DosLynx v0.35b includes approximations for nine characters not included in the ISO-8859-1 character set. These are characters, such as left and right single and double quotation marks, that english speaking journalists seem to be fond of. When included in ISO-8859-1 coded documents by means of name or numeric entity sequences, such as ’, these can be quite distracting. If they go unrecognized by one's browser!
The approximations provided, such as an apostrophe standing in for a right single quotation mark, improve a document's presentation by replacing those entity sequences. I've provided a table of the nine approximated characters below. You'll see that the approximations work equally well, whether your display uses the default PC Code Page 437 or the preferable PC Code Page 850.
Perhaps the ISO-8859-1 character set's lack of only those nine characters has prompted many Web authors to switch their documents to UTF-8 encoding? After the entity sequences for those nine characters were handled, the next imperative for DosLynx became support of UTF-8 document encoding. UTF-8 provides for the entire Unicode character set of over sixty four thousand objects. Most of those remain beyond the reach of DosLynx, for now. However, DosLynx will now provide limited support for UTF-8. That is, it will now support the UTF-8 characters and character sequences corresponding to the ISO-8859-1 character set, together with the nine characters introduced above. Seeing the entire ISO-8859-1 character set properly depends on having your display and/or printer arranged to use PC Code Page 850. See the Code Page 850 Cook Book section of the DosLynx README document for information on making these arrangements. With its present support, DosLynx will now provide for 99.9 percent of the text (dare I say 99.99 percent?) that you'll see from english speaking authors.
This release of DosLynx isn't intended to be definitive in its handling of UTF-8 sequences for unsupported characters. If you have any idea(s) about this, I hope you'll let me know about them.
Here is a table of the nine Unicode characters for which DosLynx now provides approximations. This table is given in the style of: Martin Ramsch - iso8859-1 table. In order to provide the "Char" column in this table, I have had to deviate from my usual practice of leaving this document's charset unspecified (so as to default to ISO-8859-1). Instead, I have included an HTML <META HTTP-EQUIV= . . . tag specifying charset=UTF-8.
Description Char Code Entity name ================================= ==== ============= ============== EN dash – – --> – – --> – EM dash — — --> — — --> — left single quotation mark ‘ ‘ --> ‘ ‘ --> ‘ right single quotation mark ’ ’ --> ’ ’ --> ’ left double quotation mark “ “ --> “ “ --> “ right double quotation mark ” ” --> ” ” --> ” bullet • • --> • • --> • horizontal ellipsis … … --> … … --> … Trade Mark sign ™ ™ --> ™ ™ --> ™
-->
"what your browser does with it"
-->
"what your browser does with it"
÷ -->
÷
" in the 4th column, this means your browser
doesn't know about the entity name "divide" and just puts it
literally.
DosLynx v0.35b also brings support for the Expires: <datetimestring> and Pragma: no-cache HTTP Header fields and corresponding HTML <META HTTP-EQUIV= . . . tags. And, the Cache-Control: . . . HTTP Header field. Elsewhere, these Header fields and tags are referred-to as "(anti)caching directives".
This support should improve your experiences with "login" type Forms and Cookies-using Web servers. By insuring that you see updated versions of Web pages that get changed in the course of your interactions with their Web site(s). However, if you have lower speed Internet service, you may find the document refetching this support implies annoying. If so, you may use new histmode=ON configuration to defeat the new support. See the sample DOSLYNX.CFG file included in the traditional DosLynx v0.35b package for more information on this configuration.
Of course, this release also includes several bug fixes. These fixes and other improvements again make DosLynx v0.35b the strongest running version(s) of DosLynx, ever!
The traditional DosLynx v0.35b package contains DOSLYNX.EXE and all of its supporting files. This is the Real Mode version, recommended for all users. The DosLynx v0.35b Protected Mode add-on contains DOSLYNXP.EXE, a sample DOSLYNXP.BA_ file, and the latest DPMIREVU.HTM document. It is recommended for users with systems that can provide DPMI service. Both of these .ZIP files may be un-zipped into the same directory, without conflict.
There are a couple other readme files for DosLynx. One is the again updated README.HTM which still tells about the original features, command line parameters, and other important stuff. There is also a history file which describes the major changes I've made in bringing DosLynx from v0.34b to v0.35b. The history file also contains known bugs or missing features. If you find one that isn't there, please e-mail me at the address in this graphic. As I don't have a '286 based PC, presently, I am especially interested in hearing from anyone who is able to try the DosLynx Protected Mode version on such a system. Finally, Wayne S. Buttles has provided a little cheat sheet listing the key commands to run DosLynx from the keyboard. It includes ones he added. I've brought it up to date and added a second page listing the "DosLynx Control, Movement, and Navigation Keys".
Remember that you can navigate with your numeric key pad by putting Num Lock ON.
DosLynx no longer contains a built-in graphics viewer. That has been replaced with a swap out and call to DLXVIEW with a parameter naming the .BMP, .GIF, .JPG, .PCX, or .TIF file to be viewed. You may edit DLXVIEW.BAT to invoke your favorite viewer. The DosLynx v0.35b package contains a sample DLXVIEW.BAT which invokes LXPIC (requires CGA+).
As Wayne said: "I have enhanced DosLynx for my own personal enjoyment. . . . I am just releasing my changes to the general public in hopes that it will help some other DOS User. I have made every attempt to keep it compatible with the lowest IBM-Compatible computer so that the greatest number of people can benefit and I will continue to do so as long as I play with the code."
Good luck, and happy browsing.
Fred C. Macall
30 August 2007