REVOBILD

This is a page to provide links to, and discussion about the

              PURE (DOS) TEXT MODE USE OF THE INTERNET

In any case EMail is TEXT - but few people are aware that all the rest of the Internet is "text" too, and even restricted to miserable ASCII, which is just 127 character signs: all the rest is coded to ASCII, transported as ASCII, re-transformed, decompressed from ASCII ... at an enormous waste of band width and transmission time (which is to say, YOUR fees to telephone co.'s and service providers).

Using text-only tools is much faster and thus, much cheaper, and saves the environment double: you don't need to throw away an "old" - but for all text work perfectly useful - computer and to buy "new" hardware, and you use the internet much more economical: saving us all the waste of time and the extra hardware infrastructure to shovel around gigabytes of nonsensical "logos" and the like. An excellent example for intelligent and appropriate net use is Healthnet, for instance, which serves medical people aswell in the Northern metropoles as in remote Southern regions with fast and vast information - including high-quality visual material: when needed.
(Just tell the complete stupid: Using text mode does not mean that you cannot work with graphical things and pictures - it means to use pixel stuff when you really want to, and where it makes sense; and not because some idiot page designer forces you to download, at your telco fees, Megatons of wallpapers and the like.)

What's more: as the rat-race for the next superPentical stuff marginalises people who never can afford that, you help to maintain the Net to be what it was still a short while ago: a free place with access for all at minimal costs.
And, by the way: 'Graphics' may be nice, but the blind can't hear them.

Files available here can be found on the download list below. Some of the links listed first contain highly useful information and explanation.

Here are some favorite Internet links for basic DOS/text software:

    TVDOG's links to get many programs
    The site of NetTamer, a complete set of internet functions
    BobCat, perhaps the best www-web text mode browser for small PCs.
   The ultimate DOS source - find EVERY! flavour and version of DOSes here !    - Use any PC to the fullest in DOS and get rid of M$ and N$ !

You can look at the text file from ".../~tvdog" with the URLs mentioned there, here as a overview text file, and go there and to the various sources quoted there.

And John Walker has written a concise description of all available WEB browsers - you can get an idea there of what much more there is beyond the bloatware with which the M$-N$-duopoly wants to fence us in.

And Now here is DOSLYNX !!!, the newest and continued development of the full Lynx running in DOS and even on the most simple PCs !!! It's arguably the best text browser ever available for use in DOS - with astonishing small footprint, excellent and fast rendering and soon - the author Fred Macall is working on it - including "secure" web connections ! It includes an FTP client and works with the WATTCP setup (see below).

REVOBILD is eager to promote a number of "pure text, pure DOS" tools meant to facilitate life on the net and in the web.

You can download them directly from this site. The "*.exe" files among them are selfextracting archives, others have the usual zip compression and have to be unpacked.

Still available here is the "XT"-text mode version (1.08) of NetTamer release 1.08xt: it runs on *any* DOS-PC, from the slowest XT to the fastest Pentium-like, on black-&-white laptops as well as on XTs and ATs with Hercules screens. The ZIPped package is about 429 KB.
You can find very usefull hints and additional explanations in the NetTamer-FAQ about "frequently asked questions" regarding this program.

SPECIAL: Download the latest ReRead edition: compiled to fast loading and smaller footprint (ca.210 KB unZIPed).
The ZIP file (ca.110 Kb) contains the executable program, and a template configuration and other auxiliary files. There are new tags for setup parameters added !)
So please download the manual files too.
It's thought to be mostly self-evident how to work with ReRead but the built-in help lines and keywords cannot fully describe the functionalities, their limits or fine tuning. For more details, please go to the ReRead section on the download page. !

ReRead is a text lister - or "browser" - and versatile file handler and has built-in filtering of eMail headers. Set to read mail folders, it indexes mail items and helps to keep order in the mass of incoming emails and mailbag files, with highly flexible functions to paste or extract items or just any text, to assemble topical threads, or to get together quotes from widely spread sources everywhere on the disks while writing or editing.
ReRead has a number of "hook-in" facilities which let you do auxiliary tasks like decoding of mail (or mail attachments) and HTML interpretation on the fly. With character remapping and a decent re-formatting - switchable at every moment - it succeeds even to present those ugly garbled outpourings from Winno$(TM)(R)($)($)($) gadgets and some other uncivilized "proprietary" gear in a readable way. Well, almost always...
ReRead is a file manager at the same time, and allows for the most often used DOS tasks to be done comfortably, no need to retype file and path names over and over again - and the typing errors that go with this. Navigating through the whole local system is as lazily done as could be. In fact it can be used as a DOS "shell" almost all the time, except with some big and memory hogging programs which need everything there is.

Its comprehensive mail handling features make ReRead the chosen offline reader for an eMailing Package built around Mark Ressl's Netmail, a fast and small mail transport agent. The ZIPped bundle (346 Kb) is composed of:
+ Netmail v.2.12 by Marc Ressl,
+ LSppp from LadSoft, and dialler Chat0,
+ Mail-2-Netmail (M2NM v.20), a pre-processor for the mails to upload, and
+ Netmail-2-bag (NM2BAG v.20), a post-processor for downloads from Netmail runs.

Together with ReRead, this package is a complete and highly flexible eMail setup - get your mails from dozends of POP3 boxes in one dial-up run, and have your own mails uploaded at the same time !
And as it uses the same basic net access arrangement as the Lynxes for DOS and number of other net clients like FTP - eg., Erick Engelke's "ftp07" - it can be part of a complete DOS net use evironment.
Please go to the download page to get all the programs singularly&nbs;!

A new DOS PPP driver is being developed by LadSoft, LSppp which promises good ! (You find even the latest version_0.92 at the download page here.)
There seem to be still some cooperation troubles of LSppp' dialler with certain modems but these might already be solved at the time of writing; in any case, the dialler CHAT is included with the package - you do not need LSppp's internal dialler.
In fact, using LSppp with an external, script driven dialler gets over problems with difficult dial-up net access (and certain provider-tweaked dial-in protocols). LSppp itself has a smaller footprint and a much better memory management for the TCP/IP stack than EPPPD - it can be really recommended to use this one now in stead of DOSPPP which is not developed any longer.

Another compact package for eMailing on the road would comprise either Nettamer or it's very neat and fast offspring - to send/receive eMail only -, Netmail_Pro v.1.04 (ca.70 Kb) from the same author, Dave Colston, together with ReRead as an offline reader. "Netmail_Pro" has no own reader so you best download ReRead too.
Netmail_Pro is very easy to set up, and has en excellent PPP socket integrated.
So here is another DOS eMailing Package #2, (ZIPfile of 88 Kb) consisting of:
+ Netmail_Pro v.1.04, and
+ Netmail-2-bag (NM2BAG), a post-processor after mail fetching which assembles the single-item mailfiles into a datestamped file in the format of a usual mailbag or "folder" which can even be accessed by Nettamer and - or rather, better - by ReRead, for offline handling.

One disadvantage of Nettamer and Netmail_Pro is the condition to dial-in anew for each access of a different ISP/mailbox. Almost everywhere on this world though, outside North America, each dial-up connection via the telcos means one more meter tick, and all telco use is metered. This sums up, with frequent, even short connections, as everytime the connectivity overhead has to be borne with too.
When it comes to straightforward, single connections with just one single mailserver alone, for POP3 and SMTP alike, David Colston's Netmail_Pro is easiest to set up and to handle, and its PPP driver is yet unbeaten.
For an arrangement with several different POP3 and SMTP accounts, however, a setup based on a separate packet driver like LSppp or the first "mailbag package" is much more versatile and fee-saving. And once the dial-up connection is established, it even allows to run a real text web-browser like Lynx, and the many other DOS net-utilities (FTP, TELNET, Gopher, etc.) independently.

You can find each of the utilities contained in the packages separately from this site too, at the download section!

Since v4.0, ReRead has a functionality to grab and edit lines from any text/mail/news displayed to launch a WWW-page "grabber" like HTGET or a LYNX - this is in effect a rather efficient way, in terms of online fees and waiting times, to "browse" the WWW. Lynx for DOS by now is a grown-up and highly efficient, pure text browser; HTGET is not a "browser" but you can sequentially download sources and read and continue to any next WWW place "tagged" on the page - or stop the online fees running and read the fetched pages offline. And equally, HTGET allows virtually "any PC", from the XT on, to access the WWW-URLs !

This feature had grown out of trials with a "slimmed" ReRead which would just list text files, and allow for to mark and grab text lines with URLs in them, and to edit these for use as targets for a Lynx or to fetch them with HTGET. Here is a fast and small setup to get any WWW-page:
WWW-page-GETTER !
Though most of this is not so new at all - some pieces of the arrangement are well-known and had been around for a while - but it has been a bit cumbersoume (and typo-prone) to write the command line for HTGET, one of the parts of the parcel, for instance. So here is a package which uses a dialler (eg. Netdial or DialPC) to connect a packet driver like LSppp, and a file lister which is a "web-URL grabber", LISTURLS, to grab URL-names from a text file and to launch HTGET with the complete and correct target to get.
But you can use ReRead for this straight away now !

The fast and simple HTML-interpreter HLIST from Martin Goebbel helps to do a quick check online of the WWW-page downloaded, to store or to trash it. As the whole isn't rather much more than a batch file set-up there's room to build in all sorts of additional helpers. (I've put in a little "renamer" there, for instance, to either trash or rename and move the files received.)

This is a somewhat artisanal design but it works well and fast; and it's really more efficient, in terms of online time and fees, than to surf into nirwana.
The "package" looks big (ca. 285 KB ZIPfile and somewhere in the region of 2 MB unpacked) but the actual set-up is less than 260 KB on disk(ette) - and it runs from a diskette, and on any PC under DOS (from DOS 3.3 on); the zipped package sure contains all the docs and even the sources of some of the parcels being part of it.
The "grabber", LISTURLS.exe, can be replaced by the full-grown ReRead now !

But what if you wanted to read Japonese HTML ?!? There *is* a means to do that: visit Martin Goebbel's homepage to get and try out HList, a fast and neat Html offline browser which allows even to read Japonese. And there are more fine DOS internet tools at Martin's place !
For example, here is a very tight and flexible Mail Sorting utility (just 6 Kb) from Martin Goebbel with which you can pre-sort big mailbags - before you actually start to read each downloaded message - according to origin, "threads" (those subject lines heading a certain issue in a list or usenet discussion), date ... almost to any category or criterium: It does a full text srutiny if you want. And certainly, it's useful to throw out "spam" mail from the mailbag. Very useful with any offline reader !

An fascinating "thing" to work - and play - with, is Martin Goebbel's NETBAS "basic-like" interpreter: it offers the possiblity to do all sorts of TCP/IP based connectivity your own ways - and from DOS !
Just write your own Basic script to got to an URL with HTTP, fetch mail from your accout at a remote server, Telnet, or what want you...

In itself, it's a small (and fast !) Basic interpreter in DOS, useable as such even without Net connectivity. To do Net-work, all you need is a dialler and a packet driver which works with the Waterloo TCP set-up, like LSppp. All this is very easy to install AND to use -- from DOS !

Please see the Netbas section at the download page for more details.
There's even a complete and ready-to-use package for automated POP3 mail downloads with Netbas available there.

To re-format and/or print text files easily without using some megalomanian "text processing system" there is a handy tool,
RE-PRINT (D), which can re- and undo line breaks (or create/resolve running text) and paragraphs, change character sets between standardised CodePages and in fact according to any specific list of character changes, it can do a very simple to use page layout and a lot of other things with any type of text file input.
The "(D)" version still has German language menues, but there is an English description included. A fully English speaking version may be available too.

For HTML-formatted text - the "raw" downloads you get with HTGET or the Lynx's download command -, you can use an excellent tool to STRIP HTML mark-up (HTMLSTRIP v8.06 ca.130K) from WWW pages and documents to render them as pure and printable text.
The author, Bruce Guthrie follows HTML development fast and updates the program with newest features, so check at the author's HTMSTRIP web site for the newest edition.

As you have to work with "pure" text in all Net conditions anyway, it is highly recommendable to use a clean and versatile text mode editor as your basic tool from the beginning. (Don't ever try to use "word processors" for writing eMail or HTML pages, PLEASE !)

There are lots of these around - look for instance, at the SimTel/msdos directory for "programmers' editors" !

For long years now we use a solid and highly flexible one, called
BLACKBEARD, (selfextracting exe file ca. 150kb) which you can download here directly. An even more sophisticated version, called
Captain Blackbeard, (zip file ca. 285kb) is as well available here.
Another clean programmer's editor, very versatile and complete, is
Vedit (zip file ca.80kb) which can be used on palmtops too.
A very small and unpretentious, "pure" editor is "E_88" (zip file ca.55 KB), needs less than 18 KB to run !
All are shareware, licensed at very modest prices.

Just in case: If your eMail/Web software does not easily do UU-encoding/decoding, here is an elegant and fast UU/XX-tool,
NCDC v1.5 (ca.59kb) - freeware but somewhat difficult to find on the net.
And here's a quite complete
MIME/Base64 encoder/decoder (ca. 13 Kb to download) which may be good to have at hand, as built-in coding functions of some mailers are not flexible enough to handle the more difficult cases of attached files and the like.

Finally, not to forget some hardware related programs which could adapt your "old" equipment to be at the head of really usefull newer technology !

One of the latter is doubtlessly the availability of larger storage capacity, with add-on devices like the ZIP-DRIVE. IOmega's proprietary Zip-Drive drivers for a parallel (printer) port connected Zip-Drive however, is rather tricky to install: if you try to do it their way it cannot succeed - so here are some hints for how to do it.
But the factory delivered tools are a pain and a waste to use with DOS, memory-wise - an alternative *does* exist:
it's a broadly applicable Zip-Drive driver, already working with many of the existing variations from the early '286 PC-ATs on - it is much smaller, needs just 3 Kb of DOS low memory !!! (in contrast to the some 70 Kb of Iomega's "Guest" driver, 45 Kb of which it wastes with fragmenting low memory), and it installs really easy.
It does have a disadvantage though (still), it's a bit slow in operating; the author told he's working on this.
It's not freely available, you have to eMail the German distributor to get a restricted demo-version of the Palmzip ZipDrive driver - and you'll see that it's worth its price of 30 DEM (in '99; eqiv. to about 18 to 20 US$, depending on exchange rates).
It works with handheld as well as desktop PCs running under DOS from DOS-v.2+(!) onward.
This is a really fundamental, and enormous enhancement for even "older" DOS machines, and most certainly for laptops and handhelds.

Another useful expansion of cababilities is the
Emulator for the '286-type computers to '386+ mode - enabling to run programs written to use the protected mode, and larger-than-DOS memory requirements of '386-and-later equipment, on earlier machines.

A small and handy helper to find out the comports in your machine is
IRQCHECK, a DOS utility to look up which of the first 8 comports, and which IRQ numbers with it, are in use, and what type of UART(s) there is.

And very practical and reliable DOS tool with which you can call and run any other program from inside a program is
LOADRES , zipped distribution ca.73 KB - even with fully used memory, allows an other even big prog to be launched with any hotkey you define: it swaps out the running program to disk and reinstalls it reliably afterwards. It can use, and even install itself in, upper/expanded/extended memory, and needs only 4 KB for itself.

Finally, there's a complete package to make and send, and to receive, read, convert and print FAX with DOS machines !
The basic utility is B.J. Guillot's BGFAX v1.70 (ZIP-file ca.397k). This is a rather complete (shareware) package in itself. You can find the latest version and more at the BGFAX author's web site.

As BGFAX's viewing utility for fax files has still some shortcomings, it is best to use another converting and viewing program, ZFAX (ca.104k) which earlier came along free with the ZyXEL modems.
These utilities are very easy to setup and to use, and they allow even to re-activate an 'old' PC-XT with Hercules mono screen to serve beautifully as a fax machine. And sure, faxing from DOS with some fast and tight utilities is much more reliable and easy when using a laptop travelling around !

BGFAX is highly 'batchable' - in fact it had been developed as an add-on to BBS systems - and is completely commandline driven. But as it's a bit teasing to write telephone numbers, files to use, etc. we have written kind of a pre-program which lets you pick tel-no's from a list, and the files to convert and send from a directory listing, then writes a little batch which calls the Zfax utilities to convert and finally BGFAX with the correct command line:
It's BGFAX SHELL, (ca. 46Kb ZIPfile) - well, not really a 'shell' programm but rather a 'launcher': it makes it comfortable to use BGFAX as a complete stand-alone fax setup - including multiple send-outs (broadcasts) as well as multiple-files faxes to one or several destinations. Thus you can 'point-&-shoot' to select and combine files and telephone numbers, and run BGFAX with a short batch from the DOS prompt anywhere.
This is a slightly enhanced version(Dec'98) with a sorted display of files to select from. It uses BGFAX and the ZFAX conversion utilities.

As a service to those who have restricted www download access we can send diskettes by mail containing some appropriately combined packages of some of the programs mentioned here. One 1.4MB diskette, for instance, can hold a complete package for a DOS-INTERNET setup for text mode consisting of Nettamer - or Netmail and the pre/post-processing utilities -, Bobcat/Lynx, ReRead, and the auxiliary utilities for decoding HTML, UU/XX, and Base64; all are copies of the original zipfiles.
This is not a "commercial" service - we ask only compensation for actual shipping and material costs (diskettes, packaging) and it's not always possible to do that immediately, it may take a day or two.

This place here is almost always "under construction", as you can see; we add more articles as well as source references on:
-- social and political aspects of (using) the internet,
   especially concerning North-South relations,
-- source locations (http, ftp, eMail) to relevant sites.
-- tips and tricks to use the Internet in the most economical ways !
Contributions, hints to other net places and URLs highly welcome !

SO STAY IN TOUCH !

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