DOS ain't dead

Hi all,
Although I am a dOs user exclusively since 1988, I have never
discovered the art and creativity of program development. i am one of
millions who read fanfiction however, more commonly at a site called
fan fiction dot net,
www.fanfiction.net
Since reading on line can be complex, developer's for other platforms
have created fanfiction downloaders, such as the one here.
www.fanfictiondownloader.net
The program allows one to locate a story uploaded to say
fanfiction.net and download that story in any of a variety of formats.
What I desire is finding a dos software developer who has the skills
to perhaps code this program for DOS, or create a new one. I come
across individuals all the time working in low graphics environments
who cannot access fanfiction.net content, or for whom existing
fanfiction downloader programs do not work.
depending on the details I hope to pay the developer for their
efforts. at the moment however I am gaging interest and seeking
talent. Any thoughts?

Hi!
You don't need so much a DOS programer but some javacript web-technologies expert.
The task you need can be divided into three parts:
1) DOS program connects to internet and runs some webscript
2) The webscript does almost all searching work and prepares a .ZIP file for download
3) The DOS program downloads the ZIP package

Basicly the steps 1 and 3 can be done with any DOS internet browser.
Or they can be non interactive and act like f.e. FDNPKG - an update tool for FreeDOS.
Just start with the step 2 and only then you can search a solution how to connect it with the DOS world.

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DOS-u-akbar!

Actually i did not share that ffn has a m.
m.fanfiction.net
Which seems to work fine in low graphics tools like lynx.
I wonder if using the m. edition would remove the need for
Javascript? Also, you speak of a dos browser...got a list of those?
I am not using freedos, so still am thinking someone dOs aware is a
good idea.
Thoughts?
Karen

> Actually i did not share that ffn has a m.
> m.fanfiction.net
> Which seems to work fine in low graphics tools like lynx.
> I wonder if using the m. edition would remove the need for
> Javascript? Also, you speak of a dos browser...got a list of those?
> I am not using freedos, so still am thinking someone dOs aware is a
> good idea.
> Thoughts?

Off-topic: Please, Karen, don't use the top-posting style in your messages. See Welcome to "DOS ain't dead"! for links to explanations of the different styles. Thanks!

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Forum admin

There is few DOS browsers.
The best one is probably Links
http://links.twibright.com/download/binaries/dos
(can work in textmode but also in graphics mode including perfect UTF-8 support and many nice features)

Other possibility is Dillo
https://code.google.com/archive/p/nanox-microwindows-nxlib-fltk-for-dos/downloads

The older browser Arachne can be also an option but it quite slow and outdated. But it is customusable and highly expandable by several kinds of pluggins.

Also don't forget to textmode-only browser Lynx

And yes, there is few other historical browsers. More info here:
http://www.xaver.me/drdoswiki/index.php?n=Main.Browsers

---
DOS-u-akbar!

> What I desire is finding a dos software developer who has the skills
> to perhaps code this program for DOS, or create a new one. I come
> across individuals all the time working in low graphics environments
> who cannot access fanfiction.net content, or for whom existing
> fanfiction downloader programs do not work.
> depending on the details I hope to pay the developer for their
> efforts. at the moment however I am gaging interest and seeking
> talent. Any thoughts?

As a hobbyist only, I fiddled around with my own unofficial FreeDOS mini-distros. One floppy image (used mostly under VMs) was MetaDOS, which has packet drivers that work under QEMU and VBox. (This was taken from Crynwr and also used in FDNET package.) So you can use Links2 or Wget or Curl (depending on compiled version available). As mentioned, Links2 (full version) works pretty well for what it does!

Curl has had several older builds, but most of them were weak or buggy. Even now, the Curl website points to Michael Kostylev's server, but it's down (as always). Not complaining, he's done decent work, but it's hard to find. So I'm not even sure I have his latest files!

Even though I have minimal access to mirroring files to iBiblio for FreeDOS, I've never rebuilt Wget nor Curl. There's too many files, I haven't vetted it, so I don't fully know the licensing situation (should be okay, but ...). So, even though I've mentioned it to several people, no one else seems to know or care enough to clarify or try. (It's not a big priority for anyone.) So I never mirrored it. (It needs some cleaning up to be able to separate the DOS/DJGPP-specific diffs from the upstream code. It also should probably be rebuildable atop DOSEMU2 or native DOS, maybe even with SFNs! But I may be the only one who cares about that. Sigh. Cross-compilation is good, too, maybe Andrew Wu's toolset would work, but I haven't tried. We just really need something easily reproducible.)

The latest version of M.K.'s Curl (7.64) and Wget (1.20.3) I have are here (20 MB, with full? srcs): curlwget.zip . I haven't tested the Wget as much in recent years, but it worked. But Curl (even CURLTINY) seems to work pretty well, so these days I'd prefer that.

For simplicity, I also uploaded only the three Curl .EXEs here (2 MB, no srcs, which is allowed by license): curlexe.zip

If someone here (Glenn?) wants to mirror it all, go ahead. I'm just saying, it's not ideal by any means. It needs cleaning up and needs to be reproducible with public tools (and libs) on public OSes, e.g. FreeDOS under QEMU or whatever. (I saw one mention that DJGPP 2.04 [sic] scanf() was buggy for Curl, but I don't even know if or how that was resolved. Hidden bugs are no fun.)

Just FYI.

> Curl (even CURLTINY) seems to work pretty well, so these days I'd prefer that.

CURLTINY.EXE doesn't seem to grab p7zip sources from SourceForge.net anymore, unknown error. But CURLLITE.EXE and CURL.EXE both still work. So that's ... good?