IntraDOS 1.4
Intranet HTML Browser and Program Launcher for DOS
New Features of IntraDOS 1.4
- Browse the File System.
- With the click of a button (F5), the user
can generate a browsable page containing a listing of all files
in the current directory, all subdirectories, and the parent
directory, allowing the user to navigate the directory structure
of any available drives.
- Launch Applications.
- The user can launch other applications
by clicking on an application link, or if a file is not an
application, the user can get a choice of applications with which
to read the file. When the other application is ended, the screen
reverts to IntraDOS at the same stage of browsing as when the
other application was launched. See the discussion
below.
- Menus and Other Applications.
- Based on these new features, users can now create menus
for applications and generally have more flexibility than before.
For a sample menu, see the Appmenu.HTM
file that comes with the program.
- Speed and Rendering.
- The code for rendering pages has been overhauled, resulting
in a speed increase (well, a decrease in slowness) of about 50%.
The program is still not a speed demon on a 386, but it is better
than before.
- Type letters of links to jump to a link.
- A keyboard user may now select a link by typing the first
letter of the link.
Other Key Features of IntraDOS
- 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) or by typing the first letter of a link to jump
to it without tabbing.
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.
- 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.
Included Files:
IntraDOS.EXE The program file
IntraDOS.ICO An icon for Windows, just in case
ID000.CFG A default configuration settings file
README.TXT A condensed readme file in ASCII Text
ID-Help.HTM A help file for using IntraDOS
Home.HTM A sample start-up file
ReadMe.HTM This ReadMe file in HTML
Setup.HTM Details on configuring and networking IntraDOS
AppMenu.HTM A sample page for launching applications
HTMLTags.TXT A 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.
Special concerns for setting the program up on a network and more
technical issues are addressed in setup.htm.
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.
IntraDOS Performance
Files |
Bytes |
IntraDOS 386 16MHz |
IntraDOS Pentium 75MHz |
MSIE Pentium 75MHz |
Startup File
(Program startup time included) |
2,713 |
4 — 3 |
<2 — <1 |
4-11 — NA |
File 1 |
5,995 |
2-3 — 1-2 |
1 — <1 |
2 — <1 |
File 2 |
12,645 |
4-5 — 1-2 |
1.5 — <1 |
2+ — <1 |
File 3 |
17,093 |
5-7 — 1-2 |
2 — <1 |
2.5 — <1 |
File 4 |
32,144 |
9-12 — 2-3 |
<3 — <1 |
<3 — <1 |
File 5 |
50,276 |
12-18 — 2-3 |
<4 — <1 |
3 — <1 |
These statistics show the improvement that stockpiling files can make.
Launching IntraDOS
IntraDOS may be launched by the command line or by batch file. The
syntax for calling the program is:
Intrados [/u=ABC] [BegFile.HTM]
where /u= sets the environmental variable distinguishing this user
where BegFile.HTM sets the file to display at the start.
For further details on setting up IntraDOS to run, see
Setup.HTM.
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. Keystrokes
- IntraDOS also allows a user to follow a link without a mouse by means
of the keystrokes.
* The TAB key selects the next link, and Shift+TAB selects
the preceding link.
* Alternatively, the user may press the first letter of
a link to select a link that is visible on the screen.
Once the link has been selected, 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. Browsing the File System
- When the user presses F5 (or Alt+f, i), IntraDOS creates a page of
hyperlinks to every file in the current directory, to subdirectories, and
to the parent directory. There is an ultimate limit to the number of files
that can be displayed in this way, but I have seen a directory of 1,300
files displayed correctly.
- 5. 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.
- 6. History
- When the user presses Control+H (or Alt+p, 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.
- 7. 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 "Pages" 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.)
- 8. 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.
Launching Applications:
By clicking on a link to an executable file, one that ends with a .EXE
or .COM extension, you can launch that program from IntraDOS. When you
exit that program normally, IntraDOS will return at the same place where
you left it.
This gives the user to opportunity to write an HTML file with
links to executables, and thus to create a menu for applications.
A sample file, called AppMenu.HTM, is
included in this package.
Here are some limitations.
- Since this feature uses a batch file, anything that will stop
a batch file from processing will prevent the launch of other
applications or a return to IntraDOS. There are some commercial
software packages that can do this, and the user can do it.
- Moreover, this batch file technique came into existence with
MS-DOS version 3.3. This may or may not work with earlier versions.
- By default, IntraDOS reads files with .HTM and .TXT extensions
without offering to launch other programs. If you prefer to have
the option to launch other programs to read those files, you
will need to designate those extensions when adding new applications.
See the Setup.HTM file for further details.
- Regarding Windows applications, in the Windows 95 environment,
a link to such applications seems to launch them in another window.
In a DOS/Windows 3.1 environment, however, you generally get an
error message that the program requires Windows to be running.
If Windows is not running, a link that precedes the
application with, e.g., C:\windows\win, can launch the windows
application. If you like this option, try experimenting with it.
- At present, the program takes about 7K of memory while the other
program is operating.
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 speed
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 (or 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.
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 an Internet 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 local or
network drives. 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 can 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 by listing links (80 x 25 is too
little room to do otherwise and have it usable). To work around
this limitation, I created the Table of Content feature. A user
can visit the link that contains the contents that are often intended
to be persistent, create a table of contents from that document, and
visit those sites by using the persistent menu items.
- 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 1,300 links and had no memory problems,
but there is some ultimate limit on the number of links that
a page can have. It read a text file of about 900,000 bytes, but
it failed to read a text file about 1,200,000 bytes in size.
- 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.
Table borders in non-standard English character sets (such as ISO
8859-2) are presently not supported. Sorry.
- Memory
- IntraDOS runs in just over 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
Revised 1997/03/18