The SGML syntax issues are (hopefully) all resolved in this new release. Netrik
reports errors and warning much more correctly now, and generally handles
errors better.
Now we can resume the interrupted beta stage, and after fixing all remaining
(mostly minor) issues, finally release a stable version. Hopefully there will
be no more than one or two more betas, before the stable in a few weeks.
I've been convinced that a b/w mode can be useful for some people, even if it
so crude that no text attributes are displayed at all.
Thus we do not longer wait till we have a sophisticated monochrome support, but
have just hacked such a crude b/w mode in. Full monochrome support can wait, I
believe.
The new code is in CVS. There will soon be a release also probably.
Our plans of fixing the remaining bugs and release the stable have been crossed
again.
The problem is the parser, more exactly SGML handling. As you know, netrik
complains about many syntax errors while loading most pages. Now I realized
that one of these situations doesn't seem to be considered an error in SGML.
When examinig this we discovered that actually a big part of these constructs
are of this nature -- they are valid SGML. The HTML standard is really
unspecific about these: It *recommends* not to use anything but a few SGML
constucts, but it doesn't really seem to forbid anything that is in SGML. (At
least the validator doesn't complain.) One could write a document that is
perfectly valid HTML, and still no browser can handle it...... read more
As announced, there is another beta out, with numerous fixes and improvements.
It boosts netrik usability considerably again, and is a great step towards
stable -- though we are still not there.
As quite a number of issues, including bugs and small (but annoying) misfeatures, showed up during thorough testing of the last beta, The original plan to release the final with only few fixes won't hold.
There are already quite a number of considerable fixes/improvements we've made over the past days, and there is still a whole bunch of pending issues. Thus, there will be at least one more beta release, maybe more. Stay tuned.
We have released a new beta with a number of considerable improvements.
For one, window resizing is now handled correctly -- very useful if using in an
xterm.
Also, when waiting for a keypress before (re)starting the pager, now any key is
accepted, not only <return>.
A nice little feature is displaying the IP address of the connected host during
page loading.
Finally, there are a couple of fixes to the configure script -- this should
allow compiling in some constellations that failed so far.... read more
The new release fixes a number of outstanding bugs.
There are very few issues left now; there will be one more beta, but if nothing
new arises, this will be the last one before we go stable :-)
With this new release, netrik is entering beta state, meaning it is
feature-complete for the first stable release, and only some
bugfixing/polishing is necessary yet.
The changes to the last alpha pertain to color and attribute handling. Summing
up, netrik now looks to most users as it was always intended... See the change
log for details.
This release implements "file" form input fields.
Form support is more or less complete now, at last. There are some details
missing still, but nothing really relevant we believe.
This is probably the last alpha release. 1.10 will probably have a new color
handling, and be the the first beta. (Meaning there are no more mandatory
features sceduled before going stable, only bugfixes and other polishing.)
The new release adds a feature that probably only few users will be interested
in, but then it's very useful: Reading of HTML files compressed by gzip or
bzip2.
Note that this works only for local files, not for HTTP servers -- this should
be handled by the transfer-encoding facility of MIME/HTTP, which would require
much more work.
This feature was sandwiched in as the original implementation came from an
outside contributor; our plans for going beta aren't affected by that.
This new release introduces support for <textarea> form input fields.
File uploads are still not supported; this will be fixed in the next release.
(Shouldn't be too hard, though there might be a problem with error handling...)
BTW, we've resolved that we won't add any major new features before anymore
before going beta, except fixing a few issues that make a bad impression -- the
incomplete form support, and the bad handling of color schemes. Thus we will go
beta somewhere around 1.9, and hopefully there are only a couple of days to
that :-)
Finally it's there: The new release contains the long promised text search
feature.
There are also a few smaller improvements.
We still haven't decided what to do now: Go beta and work towards stability, or
implement more useful major features first? The question is whether netrik is
now complete enough to be considered really useful and deserves a stable
release. If you have an opinion on that, please let us know.
We mentioned with the recent 1.4 release that you have to use some link
selection command explicitly to activate a link after moving the cursor, as
links are not automatically activated when moving the cursor over them. This is
now fixed. Also, the cursor is now set to the anchor start when jumping to an
anchor.
There are a few minor issues with the automatic link activation, but they are
not really important, and can hardly be called bugs. I don't think they are
worth bothering for now. I guess we will focus on more important things -- link
implementing the long promised search feature :-)
Netrik is back at a good developement pace, and there is another interesting
new release available.
Real cursor handling is implemented now, which is mostly invisible, while it is
a considerable change under the hood. Hoever, the change allowed another
interesting feature: There are commands now (^H, ^J, ^K and ^L) for moving the
cursor explicitely (not only jumping to links); this is sometimes very useful.... read more
Netrik is a fairly complete text-based web browser; it is useful both for browsing local documentation and web sites. After another longer pause, a new version of netrik is now out. There is a fairly simple, but very convenient new feature: If you go back to a page from history (or reload the current one), the link which was active when leaving the page is not only reactivated when it's still in the same place, but also if the page is somewhat different than it was. This is especially useful when reading newstickers or other dynamic pages. But even changing ads can cause layout changes, so this can also help with otherwise static pages.
As announced with the previous release, we have created another release
containing additional link selection commands -- lots of them.
There are commands for selecting the next and previous link, the first link on
the page, the first link on the next and previous line, and the first and last
link on the current line. See the README for a description of the new commands.
There are some inconsistencies in the behaviour of the new comamnds, so we will
probably create a 1.2.1 release as soon as we have enough input about those
issues -- we are awaiting your feedback :-)... read more
After the long pause, we have a first new release out now, which is to be the upbeat to regular releases again.
The major advance in this release are the new link selection commands ('H', 'L' and 'M'), which greatly simplify navigating.
Implementing the new commands required generally improved link selection code; it is much cleaner and more flexible now.
More useful link selection commands are planned; with the new code it will be easy to implement them -- so watch out for a 1.2 release soon :-)
This release fixes several, mostly long-standing bugs.
Most important among them is that URLs starting with "//" (i.e. without a
protocol specification) are handled correctly now. Thus it's possible not to
use Slashdot and other sites with netrik which failed before.
The others fix various crashes and other stability issues.
The netrik project aims at creating a really great text mode WWW browser, combining the advantages of the existing ones with severl own ideas. The 1.0.0 release has further improvements in the HTTP handling; more important, it marks the starting point for our first stable branch.
This release uses a new HTTP header parser, which allows for more graceful error handling, and there are a couple of bugfixes. (See http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=110631 for details.)... read more
Netrik now has a new HTTP header parsing, which can gracefully handle syntax
errors in the HTTP response header.
This was the last code change planned for the 1.0 alpha release. You can get it
right now from CVS.
We are making some final preparations -- updating docs, descriptions etc. And
then, let's go :-)
This new release features HTTP redirects.
Probably it's even a bit to eager about that, and it may not do exactly the
right thing always, so it might turn out to be of limited usefulness... But at
least you can go to netrik.sf.net now, don't need to spell out sourceforge ;-)
Well, OK, serveral other sites do work too :-)
As mentioned before, we will have to change the HTTP parsing, to allow graceful
error handling; but that's probably the last thing to do before 1.0 alpha :-)
The two releases both fix a couple of problems in conjuction with form handling
reported recently.
On the other hand, still no problems are known with the new user break
handling; thus, the 0.19.x releases generally seem quite stable :-)
To allow reasonable error handling during the HTTP header parsing, probably
it's necessary to completely replace the code with another basic approach. For
that reason, most likely there will be another 0.20 release before the 1.0
alpha...
This new version now allows interrupting a file/HTTP load operation.
That fills another important gap in netrik's usability. Most probably this is
one of the last releases before the 1.0 alpha :-)
Well, promised for long, but now actually there: A config file -- a feature
closing another important gap. And there are not many left -- we have made
another big step towards 1.0 :-)
Well, still no new features. This time, not even bug fixes... But wait, there
is still an intersting improvement: The man page is really nice now, and
hopefully really useful :-) So if you couldn't use netrik efficiently up to
now, because you couldn't find all the necessary information, you might want to
consider an update anyways ;-)