About Arachne WWW browser

Arachne WWW browser was written and distribution package was created by xChaos software, using third-party freeware components (see file README.TXT for details). The browser itself is proprietary software and you have to license it if you want to use it for other than non-commercial or evaluation purposes.

Some links in this document are working only if you are connected to Internet. Most important online link for you is Arachne online homepage, where you can get the latest version of Arachne. More information: info@main.naf.cz. Distribution and licensing: sales@main.naf.cz.

Author of the Arachne WWW browser:

xChaos software (CZ)
Michael Polak - author of most of the code (including HTML rendering and xSwap (TM) memory manager) and of all documentaion. Designer of user interface (including all animations, icons and the "error message skull" ;) Inventor of DOS Gateway Interface (DGI). xChaos software is oriented on developing component-based, highly customizable applications. Visit homepage of xChaos software homepage for more information. e-Mail: xchaos@main.naf.cz

Arachne is partly based on work of following companies and individuals:

IBASE group (CZ)
- Ing. Zdenek Harovnik - X_LOPIF, DOS graphics library for EGA, VGA, SVGA and VESA cards (including HiColor modes), XMS and EMS memory management, conversion of TTF fonts to DOS enviroment, virtual screens, code optimizing. e-Mail: haro@main.naf.cz
- Ing. Ivan Polak - color palette optimization algorithm (for 16 and 256 color modes), images in 16 color modes. e-Mail: pola@main.naf.cz
- Ing. Jan Vlaciha - memory management.
IBASE is powerful database capable of keeping multimedial data, which has currently been ported to Unix (Linux) and can output data stored on server to the World Wide Web - if you are online, see demo.
Erick Engelke (Canada)
WATTCP - free TCP/IP library routines sources
Copyright (c) 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 Erick Engelke Used with permission.
Portions Copyright (c) 1993 Quentin Smart
Portions Copyright (c) 1991 University of Waterloo
Portions Copyright (c) 1990 National Center for Supercomputer Applications
Portions Copyright (c) 1990 Clarkson University
Portions Copyright (c) 1983, 1986, Imagen Corporation
Antonio Lopez (E)
PPPD.EXE - port of Linux PPPD to DOS, see details. Used with permission.
New Wave Microtechnology (CZ)
Portions of WWWMAN.EXE - utility for surfing local drives. Portions of MAILMAN.EXE - utility for converting e-mail messages to HTML. Both utilites were developed directly for xChaos software. e-Mail: shaddack@main.naf.cz
Krysztof Zietara (Poland)
Author of excellent ISO-Latin-1 and ISO-Latin-2 version of fonts used by Arachne.
Vasily Zatsepin (Russia)
Author of Cyrillic support for Arachne (CP-1251 and KOI-8R).
Independent JPEG group (USA)
DJPEG.EXE - public domain convertor of JPEGs to GIFs, see details.
xChaos software NL (NL)
- Cliff Albert - BBS2HTML.EXE, conversion of FILES.BBS files to HTML, Dutch version of Arachne homepage
- Tim VanPelt - Dutch version of Arachne homepage
Jan Patera (CZ)
JPNG2BMP.EXE - fast decompression of JPEGs and PNGs to bitmaps. Used with permission.
Bill Neisius (USA)
PLANY.EXE - public domain sound player, see details.
Dev Teelucksingh
Simple idea how to use COMTOOL.COM to autodetect modem
K.H. Weiss
COMTOOL.COM - public modem tool, see details.
Clarkson University, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (USA)
TELNET.EXE (CUTE) and FTP.EXE - public domain telnet and ftp programs.

Credits:

All registered users of Arachne.
All members of Arachne mailing list - without their bug reports, Arachne will be just another NCSA Mosaic or Arena.
Linus Thorvalds - author of my favourite operating system.
Authors of Fast Tracker II - program with the best graphical user interface in DOS. I would never even think about writing Arachne without experiencing Fast Tracker II.
Authors of GIMP - the "GNU Photoshop"
Caldera - for buing Arachne source code license ;-)
Big Electronics, Patrick Sim, H.W.Wilson, TeleMED - for licensing Arachne
NAF - for internet connectivity, online disk space and providing online support
Tim Berners-Lee - inventor of World Wide Web.
Hynek Med - for numerous comments about Arachne (in)compatibility with RFC documents, for administration of our server (without knowing root password ;-).
Countless registered and unregistered fans of Arachne, who keep on flooding me with tons of enthusiastic e-mails ;-) Let's hope we will manage to survive in competition with those two huge dinousaurs, MSIE and Mozilla

Notes:
LZW algorithm used to decompress GIF files is implemented in IBASE group graphics library X_LOPIF since 1992.
Arachne was written in C language and compiled using Borland C++ 3.1 compiler. Development started in 1996. At that time, I was usning my old noname computer, which doesn't exceed minimal configuration: 386DX/40, 8 MB, 600 MB HDD, Trident 512 kB SVGA, 14" color monitor, 14400 noname faxmodem, MS-DOS 6.22, Desqview. Windows 95 with Netscape were painfuly slow on this hardware, so I deleted them and started to write my own browser.
Development of Arachne now continues on my new noname AMD K5/133, 32 MB, 2.5 GB HDD, S3 Virge 2 MB and OpenDOS 7.02, but we are still testing Arachne on slow PCs with 386 CPU. We are not testing Arachne on 286 based PCs and XT compatible PCs, but Arachne is reported to work even in this enviroment.

In Greek language, Arachne means spider. According to ancient Greek legend, Arachne was a name of woman, who dared to compete with godess Athena. Arachne won, but Athena punished her - Athena turned Arachne into a spider.