The ARACHNE WWW browser was
written and the distribution package was created by xChaos software, using
third-party freeware components (see the Arachne file README.TXT for details).
The browser itself is proprietary software and you will have to license it
if you want to use it for other than private non-commercial or
evaluation purposes.
Some links in this document
work only when you are connected to the Internet. The most important online
link for you is the Arachne
online homepage, where you will find the latest version of Arachne. More
information: [email protected].
Distribution and licensing:
[email protected].
About
the Authors of the Arachne WWW browser:
-
xChaos software (CZ)
-
Michael Polak - author of
most of the code (including HTML rendering and xSwap (TM) memory manager)
and of all documentation. Designer of user interface (including all animations,
icons and the "error message skull" ;) Inventor of the DOS Gateway
Interface (DGI). xChaos software is orientated on developing component-based,
highly customizable applications. Visit the homepage of
xChaos software for more
information, or e-Mail to:
[email protected]
-
Ing. Zdenek Harovnik - X_LOPIF,
DOS graphics library for EGA, VGA, SVGA and VESA cards (including HiColor
modes), animated GIFs, XMS and EMS memory management, conversion of TTF fonts
to DOS enviroment, virtual screens, code optimizing. e-Mail:
[email protected]
-
Vitex - author of Arachne
installation program. e-Mail:
[email protected]
Arachne is partly based
on the work of the following companies and individuals:
-
 IBASE group
(CZ)
-
Ing. Ivan Polak - color palette
optimization algorithm (for 16 and 256 color modes), images in 16 color modes.
e-Mail: [email protected]
-
Ing. Jan Vlaciha - memory
management.
IBASE is a powerful database
capable of keeping multimedial data, which has currently been ported to Unix
(Linux) and can output data stored on server to the World Wide Web - if you
are online, see demo.
-
Erick Engelke (Canada)
WATTCP - free TCP/IP library sources
Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 Erick Engelke
[Used with permission]
Portions Copyright (c) 1993
Quentin Smart
Portions Copyright (c) 1991 University of Waterloo
Portions Copyright (c) 1990 National Center for Supercomputer Applications
Portions Copyright (c) 1990 Clarkson University
Portions Copyright (c) 1983, 1986, Imagen Corporation
-
Antonio Lopez (E)
PPPD.EXE - port of Linux PPPD to DOS, see details in Arachne.
[Used with permission]
-
New Wave Microtechnology
(CZ)
Portions of WWWMAN.EXE - utility for surfing local drives. Portions of
INSIGHT.EXE - utility for converting e-mail messages to HTML. Both utilites
were developed directly for xChaos software. e-Mail:
[email protected]
-
Krysztof Zietara (Poland)
Author of the excellent ISO-Latin-1 and ISO-Latin-2 version of fonts used
by Arachne.
-
Vasily Zatsepin (Russia)
Author of Cyrillic support for Arachne (CP-1251 and KOI-8R).
-
Independent JPEG group
(USA)
DJPEG.EXE - public domain convertor of JPEGs to GIFs, see details in Arachne.
-
xChaos software NL
(NL)
-
Cliff Albert - BBS2HTML.EXE,
conversion of FILES.BBS files to HTML, Dutch version of Arachne homepage
-
Tim VanPelt - Dutch version
of Arachne homepage
-
Jan Patera (CZ)
JPNG2BMP.EXE - fast decompression of JPEGs and PNGs to bitmaps.
[Used with permission]
-
Bill Neisius (USA)
PLANY.EXE - public domain sound player,see details in Arachne.
-
Dev Anand Teelucksingh
(Trinidad)
For simple ideas on how to use COMTOOL.COM to autodetect modem
-
K.H. Weiss
COMTOOL.COM - public modem tool, see details in Arachne.
-
Clarkson University, National
Center for Supercomputing Applications (USA)
TELNET.EXE (CUTE) and FTP.EXE - public domain telnet and ftp programs.
-
Bernhard "Bernie"
Eriksson (Sweden)
Bug fixes and improvements on some of the free source code.
Also made it easier to translate Arachne.
Credits:
-
All registered users
of Arachne.
-
All members of the Arachne
mailing list - without their bug reports, Arachne would be just another
NCSA Mosaic or Arena.
-
Linus Thorvalds -
author of my favourite operating system.
-
The Authors of Fast Tracker
II - the program with the best graphical user interface in DOS. I would
never even have thought about writing Arachne without experiencing Fast Tracker
II.
-
Authors of GIMP -
the "GNU Photoshop"
-
Caldera, Big
Electronics, Patrick Sim, H.W.Wilson, TeleMED ,
GE Capital Bank - for licensing Arachne
-
NAF - for 2 years
of internet connectivity, online disk space and providing online support
-
Tim Berners-Lee -
inventor of World Wide Web.
-
Hynek Med - for numerous
comments about Arachne (in)compatibility with RFC documents, for administration
of our server (without knowing root password ;-).
-
Countless registered and
unregistered fans of Arachne, who keep on flooding me with tons of enthusiastic
e-mails ;-) Let's hope we will manage to survive in competition with those
two huge dinosaurs, MSIE and Mozilla
Notes:
The LZW algorithm used to
decompress GIF files is implemented in IBASE group graphics library X_LOPIF
since 1992.
Arachne was written in C
language and compiled using Borland C++ 3.1 compiler. Development started
in 1996. At that time, I was using my old "noname" computer, which had a
minimal configuration of:- 386DX/40, 8 MB, 600 MB HDD, Trident 512 kB SVGA,
14" color monitor, 14400 "noname" faxmodem, MS-DOS 6.22, and Desqview. Windows
95 with Netscape were painfully slow on this hardware, so I decided to delete
them and started to write my own browser.
Development of Arachne now
continues on my new "noname" AMD K5/133, 32 MB, 2.5 GB HDD, S3 Virge 2 MB
and OpenDOS 7.02, but we are still testing Arachne on slower PCs with 386
CPU. We are not ourselves testing Arachne on 286 based PCs and XT compatible
PCs, but Arachne is reported to work even in this enviroment, although perhaps
is not very fast due to the limitations of the machines and the
hardware.
In the Greek language, Arachne
means spider. According to ancient Greek legend, Arachne was the name of
a woman, who dared to compete with the goddess Athena. Arachne won, but then
Athena punished her - by turning Arachne into a spider.
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