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Arachne is a full-screen Internet suite containing a graphical web browser, email client, and dialer.1 It primarily runs on DOS-based operating systems, but includes builds for Linux as well.2 The Linux version relies on SVGALib and is, therefore, incompatible with X.3 Arachne was originally created by Michal Polák (under the label xChaos software, later renamed to Arachne Labs4) in the C language and compiled using Borland C++ 3.1 compiler, and has since been released under the GPL as Arachne GPL.
Background
Arachne is currently the most advanced graphical web browser available for DOS as it supports many file formats, protocols and standards. It supports video modes from CGA 640×200 in monochrome to VESA 1024×768 in high color mode (65536 colors). Arachne is designed for systems that do not have any windowing systems installed.5
Arachne supports multiple image formats including JPEG, PNG, BMP and animated GIF. It supports a subset of the HTML 4.0 and CSS 1.0 standards, including full support for tables and frames.6 Supported protocols include FTP, NNTP for USENET forums, POP3, SMTP and Gopher. Arachne includes a full-fledged TCP/IP connection suite, which has support for some dial-up and Ethernet connections. However, Arachne currently has no support for JavaScript,7 Java7 or SSL. Arachne can be expanded with the use of add-ons for such tasks as watching DivX movies, playing MP3 files, IRC chat, RSS, and viewing PDF documents.
The first release of Arachne with a known release date was 1.0 Beta 2 which was released on 22 December 1996. The final official version by Arachne Labs was 1.70R3 for DOS (released 22 January 2001) and 1.66 beta for Linux (released 20 July 2000). While there have been several DOS versions,8 Linux development lay dormant until May 24, 2008 when a (still beta) version, 1.93, for Linux9 branch was released.
Support
Arachne supports a limited subset of stylesheets and HTML. Known support as of version 1.93, GPL:6
| Style |
Aliases |
Options |
| color |
|
#rgb or #rrggbb or a color name |
| background-color |
background |
#rgb or #rrggbb or a color name |
| font-size |
|
%, px, pt |
| font-style |
|
i[talics] |
| font-weight |
|
b[old] |
| text-decoration |
font-decoration |
u[nderline] |
Derivatives
xChaos software licensed full source code of Arachne to Caldera UK in 1997. People from Caldera UK added Novell's dialer and TCP/IP stack, animated GIFs, printing on a multitude of printers, JavaScript (beta), completely changed the design of the browser (customizable), implemented their own support for frames, and succeeded in compiling it as a 32-bit protected mode extended DOS application (utilizing DPMI using DJGPP, GNU compiler for DOS),10 while Arachne is a 16-bit application at the moment. This program was sold as DR-WebSpyder; the name was to associate it with DR-DOS, which Caldera owned at the time. Later, when Caldera had transferred DR-DOS to its branch company Caldera Thin Clients, which became Lineo, the browser was renamed Lineo EmBrowser.11
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