IntraDOS 1.3
Intranet HTML Browser for DOS
Features of IntraDOS
KEY FEATURES:
- DOS-file system support.
- Unlike some DOS browsers, IntraDOS recognizes the DOS file
structure (e.g., c:\htm\file.htm) as well as the internet
standard (e.g., file:///c:\htm\file.htm).
- Imitation of Leading Windows Browers.
- IntraDOS attempts to mimic the operations of leading Windows
web browsers to the extent that a text-mode program can do so.
See Navigating the Intranet for further
details.
- Keystroke support.
- IntraDOS allows the mouseless user (and those of us who continue
to think that the keyboard is faster) to select links without a
mouse by using the TAB key (or Shift+TAB to go in the reverse
direction). Menu items (e.g., the Back button) are activated
by pressing Alt+ an accelerator key (e.g., Alt+B to go back).
See Navigating the Intranet for further
details.
- Customizable color display.
- Most HTML tags (e.g., bold, italic, header, etc.) are color coded,
as are hypertext links. Users can customize how those colors and the
background color will be displayed. See Options
for further details.
- Tables support and limited frames support.
- IntraDOS supports basic tables, but not nested tables. See
below for a fuller discussion of tables.
IntraDOS also provides modest support for frame pages by listing
links to documents in the frames and their titles and allowing users
to add the links in a table of contents (for example) as menu items.
See the discussion below.
- Stockpile of Pre-parsed Files.
- Because IntraDOS attempts to implement many formatting codes,
parsing large HTML files can be slow on a 386 PC.
Therefore, IntraDOS gives the user an option to save the
parsed file in a stockpile (formerly called a registry) so
that the same file does not need to be parsed again (unless
it is updated, which IntraDOS checks automatically). This results
in faster performance, since a 386 PC reading a long pre-parsed
file from the stockpile can display it about as quickly as a
Windows browser on a Pentium can parse it and display it. (See
statistics below.) See
Options for further details.
My concern: The DOS PCs may be dinosaurs, but they should still
not die prematurely. Don't junk them just to give all your users access
to an Intranet.
Improvements in IntraDOS 1.2:
- Look and Feel. Those upgrading from IntraDOS 1.1 will have much
the same look and feel, except that the existing registry of
pre-parsed files will not work because of the color changes.
Therefore, delete the prior IntraDOS.lst file and all
IDPF.* files.
- Customizability. Users can set their default colors and locations
of key files. See Options below.
- Stockpile (formerly called Registry). The user is no longer
forced to choose whether to stockpile automatically. Manual
stockpiling at any time is allowed. This enhances usability.
- More HTML tags allowed. IntraDOS now handles more HTML codes
such as <FONT SIZE=+x>, BIG, SMALL, SUP, SUB, SAMP;
<HR Width=xx%> <P align=center>; <IMG
Alt="Text">; and others that the prior version did not handle.
- Faster rendering of HTML pages. The rendering algorithm was
extensively re-written to cut wasteful cycles and render HTML
codes faster.
- More accurate rendering. In addition, the rendering algorithm
was re-conceived so that it would handle all cases more accurately.
Problems had been observed with unusual cases of various levels of
(nested) lists and links within tables.
- Text file wrapping. IntraDOS now wraps text files automatically,
thus handling the situation in which the text files were created
without carriage return-line feed combinations for each line.
Improvements in IntraDOS 1.3:
- Look and Feel. In addition to various features noted below,
IntraDOS 1.3 stores data slightly differently from prior versions,
and therefore all pre-parsed files should be deleted and stockpiled
again. Sorry!
The current active hypertext link (shown in red) is now stored
rather than reset when moving from one file to another. It will
be easier to trace one's path through the net.
The method of tracking pre-parsed files was changed so that
no file visited previously in an IntraDOS session needs to be
parsed again in the same session. This can speed the session
overall.
Spacing between paragraphs, headings, and pre-formatted text
will appear more uniform. Columns widths are more accurate.
- Bug Fixes. The following bugs were fixed:
- Handling URLs that are not valid DOS files (not an 8.3 file,
invalid drive, mailto, etc.) as opposed to non-existent files.
- Occasionally running words together (1.2 version).
- User hits the "Home" menu at the start of a session.
- Alignment of pre-formatted text.
- Use of TABs in pre-formatted text.
- Files without a <BODY> tag.
- Better table rendering.
- Tables more than 32,000 bytes in size may now be displayed.
- Tables wider or narrower than the screen may now be displayed.
- The width=xx% attribute is now supported in <TD>
and <TH> tags.
- Column widths are better calculated, courtesy of the
W3C.
- Right alignment and table alignment tags. IntraDOS now supports
full left-, center-, and right-alignment tags in tables and in the
<P align=...> tags.
- Bookmarks. Users can now bookmark sites for future reference by
pressing Control+b. See the discussion below.
- Table of Contents. Users can automatically add each hypertext
link in the current file as a menu item by using the menu "File, Make
Table of Contents" (Control+c) option. See the discussion below.
- Limited Frames Support. IntraDOS now
responds to a frame page
by creating a page with hypertext links to the documents in each frame.
A user can simulate a table of contents in a persistent frame by
(1) opening the file with the table of contents, (2) using the new
Table of Contents feature to add each item to the menu, and (3) using
the menu to display the substantive files.
- Limited Long File Name Support. IntraDOS first truncates the file
name to 8.3 format, and if it fails to find it, looks for a file
of the form xxxxxx~1.xxx.
- Implicit Name Support. IntraDOS treats a call to a directory as
looking for a file in the directory called "home.htm", "index.htm"
and "index~1.htm," in that order.
- Printing Support. Administrators can set up users to allow printing
to the DOS LPT1 printer, as shown below.
Included Files:
IntraDOS.EXE - The program file
IntraDOS.ICO - An icon for Windows, just in case
Home.HTM - A sample start-up file
ID-Help.HTM - A help file for using IntraDOS
ReadMe.HTM - This file in HTML
ReadMe.TXT - A short version of this file in ASCII Text
HTMLTags.TXT - A text file listing the HTML tags handled by IntraDOS
Setup
Recommended System:
IntraDOS has been extensively tested on my office's 386 PCs
running MS-DOS 5.0 with VGA monitors. Anything better is great.
I haven't tested the program on other monitors, on slower processors,
or earlier versions of DOS. If you experience problems with those
systems, please feel free to let me know, though I cannot guarantee
that I can help.
Here are some performance statistics for our office intranet. Your
mileage may vary. Times are in seconds. Using IntraDOS, the first
number is the time to parse and show the file; the second is the
time it took to read a pre-parsed file from the Stockpile. (2 386 PCs
were used, hence the variation.) Using MSIE, the first number is the
time it took to link to the file; the second is the time it took
using the back/forward buttons.
Files |
Bytes |
IntraDOS 386 16MHz |
IntraDOS Pentium 75MHz |
MSIE Pentium 75MHz |
Startup File (Program startup time included) |
2,713 |
5-6 -- 3 |
<2 -- <1 |
4-11 -- NA |
File 1 |
5,995 |
4-6 -- 1-2 |
1 -- <1 |
2 -- <1 |
File 2 |
12,645 |
7-10 -- 1-2 |
1.5 -- <1 |
2+ -- <1 |
File 3 |
17,093 |
9-14 -- 1-2 |
2 -- <1 |
2.5 -- <1 |
File 4 |
32,144 |
18-24 -- 2-3 |
<3 -- <1 |
<3 -- <1 |
File 5 |
50,276 |
25-36 -- 2-3 |
<4 -- <1 |
3 -- <1 |
These statistics show the improvement that stockpiling files can make.
Recommended Setup on a Network:
- Place the program file IntraDOS.EXE in a directory on your
network server (e.g., X:\INTRADOS) accessible to those with
DOS PCs who will use it. This directory will store:
(a) The online help file (ID-Help.htm).
(b) The registration information file (IDReg.cfg) when the
program is registered.
(c) Individual user setup files recording color and other
selections (ID-abc.cfg).
NOTE 1: Thus users need to have creation and deletion rights
in the directory.
NOTE 2: The help file can be changed by the menu
under File, Setup, Help File.
- Prepare one or more appropriate start-up files (home pages) for
network users. Since this program allows the network administrator
to call any file as a start-up file, he/she can set the browser
to start with a file that may be appropriate to different contexts
in the office setting.
- Put your (users') startup HTML file(s) in a public directory.
This directory can be, but need not be, the same as the
directory containing the program files. This directory
will store certain files generated by IntraDOS:
- Temporary files as users parse HTML files on the
intranet of the form $abc.1 (2,3,4, etc.). These are
deleted by normal program termination.
- A database file listing files in the permanent stockpile
known as IDPF.lst.
- Preparsed files that are stockpiled, in the form
IDPF.1 (2,3,4, etc.)
NOTE 1: Because IntraDOS places temporary files in this
directory, users need to have read, write, create, and
delete rights in this directory. If the network
administrator wishes to give read-only access to certain
files, those should be placed in a separate directory where
users have limited rights.
NOTE 2: The location of temporary files can be changed by
the menu under File, Setup, Location of Temporary Files.
- If not already done, each user should have his/her environmental
variable USER set to three letters (initials). To avoid conflicts,
the initials should be unique. Most PCs on a network have this
variable set at the time of logging in to the network.
- The administrator should preview all the files on the intranet
with IntraDOS on a fast PC and save at least the large
ones (if not all files) in the permanent stockpile, so that
users on slow PCs can view the files quickly.
- The administrator can configure each user's id-xxx.cfg file
with a text editor to select all options, such as colors,
start files, help files, stockpiling, and the directory for
temporary files. The administrator can also add bookmarks by
adding two lines for each bookmark in this form:
BOOKMARKNAME1=First Bookmark to appear in menu
BOOKMARKURL1=x:\public\htm\BMark1.htm
BOOKMARKNAME2=Second Bookmark to appear in menu
BOOKMARKURL2=x:\public\htm\BMark2.htm
etc. The administrator can also give a user the ability to
print the file to LPT1 by adding the line:
PRINTERON=1
Launching the program:
You can start IntraDOS by the command line or by a batch file.
IntraDOS will open a startup HTML file as follows:
Here are some sample batch files for launching IntraDOS:
- 1. Where the network has set the user variable, the startup file
is called Home.HTM and is located in the same directory with
IntraDOS.EXE:
- x:
cd\Intrados
IntraDOS
- 2. Same, but the startup file is located elsewhere:
- x:
cd\Intrados
IntraDOS x:\public\html\startup.htm
- 3. Where the user needs to start in the HTML directory and
IntraDOS is in the user's PATH.
- x:
cd\public\html
IntraDOS startup.htm
- 4. Same, but IntraDOS is not in the user's path.
- x:
cd\public\html
x:\intrados\IntraDOS startup.htm
- 5. Same a #3, but the USER variable has not been set by the network
software:
- SET USER=ABC
x:
cd\public\html
IntraDOS startup.htm
SET USER=
Using IntraDOS
Navigating/Exploring with IntraDOS:
As with other browsers, a user can move through the information system
by activating links. In IntraDOS, the links generally appear in yellow, but
the currently active link appears in red. The user can navigate by the
following means:
- 1. Mouse
- A user may follow hypertext links by clicking on them with a mouse.
- 2. TAB Key
- IntraDOS also allows a user to follow a link without a mouse by means
of the TAB key. To select a link, press TAB until the desired link is
highlighted (or Shift+TAB to cycle through the links in the reverse
direction). Then, the user presses ENTER to activate the link. If you
scroll so that the active link is out of view, IntraDOS interprets a
TAB as calling for the first link on the screen rather than the next
link in order.
- 3. Back, Ahead and Home Menu Items
- These menu items function as they do with Windows browsers. "Back" (alt+b)
takes the user to the immediately preceding link (even in the same document),
"Ahead" (alt+a) to the one immediately next, and "Home" (alt+o) to the first
one.
- 4. File Open Dialog Box
- When the user presses Control+O (or Alt+f, o), IntraDOS provides a dialog
box for selecting a file to be opened.
- 5. History
- When the user presses Control+H (or Alt+v, h), IntraDOS provides a list
of all links from the first to the last. The user can revisit any of those
documents by selecting the appropriate link and clicking OK.
- 6. Bookmarks
- The user can save the current document as a "Bookmark" or "Favorite" by
pressing Control+B. Doing so will cause IntraDOS to show the file as a menu
item at the bottom of the "View" menu, thus allowing the user to return to
the same file by using the menu rather than navigating through the intranet.
The bookmark can be used in later IntraDOS sessions. (It can be changed
by editing the user's configuration file.)
- 7. Table of Contents
- By pressing Control+C, the user can also automatically store every link
in the current page as an entry in the "Table of Contents." The menu item
"Contents" will appear, and by activating it a list of links will appear below.
The links can be used until the user exits IntraDOS or supersedes those
links by loading others.
Selecting Options:
- Screen Colors.
- Users may set default color preferences by clicking the menu
under "File, Setup, Colors." The currently selected colors are
shown. The user can experiment with the color scheme by
clicking the menu item "Change," selecting a screen display
item to change, and scrolling up and down the color list box
until a suitable color scheme is selected for each item.
The user can save the color changes by clicking the "Save"
button and exiting, or disregard the changes by exiting without
saving.
- Stockpile of Pre-parsed Files.
- This option, which will be of importance mainly to the intranet
administrator, allows the automatic saving of pre-parsed files
to a "stockpile," a permanent cache, which improves performance
on the intranet, particularly for slower PCs.
By default, no files are automatically saved to the stockpile.
The user may add files to the stockpile only by clicking the
"File, Stockpile Permanently" option (Ctrl+P).
The user can change the default by clicking on "File, Setup"
and selecting whether to save all automatically, or to force
the user to decide on each file.
If you create more than one start-up home pages on different
directories, stockpiled files will be left in the different
directories. This will not be a problem if there is little
overlap between the two sets of files, but if there is a
significant overlap, it would be better to keep all start-up
home pages in the same directory.
-
Known Limitations:
As with any other browser, with sufficient ingenuity (or sufficient
sloppiness) one can write a page in HTML that will confound IntraDOS.
In testing this on many, many files drawn from the internet, I've
found huge numbers of badly written HTML files. I have attempted to do a
lot of error trapping in IntraDOS, but it is impossible to catch
them all. This browser should be able to represent any moderately
well-formulated ordinary page of HTML, but I cannot guarantee that
all pages can be parsed or that, if parsed, all original data appears
on them. Again, this is true for any browser.
Here are some of the more important known limitations:
- Not a Web Browser
- You cannot use IntraDOS to access the internet, and it does not work
with a modem. The HTML files must be available on the user's hard drive
or network. Within IntraDOS's other limitations, HTML files on the
internet can be saved in the office network.
- Look/Feel
- IntraDOS does not support images (which are marked by è).
Extended or "special" characters are displayed based on the
ASCII character set rather than the Windows set. Thus the
image marker (above) appears as the Greek letter phi in
IntraDOS, but as e-grave in Windows.
Colors are limited to 16 and cannot be changed only by customizing
the color selection, as discussed above,
and not by coding the HTML page. Thus links have one color (yellow,
or red if currently selected) whether one has used them or not.
Only one font and font size are available. Emphasis can be
accomplished only by codes such as <B>, <I>, <H1>, etc.
Codes such as <Font size=+1> affect only the color
of the text.
Frames are only modestly supported. See the discussion
above.
- Size of Files
- IntraDOS will not handle a file that generates a screen length
longer than 32,000 lines or wider than 32,000 characters.
I have loaded pages with over 200 links and had no memory problems,
but there is some ultimate limit on the number of links that
a page can have.
- Lists
- Bullet-like characters in all lists are standardized by the program,
not established by the HTML author.
Nesting of lists (<UL> and <OL>) is supported up to
9 levels and only so far as the left margin is less than 50% of
the space available for text (i.e., fewer levels in tables).
Attempts to make deeper levels of nesting will yield
unpredictable results.
Due to formatting limitations, numeric ordered lists will
start over at 1 after 99, and alphabetical
ordered lists greater than 26 (a-z or A-Z) will repeat. For the
same reason, Roman numerals are not supported in ordered
lists.
- Tables
- Nesting of tables, i.e., one table within another, is not supported
and will yield unpredictable results.
Tables containing more than 10-12,000 bytes are rendered in stages of
about 10,000 bytes and column widths are calculated based on the
status of the table after the first 10,000 bytes. Unpredictable
results may occur if the structure of the first 10,000 bytes does
not reflect the structure of the rest of the table, or if a cell
in the table contains 10,000 or more bytes, etc.
In tables with different numbers of cells per row, cells are filled
with data from left to right. Thus some unusual configurations
of tables are not supported.
Special formatting of tables, such as combining cells and cellpadding,
is unsupported. Borders are either off (invisible) or on (single
line around each cell) and there is one space between the border
and the text.
- Memory
- IntraDOS runs in under 300K of memory, but each new document, each
hypertext link and target, each bookmark and each entry in the table
of contents adds to the memory that IntraDOS needs. I have not yet run
out of memory though loading scores of extensive pages, but there is
some upper limit on the total number of pages, links, etc.
REGISTRATION
This program is shareware. If you wish to use it beyond a 30 day trial
period, please register your version.
The normal registration fee is $25 for a stand-alone computer, $10 per
additional computer on a local network, with a maximum fee for an entire local
area network of $75. Certain discounts also apply:
Ministries that are engaged in
full-time relief of the poor........free
Religious organizations and
organizations that engage in
substantial work on behalf
of the poor.........................$5
Other charities.....................$15 single computer
$25 2-5 computers on a network
$40 6+ computers
Register by sending a check or money order to:
Charles M. Cork, III
P. O. Box 6897
Macon, Georgia 31208-6897
Please include your name, your business's name (if applicable), your
mailing address, and your e-mail address. By return e-mail or mail,
you will get registration information.
Beyond the satisfaction of doing the right thing and making the registration
request at the end of the program disappear, registration will
entitle you to notifications of upgrades (free to registered users, unless
the upgrade is really colossal) and to such support as I may
be able to give via e-mail to ccork000@counsel.com.
Redistribution Limitations:
The unregistered version of IntraDOS may be freely distributed by
any means so long as no included files are
altered or deleted, though other files may be added.
A registered user of IntraDOS may distribute the program without
alteration, except that the default start-up file (Home.HTM) may
be altered or replaced as the distributor wishes, so long as the
program contains the help file (ID-Help.HTM) and a readme.txt or
readme.htm file that includes at least these registration and
redistribution limitations.
IntraDOS
I hope that you find IntraDOS useful and worth the cost.
Charles Cork
E-Mail: ccork000@counsel.com
Updates available at the IntraDOS web site:
http://www.mindspring.com/~cmcork3/intrados.htm
or by FTP to ftp.mindspring.com/users/cmcork3/ntrdos13.zip
Revised 1997/01/08