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

[Bill Schiavo]

Hello everyone.  I hope my solution to your problem you described works
for you.
Mr. Jim Dennis had quite a bit to say but unfortunately, There wasn't
much information about how to get and use the DOS port of lynx to do
what you want.    Read on.

On Mon, 8 Sep 1997, Jim Dennis wrote:

>  
> > 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.  I agree!
> 
>       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.  I run Slackware myself and find it
quite easy to install.  
> 
>                  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.  Okay, here's how
you can accomplish your task.  First get the dos port of Lynx from
http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/lynxport.html and unzip it.  If you use
pkzip, be sure that
you use the -d switch.  The -d switch tells pkunzip to make the
directories contained in the zip archive.  If all goes well, there will be
a drivers directory under the lynx2-7- directory and there you will find a
driver called slip8250.  Now load the driver like this:

slip8250 1 0x60

Note that you might have to use a different serial port than the one
shown.  The idea is to pick a serial port that doesn't have anything
connected to it since we are not interested in accessing remote files at
this time. If you want to remove this driver, you can use the termin
program like this:

termin 0x60
Take a look at the readme file that comes with lynx for more specific
installation instructions.  

You should be all set with this but if you still have questions, I am
always more than willing to help.

 >
> 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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