[Info-vax] web browsers for VMS on ALPHA

[George Cook]

In article <ijo350$tr9$1 at online.de>, helbig at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---undress to reply) writes:
> In article <14WQ0SLFBSyl at wvnvms>, cook at wvnvms.wvnet.edu (George Cook)
> writes: 
> 
>> I've been wanting for over two years to get the next release packaged
>> up.  The main holdups are revising the doc and creating all the
>> pre-built executables.
> 
> When the release is ready, presumably it will contain pre-built 
> executables, as you mention.  But will there be a procedure to build it 
> from scratch as well?

The distribution kit contains only source and build procedures.  The
pre-builts are released as separate files along with the kit.

After we finish shutting down the large WVNET cluster (up continuously
since January 1996) at the end of this month (it will hopefully
continue on as a small cluster of office workstations), I may make
an attempt to get it packaged up.  Unfortunately my build platforms
may be very limited at that point (e.g. probably no more VMS 5.4-3
pre-builts).

>> I can make Alpha 8.2 and VAX 7.3 images of Mosaic V4.3 available
>> to anyone who contacts me, but I'm not going to make a public release
>> until the distribution kit is at least the same quality as previous
>> releases.  The images are built against OpenSSL, so they will run on
>> any system regardless of what, if any, SSL is installed.  The list 
>> of the V4.3 changes is attached.
> 
> I'm sure many appreciate the effort you are putting into this (by
> yourself?).  I have an older version of Mosaic installed (VAX and
> ALPHA).  It doesn't eat up the resources like CSWB does.  Unfortunately,
> many web pages these days rely on JavaScript, Flash, Java etc.  How much 
> support for these bells and whistles is there in Mosaic?

None, other than the ability to filter them out of the HTML.  This
release was supposed to have limited style sheet support, but the
work was interrupted just a few days after I got all the required
libraries (libxml2 and libcroco) built and linked in.

Besides being a hobby, I still use Mosaic a lot because even on a
DEC 3000, it still runs circles around CSWB on an ES45, can be
used longer before crashing and never slowly grings to a halt (I
need to exit CSWB and restart periodically in order to regain
acceptable performance).  Mosaic V4.3 has additional file I/O
tuning, so it may have a noticeable performance improvement
depending on your file system hardware.

FWIW, if anyone is interested in running a somewhat updated
NCSA Mosaic on OS X or Linux, check out Mosaic-CK at
http://www.floodgap.com/retrotech/machten/mosaic/
The orginal NCSA Mosaic is also available for Linux (at least
for Fedora); just for grins and giggles, I recently installed
it on my laptop.


George Cook
WVNET