Re: SIS, Marinetti, & SS

[gareth@vcn.bc.ca (Gareth Jones)]

James OReilly (joreilly@smtp.dorsai.org) wrote:
(questions about Spectrum Internet Suite, Marinetti, and Second Sight)

James, I'll give you the information I have. I own SIS, I have (but
haven't been able to use yet) Marinetti, and I have a little experience
with the Second Sight board because there is one in my UserGroup's GS.

Spectrum wins over Lynx in providing different type sizes, text
justification, a few neat dingbats (OK, icons), underlining of links,
and so on. It looks to a user very like Navigator with its graphics turned
off. (Many people turn the graphics off to increase the speed at which a
page displays. Me among them). It is also a very handy tool for viewing
HTML files on disk or CD-ROM on a GS, then saving them as Teach files. For
$25 (on top of the price of Spectrum) it is a great deal.

I've read in Juiced GS magazine that Ewen Wannop, author of Spectrum, has
written a Spectrum XCMD to support Marinetti, but Marinetti is a moving
target. The current version is beta. I expect that it will eventually
support PPP connections. I also suspect that SIS will, some time after
that, become even more like a Navigator style browser - although probably
still without graphics. (I have no special knowledge. Just guessing).

Second Sight hasn't been taken advantage of by many programs because
there's no set of toolbox calls for programmers to use its special
abilities. This will probably change with the release of "FaceLift" - but
even then, programs will have to be rewritten to take advantage of the new
tools. 

Will SIS at some point take the plunge into showing graphics? I doubt it,
and don't really care, as long as it can _download_ graphics so I can see
them later.

-Gareth