Win3.1.
Does Marymount have any Unix boxes to which you can get
access? The easiest way for you to use Lynx would be to
telnet to a Unix system (or VMS) and use a copy that's
installed there. If your school doesn't have any
copies of Lynx installed on student access systems you
might want to point out to them that this is the easiest
way to comply to equal access guidelines and laws -- vis a vis
web access for visually impaired students.
(I'm not visually impaired -- I'm GUI challenged).
> I seem to have found a reference to Lynx 2.7 for DOS 386+, which would
> probably work, but I am not certain what else I need. The blurb (
> http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/lynxport.htm ) mentions that I should have
> a packet driver. Would this be necessary for me? I am not planning
> on using this as my primary browser (yet ;-), I simply want something
> so I can test the pages locally when they are in development. So all
> the URLs would look like file:///c:/html/index.htm.
This is true. The DOS port requires some sort of networking
code -- even if you just want to access local files. I know
that sounds like a silly requirement and like it should be
simple to program around. However, that doesn't seem to be the
case. It would apparently take alot of work to make a
"non-network" enabled Lynx browser.
However I've heard that there are "dummy" or "loopback"
packet drivers. I'll use the search string "crynwr" to find
more info on these -- Crynwr is the company named for
(Russ Nelson?) -- who wrote and released most of the packet
drivers to the 'net.
I haven't used MS-DOS regularly for a couple of years --
so I'm way out of practice. Another option would be to
install Linux on your 486 (or FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, etc).
These are free packages -- and a 486 is plenty of horse
power for Linux (I'm using a 386 as I type this).
There are three cons to this:
1. Linux (and other forms of Unix) are significantly
different from and more complex than MS-DOS.
X Windows (the protocol through which most Unix
GUI's operate) is much more complex than Windows.
In other words there is quite a bit of learning
curve. (On the up side -- being skilled in
Unix is useful in a variety of job markets.
Beyond the PC and Mac worlds almost every plaftorm
runs some for of Unix and most other operating systems
share many similarities to Unix).
2. Linux can boot and run in only 4Mb of RAM. However
16 or 32 Mb are *much better*. The system I'm typing
this on is a 32Mb 386.
3. Linux (and any other version of Unix) can take up
quite a bit of disk space. A typical Linux distribution
comes with compilers and interpreters for several
programming languages, a half a dozen editors, a dozen
mail and newsreading clients, source code for just
about everything -- and almost two thousand utilities.
Where you have COMMAND.COM Unix provides your choice of
sh, bash, zsh, ksh/pdksh, csh, and tcsh (just for
starters -- there are lots of other command shells
available). So, Red Hat (currently the most popular
Linux distribution -- and hands-down the easiest to
install) will want somewhere between 100 and 200 Mb
of disk space.
On the flip side I've installed "DOSLINUX" in 20Mb
on my favorite laptop. This "distribution" of Linux
is intended to be installed in a DOS partition and
launched through a simple DOS batch file (using
a DOS program called LOADLIN.EXE). This is a one
way trip (per session)-- you have to shutdown/reboot
your system to go back to DOS from Linux. However,
DOSLINUX does come with a recent version of Lynx,
and a pretty decent selection of other Unix tools.
> Any help you can give will be greatly appreciated.
> Thank you.
I hope my suggestions help. I'd be willing to help more
with the DOS stuff -- but I've rarely used the packet drivers
for DOS (I mostly stuck with Novell's LAN Workplace TCP/IP
package) -- and they've probably changed quite a bit since then
anyway.
> Denise Plourde
> address@hidden
> address@hidden
Where are you located? If you're in the SF Bay area then
my wife and I could make arrangements to help in person.
She has kept up a little more on the DOS side of the world
-- having stayed in tech support while I moved on to other
roles.
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