Re: www on Apple II logged onto Unix BBS?

[nathan@cco.caltech.edu (Nathan Mates)]

In article <D3LByJ.DIo@dorsai.org>,
James OReilly <joreilly@news.dorsai.org> wrote:

>Is world-wide web available to Apple II users logged onto a Unix BBS 
>internet connection?  I don't believe Mosaic is available to such a user, 
>but is basic www service?  

   All versions of Mosaic (Mac, Windoze, Unix variants) require a
graphical display to display things on. This is not available to Apple
II users. But, there are WWW viewers that do not require a graphical
display but can put things to a vt100 (or similar) terminal. The most
common (the only? Not sure) is a program called 'lynx'.

   From the unix host's prompt, type 'lynx', and see if it starts. If
so, you're ready to play around on the WWW. If not, bug your sysadmin
to get and install it. 

   Joe Kohn's been singing the praises of Lynx in all of his Shareware
Solutions II magazines, and has included a lot of cool Apple II www
addresses. Since I tend to run Mosaic on a real (cost >$30,000)
machine, Lynx is a neat toy, but if you've got nothing else, it's
pretty cool.

>I can run Unix commands remotely on my host 
>from my Apple II.  Should it matter what the home computer is if the host 
>can handle www?  

   Pretty much no, as long as the home computer can do vt100. One BIG
caveat if you're using ProTERM 3.x and similar programs. Lynx uses both
'bold' and 'inversed' text in its displays, and there's a big difference
between the two. Normally, ProTERM displays both bold and inverse as
the same, inverse. The solution is to tweak the config options so that
only inverse video is inversed; you don't really lose much if the bold
text is made normal.


Nathan Mates
-- 
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