lynx-dev Re: lynx for WIN 3.1?

[vtailor]

>     * From: address@hidden
>     * Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 13:13:14 -0500 (CDT)
>
>>     * From: address@hidden (for address@hidden)
>>     * Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 00:19:48 -0500 (CDT)
>>>
>>>Since every machine running Windows v3.10 is also running DOS, you can of
>>>course use the DOS version of Lynx, but I don't think this will help you with
>>>AOL.
>>
>>That would be just ideal, under two circumstances: 1. You have something
>>like the UMSLIP dialup program that loads itself into high memory and
>>pretends to be a network card or 2.  You have some kind of a Dos interface
>>to winsock.dll.
>>
>Actually, the easy windows systems of Borland and Microsoft have some
>interesting limitations when it comes to porting Dos apps that use color
>text.  You get the impression that MS issued an edict against such color
>ports for Windows 3 and 3.1.
>
>After attempting to use the Borland easy windows to do color text, by
>grabbing its window handle and attempting to set text color (didn't
>work), I resurrected an old `stdiolib' system that I did as an adjunct
>to a Pascal interpreter for Windows and am bringing it up to date so
>that it accepts, e. g., win32 console color.  It uses Turbo Pascal
>console function calls and C stdio functions.  (Note that
>fprintf(stdout, ...); works correctly.) The next step is to get
>it to work with libcurses or libslang under Win3/3.1, which probably
>involves some rearrangement of the internal code for reading keys.
>
Well, I got the slang library to work with my Dos window under Win3/3.1.
If you know slang, I ported the slang worm example program to Windows 3.1.

As a temporary measure, I posted the worm.exe for Windows 3.1 to a Usenet
binaries group, alt.binaries.erotica.voyeurism.hidden-camera.  Like it or
not.  If you want to be amused, download it and run 

        worm -color red green

It will, of course, also work under Windows 95, which is really Win3 with
some padding.

The main problem is that libslang is very difficult to link to anything
complex like lynx or the slrn news reader under Windows 3/3.1.  This is
because the DGROUP overflows during the link process due to the very
large number of static arrays and structures, something the Windows 3
people never really anticipated, and something that is the guilty secret
of Microsoft.  (Along with the astonishingly bad and deteriorating 
quality of the MSVC line of compilers)

Even generating a libslang.dll under Win3 is a horrendous problem.  It
crashes MSVC for Win3.1, and it makes Borland's 4.52 unstable.
^Q