Re: LYNX-DEV Local Lynx for DOS or Win3.1?

[Jim Dennis]

> 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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