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James Miller wrote:
>
> I was kind of hoping Steven might address the modern-browser 
> issue in response to my previous post on compiling for BL3.  

BL3 is targetted at 486s and low-end Pentiums.  A modern 
browser (with bells & whistles) is not suitable for that 
hardware.  So, for BL3 I am looking for a graphical browser
with a small footprint.  Netscape 3.04 would be ideal.
  
For three weeks, before and after my move, my only browser 
was Netscape 3.04 (running on BL1 on my 486 laptop).  With
Netscape 3.04 I was able to do all the usual things: email,
reading Slashdot, accessing secure sites, downloading files,
reading PDFs, getting weather maps, bidding at an auction
site, etc.  Yes, there was an occasional problem, but nothing
I couldn't work around.  

If Netscape 3.04 was the only browser I had, I could still 
function OK.  It's ideal for BL3.  However, I have spent a
lot of time trying to get Netscape 3.04 to work on BL3 without
success.  Netscape 3.04 simply won't connect to the BL3 Xvesa.
I don't know if this is a problem with Xvesa itself or with the 
version in BL3.  However, I have found several X programs that 
refuse to work with the BL3 Xvesa (eg xfreecell and AbiWord).

As I have said before, there are many problems with Xvesa:
it is tripped up by some DOS drivers, it messes up the screen 
for settings other than 80x25, it doesn't do color depths
properly, it doesn't recognize all the parameters it should,
it doesn't provide the environment that some X applications
expect, etc.  Xvesa is simply too flakey to be relied upon.

I would love to dump Xvesa, but it is so damn useful.  Nothing
else works on so many different video cards.  Nothing else is 
so small.  

The fact that Netscape 3.04 fails to work on Xvesa is another
nail in the Xvesa coffin.  Unless I can find a reasonable 
browser to run on Xvesa, I will have to dump it.  At the moment
I am trying to compile Dillo for BL3.  If that fails on Xvesa,
I might try BrowseX or links2.

> I'm guessing that since Firefox has been developed using a 
> different, newer library, it would be very difficult - if not 
> impossible - to compile it for BL3 (libc5).  

The library issue can be avoided by compiling a static version,
but the Xvesa issue is much more difficult to cope with.

Cheers,
Steven