------------------------------------------------------------ |\| /|/ # # # # ### ##### #### |\| /|/ # # ## # # # # # |\| /|/ ### # # # # # # #### _|\|/|/_ # # # ## # # # # \_\\|\|/_/ # # # # ### # #### \/_/_/_/_/ |/|/| Knots html browser |/|\|\ |/| \|\ ver 2.0 Copyright (c) 1996-1997 Nick Gray. |/| \|\ |/| \|\ ------------------------------------------------------------ IF KNOTS CRASHES WHEN YOU RUN IT THE FIRST TIME, YOUR COMPUTER CAN PROBABLY NOT DISPLAY IN EGA. EDIT THE FILE "KNOTS.INI" AND CHANGE "GraphicMode" TO CGA OR HGA AND RUN KNOTS AGAIN. Read the NEW FEATURES section to find out about all the other changes since the last version. USEFUL COMMANDS =============== Use the Arrows and Page-Up, Page-Down keys to scroll through a page. Follow a link typing `T', linknumber, `ENTER'. Press `F1' for a more detailed help screen. KNOTS ===== KNOTS is a DOS based html browser designed for the owners of low powered PCs, who wish to create WWW pages (or Knots of a net) at home, either for their personal, one node intranet, or to be displayed later on a World Wide Web server. What makes KNOTS different to other DOS browsers is that it displays the pages graphically, to give a better idea of the final result. You may use Knots freely for 30 days for evaluation purposes. If you are still using Knots after this period, you must register by sending $20 (or the equivalent in FF or UK pounds) to: Nick Gray Cidex 355 38330 St Ismier FRANCE E-Mail: N.Gray@ecs.soton.ac.uk Registered users are exempt from the registration fee for future versions of Knots and therefore safe from future fee increases. If you truely can't afford the price send me a postcard instead! Comments, queries, suggestions and bug reports are also always welcome. WHAT'S NEW ========== o The EGA, CGA and Hercules versions are now all kept in a single executable file. Check out KNOTS.INI if your computer crashes: it probably cannot display EGA. o The keys have changed: (Go Back) is now replaced by . (Forwards) is replaced by . still goes home. o The file access has changed: KNOTS no longer uses the DOS conventions for naming files, and now uses real URLs (Uniform Resource Locator). The URL can point to a local file using the form: file:///C|/dir/subdir/file.ext The URL can also be a remote URL where the page is cached locally: http://www.place.org/dir/subdir/file.html Please note that you may have to replace "\" by "/" and "C:\" by "file:///C|/" in your own pages, which makes them portable to the Web. o Knots uses a File Allocation Table (FAT) to specify where all remote URLs are cached. If you know where your site will be hosted, or if you have downloaded pages, you can add an entry to the FAT file. The FAT convention is: each line contains a mapping of the form such as: http://www.place.org/dir/file.html C:\CACHE\FILE.HTM Any links to the remote URL will open the local file. o A self-documenting configuration file is included where users can specify the Graphic Mode to use, the position of the FAT file, whether to display the ShowLocation bar and the URL of the first (Home) Page. o Pages writen using special extended ASCII characters instead of HTML character codes are now properly viewed to make non-english pages more readable. o An optional Display-Location bar displays the URL of the current current page. SUPPORTED FEATURES ================== KNOTS supports the following html FEATURES o HTML Headings and page titles o Bold, italics, preformatted, strong, em, address and code tags o Paragraphs, line breaks and horizontal rules o Special Characters: < > A © " o Ordered and Unordered lists o Hypertext Refs to local and cached files o Inline Image ALT tags o International Character codes: é Ñ o The default home page is index.htm of the current directory. KNOWN LIMITATIONS ================= o Html pages cannot exceed 1800 lines. o No more than 390 URL links per page. o URLs cannot be longer than 100 characters. o A history of only 100 links is stored. o Ordered lists cannot exceed 127 items. o The browser cannot deal with more than 200 files in a directory. DISTRIBUTING KNOTS ================== o KNOTS is shareware so there are no restrictions to the number of personal copies you can make of it. o You may freely distribute or upload KNOTS to Bulletin Boards and FTP sites and are encouraged to do so. Please leave the program in its original zipped form, named KNOTS2_0.ZIP. You may not modify KNOTS in any way. o If you would like to make money distributing KNOTS, for example by selling a shareware disk that includes this program, please contact the author, Nick Gray for his permission first. DISCLAIMER ========== I have taken best care in ensuring that the features supported by KNOTS are bug-free, and that KNOTS reacts as similarly as possible to other popular navigators. However, I make no guarantee about the correctness of any part of the program. If you believe that bugs in this program could result in any type of damage, including financial loss, please do not use KNOTS. I will not accept responsibility for any kind of damage due to the use or misuse of KNOTS. WATCH THIS SPACE ================ New versions of KNOTS are likely to be released in the near future to encompass a larger amount of html features. Later versions will also aim to improve the speed and efficiency of the browser on our slow antiquities. Future improvements will include: o Handling of html tables. o Handling of html justification mark-ups -
, o Handling of html anchors within a file o A search function. o A DOS shell and the possibility to invoke an external editor from within KNOTS to make html development faster. o The possibilty to invoke external viewers for certain file types. The latest version of KNOTS can always be found on the Web, at: http://www.soton.ac.uk/~ng194/knots