Installing the Ted word processor in modern Linux

So one day, I'd installed Debian 11 in Windows 11 using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). This one is a separate ordeal, and today I discovered, that the install even included LibreOffice, which I didn't think I needed to download and install, as I have the same package on Windows already.

Installing a small word processor program ontop of an installation of Debian running atop WSL in Windows 11 is perhaps a form of overkill in terms of memory and storage requirements, since WordPad itself is still present, and Windows-native small-footprint open source word processors exist, too; one of them being the fabled AbiWord. But Linux in Windows is very much another story.

WSL did make it possible for me to investigate how to install Ted in modern Debian, as a proof of concept. — without having to use a LiveCD/LiveUSB variant of Linux, and without the opportunity to use either. One of the reasons was, that the hardware is a modern notebook computer able to run Windows 11; this laptop does not have an internal optical drive, and I don't have any form of external storage that I could use to run a LiveUSB variant of Linux.

Contents

• About Ted
• Pick your architecture
• Required dependencies for Ted
• Finding out what dependencies to install for old or obscure packages in Debian
• Configuring user interface font sizes
• Screenshot of Ted

About Ted

Ted is a simple Linux-based word processor for RTF documents, and its history goes back to November 1998 or even earlier; version 2.0 of the program was released on 9 November 1998.

Ted is more advanced than any plain text editor, such as Notepad or Nano, very roughly equivalent to — and often more advanced than WordPad, and more basic than AbiWord.

Compared to WordPad, Ted includes more formatting capabilities, spell-checking functionality, and can export files into HTML, EML (HTML mail message), EPUB, PostScript, and PDF formats. It can only open plain text files and RTF files. Ted 2.23 introduced a basic autosave function to help recover files in the event the app suddenly exits.

AbiWord, OTOH, is more advanced, and comparable to the word processing component of Microsoft Works. AbiWord can open, save, and export a greater amount of document formats; it has a proper toolbar, page zoom, and plugin support, spelling and grammar checking, the highlighting of misspelled words; document annotations, revisions, and versioning, and collaboration functionality. The last AbiWord release for Windows is v. 2.9.4 (from 25 November 2012), and remains available for download.

Ted is one of the most fitting Unix/Linux word processing programs for really old computers: its storage requirements are small, and its memory footprint low. I remember in 2005, I could launch it relatively quickly in a 120 MHz computer with Debian 3.0 and just 32 MB of RAM.

The installed size of Ted is 9.76 Mb, while the installed size of AbiWord is roughly 25 Mb. Ted is one of the smallest word processing programs for Linux. In terms of size, it would be competing with Pathetic Writer of Siag Office.

There can be instances, when Ted might crash, such as when quickly browsing through different fonts in the fonts dialog, so take care to save your work regularly.

The latest version of Ted is 2.23, dated 4 February 2013, and its installers are available at the Ted homepage.

Pick your architecture

Given the 64-bit nature of Windows 11, Debian over WSL is also 64-bit. The architecture in use is usually called amd64, even if the CPU in a consumer-grade computer was made by Intel or VIA. 64-bit Ted is available as ted-2.23-amd64.deb.

IA-64, aka Itanium, is Intel's own in-house 64-bit architecture, which is incompatible with AMD64. IA-64 should not be confused with Intel 64 or EM64T, as these two are the names of Intel's implementation of the AMD64 architecture. IA-64 has been discontinued. Its chips have always had niche uses, and they're not found in most PCs.

Installers of Ted for other architectures and operating systems, its language packs, and spelling dictionaries are available at the official Ted FTP directory here.

Required dependencies for Ted

The main problem is, that Ted has several old dependencies that are not available in any modern version of Debian, as Ted has not been maintained since 2013. The .deb packages must each be downloaded and installed separately.

Installation goes with dpkg in the command line. For the sake of simplicity, make sure the current folder is the same where the downloaded .deb packages are located.

$ sudo dpkg -i packagename.deb

Install packages in roughly this order:

Package	Download link	Download page	Notes / From
multiarch-support	multiarch-support_2.28-10+deb10u2_amd64.deb	Package page / AMD64 package download page	Install this package before anything else. Debian 10 Update 2 (Buster)
libjpeg8	libjpeg8_8d-1+deb7u1_amd64.deb	Debian archive	Debian 7 Update 1 (Wheezy)
libpng12	libpng12-0_1.2.49-1+deb7u2_amd64.deb	Debian archive	Debian 7 Update 2 (Wheezy)
libtiff4	libtiff4_3.9.4-5+squeeze10_amd64.deb	Debian archive	Debian 6 Squeeze

Then install ted-2.23-amd64.deb.

After installation has completed, the shortcut to Ted should be visible in:

Start Menu > All Apps > Debian > "Ted rtf text processor (Debian)", with a dedicated icon. The shortcut can then be pinned to Start or the taskbar.

Subsequent to that, a spelling dictionary can be installed. Their .deb filenames use this naming format: ted_en_GB-2.23.all.deb. Make sure Ted is closed when installing dictionaries.

Finding out what dependencies to install for old or obscure packages in Debian.

I had actually used dpkg to try to install Ted first, not knowing what the dependencies were, and dpkg had promptly informed me what the required packages were. The installation was not finalised because of the missing packages.

apt-get install required_packagename did not help, as the package list for Debian 11 did not contain the names of those old packages.

The Debian installation also includes the Synaptic package manager front-end. I couldn't activate it through the start menu, but could launch it from the Debian command line:

$ synaptic &

This starts Synaptic without administrative privileges. That's just enough to find out information.

In Synaptic:

1. click on "Status" in the bottom left section > then click on Installed in the top left page.
2. The list to the right shows the list of all installed packages.
3. Click into the list to focus into it.
4. Type ted to search for the package.
5. If the install failed or did not finalise, the package is marked with red.
6. Right-click Ted, select Properties
7. In the Properties window, click on the Dependencies tab.
8. The Dependencies tab is self-explanatory, and lists all the packages required for a program, component, or package to work.
9. Packages listed in italics are missing from the system. This should inform users as to which packages to look for on the web.

Configuring user interface font sizes

Graphical apps installed with Debian over WSL by default have small font sizes, as they don't recognise Windows scaling settings. On my computer, very nearly all display elements are scaled to 150% in Windows, which Debian are unaware of.

Fortunately, there are two configuration programs that can fix that.

One is xfce4-appearance-settings. In Application Finder, it's listed under Settings > Appearance, but fails to launch from there. It does launch from the command line:

$ xfce4-appearance-settings &

There, it's easy to change the look and feel of most graphical programs; the most important would be the font size.

But Ted is an older program, so it requires the installation of gtk-chtheme, which is a front-end to change GTK+ 2.0 themes.

gtk-chtheme can be installed that way from the command line:

$ apt-get-install gtk-chtheme

or by launching Synaptic as sudo from the command line:

$ sudo synaptic
On invoking a command with sudo, you may be prompted to enter a password.

In Synaptic:

1. Click the Search button, enter gtk-chtheme in the Find dialog, click Search or press Enter.
2. gtk-chtheme should be listed in the results >
3. Right-click on the gtk-chtheme package, select "Mark for Installation."
4. Click Apply in the toolbar > review information in the Summary window. It contains details about what packages would be installed. > Click Apply.
5. Once you get the 'Changes applied' window, it should be safe to close it, and quit Synaptic.

Subsequent to the installation, a "Gtk-ChTheme (Debian)" item will appear in the Debian folder in the All apps section of the Windows Start menu, and it can be launched from there. Its user interface is similar to xfce4-appearance-settings. Changing the font size to 14 pixels or greater should improve the legibility of menus and most other user interface items in Ted. Themes can be changed, too, from light to dark.

How to get Skype on the Web to work in Firefox in old Android

As you may already know, Microsoft ceased Skype app support below Android 4.0.3. This covers Android 3.0 and Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Maybe some of you probably cannot upgrade from these OS versions to Android 4.0.4 or greater, or that you can't upgrade your device. So, I've got a possible solution, but it's very technical, and might not work with every affected device.

If you feel adventurous, then bear with me.

The solution only works on certain devices that have a screen big enough, and a CPU and memory combo that's big enough, too.

What you need

* A reasonably fast device. Slow devices are those with a CPU with 800 MHz or less, and 512 Mb RAM or less. This was my experience, and slow means very slow. In my case, I got Skype on the Web to work, but as it loads in Firefox, the browser takes the entire resources of a device, forces other apps to quit (per Android design), and the entire interface takes three-to-four minutes to load from login to UI.

* The screen resolution must be greater than 320x480 px, because Skype on the Web was not designed for small screens.

Your mileage may vary.

* Firefox version between 44.0–47.0. Firefox 44.0 is the earliest version that can handle Skype; possibly, because of its more generous cookie acceptance mechanism from that version on. (Firefox 44.0 and newer no longer have the cookie prompting mechanism.) On some versions of Android Gingerbread, only Firefox 44.0–45.0 are the newest to run, though version 47.0 of the browser is the latest built for Android 2.3. If v47.0 won't run, get v44.0 or 45.0. Firefox 44.0 supports old-style native Android menus, v45.0 has a newer main menu.

* Another requirement is installation of the NoScript Anywhere extension in Firefox. Technical users already know about this extension. If configured correctly, then NoScript allows reducing overall resource usage while browsing the modern web.

The hardest part is allowing/disallowing sites in NoScript on a subdomain level, because it requires Vim Touch for advanced text editing. (Someone please write an extension to alleviate this issue.)

The soup

Firefox for Android comes with this neat feature, that one can specify site-specific user agent overrides in about:config.

The user agent is a piece of text that a browser sends to a website as identifying information about itself. It contains operating system name and version, and browser name and version. All browsers do that since the first browsers on the web.

about:config is the advanced settings page in Firefox, GNU IceCat, and other browsers that use the Gecko rendering engine. You can access the page by typing about:config in the address bar.

Since Firefox versions 47.0 and below for Android 2.3 are older than the version required by the web Skype, you need to modify the user agent string to make Firefox appear like a newer version to allow Skype on the Web to load.

In about:config, create a new setting string by tapping the Plus (+) button; then specify, that the setting is a string, then add the name to the setting:

general.useragent.override.skype.com

For a time, you can leave the string part empty, until you paste the one I suggest here:

The UA string needs to show that the browser is a desktop browser and of a reasonably recent version. The one I use on my device is this:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux armv7l; rv:52.0) Gecko/52.0 Firefox/52.0

Some of the items mean the following:
* X11 is the platform part, and means X Window System, the most widespread graphical environment in UNIX/Linux.
* Linux is the OS and the OS kernel name. Because Android uses the Linux kernel, stay with X11 and Linux (though Android uses a different graphical subsystem).
* armv7l — the CPU architecture in my device. Most mobile devices running Android 2.3 and 4.0 have that, and it's the one variable that you can change. The letter after number 7 is not 1 (one), but a lower-case L.
If your device is based on ARMv6, then it's more rare and physically less fast, and the most recent supported Firefox for that is version 31.3.0esr (also for Android 2.2 Froyo). You can use ARMv6 in the string, if you know the correct nomenclature naming of the architecture (I haven't looked it up), and it's actually in your device.
* rv: stands for revision;
* Gecko is the name of the browser's rendering engine;
* Firefox is the browser name. Note, that Skype on the Web does not officially support alternative Gecko-based browsers, such as IceCat, so use only Firefox in the UA string. This means, that you can use GNU IceCat, but you'd still need to enter the Firefox-based UA string.
* Firefox/52.0 is the current official extended support release (ESR). As above, the version number must be 52.0 everywhere.

Sample screenshot of how it looks in about:config —

Domains to add for useragent override

You must continue adding UA strings for a number of Skype and Microsoft domains as described above, so here's what I think is the full list of those:

skype.com
skypeassets.com
live.com
microsoft.com
s-microsoft.com
msecnd.net
gfx.com
gfx.ms
trouter.io
bing.com
azureedge.net


Domains to whitelist in NoScript

Generally, you can whitelist all of the above domains, and be happy.

But if you want to tinker on a subdomain level, then you must edit the line in about:config at

extensions.nsa.policy

To edit that line, I strongly recommend using VIM Touch, which is available from the F-Droid repository of FOSS apps for Android. For detailed instructions on how to do this, read A primer on whitelisting subdomains in Firefox NoScript. This is compulsory.

I compiled the whitelist with the help of NoScript for desktop Firefox, which lists the below domains for all to see.

then you must edit the JSON string in VIM Touch. So here's what I got what I think is the full list of subdomains to whitelist:

"config.skype.com":1,
"drip.trouter.io":1,
"lw.skype.com":1,
"secure.skypeassets.com":1,
"https://account.azureedge.net":1,
"https://api.asm.skype.com":1,
"https://api.skype.com":1,
"https://apps.skypeassets.com":1,
"https://auth.gfx.com":1,
"https://auth.gfx.ms":1,
"https://browser.pipe.aria.microsoft.com":1,
"https://c1.microsoft.com":1,
"https://client-s.gateway.messenger.live.com":1,
"https://config.skype.com":1,
"https://consumer.entitlement.skype.com":1,
"https://contacts.skype.com":1,
"https://cs.microsoft.com":1,
"https://drip.trouter.io":1,
"https://flagsapi.skype.com":1,
"https://go.trouter.io":1,
"https://apps.skypeassets.com":1,
"https://avatar.skype.com":1,
"https://c.bing.com":1,
"https://i.s-microsoft.com":1,
"https://kes.skype.com":1,
"https://login.live.com":1,
"https://prod.registrar.skype.com":1,
"https://prod.tpc.skype.com":1,
"https://s4w.cdn.skype.com":1,
"https://static-asm.secure.skypeassets.com":1,
"https://static.asm.skype.com":1,
"https://support.skype.com":1,
"https://swx.cdn.skype.com":1,
"https://web.skype.com":1,
"https://weu1-api.asm.skype.com":1,
"https://www.skype.com":1

This list is in JSON format: domains are surrounded by double quotes, with :1 meaning to allow that domain (:0 is to forbid, but you won't need that with these).

I typically also add the https:// protocol prefix to make sure, that only the secure version of the site is whitelisted. This is useful in case a non-secure version of a domain is compromised, but a secure version isn't, as domains with http:// and https:// can serve different content.

Domains in double quotes are those that use variable subdomains, which makes using the protocol prefix moot. Double-quoted domains support both http:// and https:// versions of a site. Sometimes, these are also made to serve non-secure content. The profuse use of the secure protocol prefix is really for security purposes.

Whitelisting only these domains means, that other Microsoft properties are still not script-enabled.

The entire exercise worked for me, but the Skype for Web UI was extremely slow on my device. There are newer, more powerful and better devices with only Android 2.3–4.0.3, so people with those might have more luck.

Errata and considerations

In my experience with a very low-end Android device, Video and audio won't work. Text and SMSes work, and sometimes that's everything that is needed.

Entering YouTube URLs or web addresses starting with either http:// or https:// might not work. If that is so, enter web addresses without these protocol prefixes.

A more experienced user might choose to edit the ABE string from about:config in a text editor. It goes like this: copy string, paste to text editor, edit, copy string, paste string to overwrite the olde parameter value. Editing the NoScript ABE string in Firefox mobile does have a learning curve.

February 2018 update:

I recently upgraded Malawarebytes AntiMalware, and it had "web protection" for two weeks. After that, I could not have access to Skype on both the Skype desktop app, and Skype for the web. After uninstalling, I could connect again via the browser, but the service forced me to make my Skype account a Microsoft account; possibly because of multiple unsuccessful logins.

There was also the case of having to manually set web.skype.com to accept cookies though "Page Info" > Permissions > Cookies in Firefox (set to Allow from all gray/default). Strange.

Before there were computers in Estonians' homes

This article concentrates on the availability of writing equipment in people's homes in Estonia before Estonia's reindependence.

Until Estonia regained independence in 1991 from the Soviet Union, after which computers gradually began taking a foothold, most people relied on pen and paper, even in organisations. Everyone (if not most people) didn't even have a typewriter.

During the Soviet era, Latin-lettered typewriters were harder to get than typewriters with Cyrillic characters, and students at universities had to submit their works in Russian (at least major works).

And all photocopiers (Xerox and like machines found only in organisations) had to be accounted for to avoid widespread dissemination of 'dangerous' information.

And then there was Samizdat (lit. 'self-publishing' or 'Self-publishing House'), wherein people would retype and carbon-copy banned literature.

One of my schoolteachers told our class, that when she studied at school/university in the 1970s, then ballpoint pens were very fancy; everyone wanted and had to have at least one, and there were even special ballpoint ink vending places, where people would queue up for refills.

Fountain pens and cheap ink pens were widespread, and these were mostly used in schools by students. Specialized simpler fountain pens were used at school to train penmanship.

Rotary-dial telephones were very widespread well into the 1990s.

Usage share of writing equipment in Soviet Estonia. This is a rough estimate with no numbers, and covers the time period of 1980s – early 1990s. (Estonia regained independence in 1991.) As it was, unauthorised copying of software was rampant.

1. Pencils. — Well, these were everywhere. KOH-I-NOOR from Hungary was the definitive trademark for a plain "HB" (aka No2) pencil. No Soviet-/Eastern Bloc-manufactured pencil ever had an eraser on it.
2. Fountain pens (primary school level);
3. Ballpoint pens;
4. Cyrillic typewriters (always cheaper);
5. Latin typewriters — because these were harder to get and more expensive. Possibly because they were mostly manufactured in East Germany (DDR). "Erika" comes to mind.
6. Electric typewriters. Organisations of certain importance and up. I remember at least two in a specialised cabinet of a children's hospital. Very few people had these at home.
7. Photocopiers. Organisations only. All had to be accounted for.
8. Home computers (often DYI, 8-bit). Not particularly cheap. Printers were not sold, AFAIK.
9. General-purpose and school computers. Only 8-bit, and only in selected (favoured) schools. Prohibitively expensive for home use. The Soviet Agat and Estonian-made Juku come to mind. ELORG (a Soviet export organisation) put a $10,000 price sticker for just one "Agat" in 1984. (Oh wait, stickers were not widespread.)
10. Even some higher institutions of education and research used 8-bit computers, such as Pravetz (Bulgaria) and Robotron (DDR), but not limited to just these. I remember typing in WordStar 3.2 on a Robotron computer at father's workplace. Dot matrix printers were certainly there.
11. Anything above 8-bit was certainly found in universities and large organisations of importance, such as ministries.

Mozillale NoScripti installimine Windows Vistas

Seesinane on siis eestikeelne kokkuvõte oma varasemast ingliskeelsest blogipostitusest. Alguses kirjutasin selle kohta ühele sõbrale, ning kuna tekst osutus siiski pikemaks, leidsin ma seejärel, et jutt vajab avaldamist.

Hiljuti ühes Windows Vistaga masinas avastasin Mozilla 1.7.13. Tegemist on siis tarkvarapaketiga, mille lehitsejamoodul on sama vana kui Firefox 1.0.8 (Aprill 2006; esitlusmootor pärineb 2004. aastast ja Mozilla enda arhitektuur 2001.-st aastast).

Et Mozilla mõnede lehekülgede JavaScripti pärast kokku ei jookseks, läks alguses palju aega, et kuidas sellele NoScript nii peale panna, et töötaks, sest umbes sama vanale Firefoxile Knoppix 4.0.2-s (2005) sai küll. Lõpuks jätsin asja katki...

Mõni kuu hiljem leidsin lahenduse (Mozilla tuli käima panna administraatori õigustega) ja siis panin peale NoScripti, aga nii, et see tuli kindlasti installida Mozilla kasutajaprofiili kataloogi.

SeaMonkey 1.1-ga sellist probleemi ei tohiks olla, sest SeaMonkey 1.1 ja Windows Vista arendus/väljalase langes umbes samale ajale, et põhimõtteliselt sai seda Vista jaoks siis veel kohendada nii, et oleks parem ühilduvus.

SeaMonkey 1.1.19 on üks viimastest vabatarkvaralistest graafilistest lehitsejatest, mis töötab Windows 98/Me peal.

Tools to uninstall extensions in Mozilla 1.7.xx and SeaMonkey 1.x.

Mnenhy

In Mozilla Application Suite and SeaMonkey 1.x, removing extensions is not as easy as it is in SeaMonkey 2.0, given that the latter uses Firefox-based infrastructure.

First off, there is Mnenhy, which has many modules and which is more geared towards expert users. The important module is the Chrome Manager, which is accessible from the Tools menu.

* For SeaMonkey 1.1.xx, I use Mnenhy 0.7.6.666 (Can't remember where I got the version with the .666 patchlevel, but this should be the one for SeaMonkey 1.1.xx);
* For Mozilla 1.7.13, I use Mnenhy 0.7.6

Mnenhy 0.7.6 is compatible with Mozilla 1.7 and SeaMonkey 1, and it can be downloaded from mnenhy.mozdev.org

Extension Uninstaller 0.2

Unlike Mnenhy, this is one is more user friendly and even has easy-to-read error logs in case something doesn't work.

Extension Uninstaller 0.2 also requires the Extension Uninstaller API, which should be installed first.

Now, the problem with getting Extension Uninstaller is that its original website with
http://mozmonkey.com/extuninstaller/ and
http://mozmonkey.com/extuninstaller_api/
URLs is offline.

The only relatively good references I found to it are in
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=365228
— where only the addons.mozilla.org extension pages are references, but these are unfortunately closed, too.

The solution is to peruse the original official URLs in the Web Archive.:

Snapshot from 2010-03-04

There, scroll down to the Install section, see the "Install For:" Mozilla link. Right-click on the link, choose "Save Link Target As..." command to save the XPI.

It's a bit more difficult With the Extension Uninstaller API .xpi, which can be separately had from archive.org.

Windows Me, Netscape 4.x

This text was written as a series of replies I posted in the YouTube comments section of a promotional introduction video of Windows Me, which can be found in the said operating system.

Since the video was not uploaded from the official source, chances are that the video and the comments to it won't be available at some point of time. So I posted them here for future reference.

And since Blogspot does not have limits on the amount of text, then I have edited the replies a bit to add text.

Windows Me was really good on something like a 667 MHz CPU and 128Mb RAM at the time. If you want to run reasonably modern software without swapping much, then you need 256 Mb of RAM (factor in [modern] web browser, IM program, OpenOffice 2.4.3).

Windows Me can run on less, of course, as it was included in computers that only had 64Mb of RAM.

At one point, Windows xp ran fine with 128 Mb RAM, but nowadays it needs 512M RAM as a real-life minimum to keep the system secure & do something productive.

These specs were for a new PC from around 2000 that was first supplied with only 64 Mb RAM. I requested it have 128 Mb, since the lesser setup was slow with multimedia of the time (it had fast Internet, so I knew it was the amount of RAM). After the RAM upgrade, using the computer was a breeze.

I also took very good care of the hard drive and the OS, keeping it updated & secure, and since its users mostly used Netscape for business, then viruses and exploits never made it there.

At that time it [the popular version of Netscape] was Netscape Communciator 4.x. I think on that PC we stuck with 4.79 for a long time (the last of 4.x was 4.8, released in 2002 :-). The 4.x branch was the first to support CSS, but that was the only feature which caused crashes when turned on (especially in 4.0x), so I kept it off on all our Netscapes, which were fairly solid after that. Despite the clunky Navigator, the best part was the e-mail client, which introduced mail filters to fight spam (then seen as controversial).

We skipped Netscape 6, never considered 7.x, and in newer PC's moved instead to Mozilla, the open-source descendant of Netscape and which Netscape 6 and 7 were based on anyway.

As Mozilla Foundation started Firefox, it ceased Mozilla development, which was taken over by others, and Mozilla Application Suite became SeaMonkey.

The last version of SeaMonkey for Windows 98/Me is 1.1.19 ([from] 2010); its Gecko rendering engine is a wee bit newer than that of Firefox 2.0 (Gecko 1.8.1.20 vs 1.8.1.24).

ZX Spectrum oli masside arvuti

Kommentaar Delfi Forte artiklile
"Koduarvutite tootjad pole suutnud ZX Spectrumi soodsat hinda juba 30 aastat üle trumbata"

Tuleb lisada, et Suurbritannias oli keskmine kuupalk 1982. aastal £780,79, nii et kui arvestada maksud ka maha, siis näiteks £600 maksnud Commodore 64 hinnaks oli sisuliselt üks [keskmine] kuupalk; tol ajal Inglismaal vägagi populaarne BBC Micro umbes kolmandik sellest kuupalgast ja ZX Spectrum maksis vaid £125.

(Samal ajal valitses Inglismaal mitte just väike majanduslangus.)

ZX Spectrumi kõige odavama variandi selline hind tähendas seda, et selle võis suurema vaevata ära osta ja paljudes kodudes oli see ka esimene arvuti. Nii et Inglismaal tõeline masside arvuti, umbes nagu USA-s Commodore C64.

BBC Micro eeliseks oli selle arvestatav laiendatavus ja vastupidavus ning see läks paljudes koolides esimeseks kooliarvutiks ja seda ei peljatud ka kodudes ära.

Kaks aastat hiljem, 1984.a., lasti välja Amstrad CPC464 koos rohelise monokroommonitoriga, mis maksis £249. (Amstrad arvuteid müüdi vaid ekraaniga samal ajal, kui teised tulid "rasedate kalkulaatoritena", mida sai ühendada teleriga). Erinevalt teistest toetas Amstrad C/PM opsüsteemi, millele oli juba arvestatav tarkvarakataloog juba olemas. Seega Amstradi diil oli nii hea, et Lääne-Euroopas kasutati seda edukalt ka ärides.

Aja jooksul alandati paljude nende masinate hindu, nii et nende kättesaadavus isegi suurenes.

Hiljem turg küllastus, peale tulid juba IBM PC-ühilduvad masinad ja 8-bitised arvutid olid põhimõtteliselt oma aja ära elanud. ZX Spectrumi teeb huvitavaks muidugi see, et sellele arvutile tehakse siiamaani tarkvara; veel 2010. aastal tuli välja umbes 90 tiitlit.

Tänapäevastest uutest tehnikavidinatest võib tõmmata paralleele näiteks Android nutitelefonidega; odavaimad sellised maksavad (uuelt) umbes kuuendiku–kaheksandiku Eesti keskmisest palgast (kui see on 900€ bruto).

Smith-Corona Personal Word Processor

For some odd reason I rather vividly remember an early 1990's ad for the Personal Word Processor in the "Smithsonian" magazine I got my hands on when alone at home; the item in that ad looked nice enough to my not quite yet post-Soviet eyes... I also remember a very nice looking businessman pretending to work on a file there.

The fun part of it nowadays is getting to enjoy the sardonic read of almost completely failed attempts to recover all that data saved to obscure Mitsumi diskettes from those machines.

A similar comment was posted here first.

Lynx: Associating filetypes with a program in Windows

After a few hours of trying and failing in lynx.cfg and searching the Internet, I found a reasonably good collection of ideas (kudos to Kenneth Kwok), which served me with inspiration for a working solution.

• The version of Lynx is 2.8.7rel1, unfortunately it doesn't support SSL (gonna work on getting Lynx with that some day...).

N., 15.09.2011. update: A fully functional and SSL-enabled, albeit an older, 2.8.5rel1, version of the browser is available at Claudio Santambrogio's (csant) website (beware that export and other restrictions may still apply to the downloader's country).

As I needed an SSL-based browser, then out of curiosity I started comparing both Lynx browsers' config files and to my great delight found that csant's external app configuration was more elegant than my previous discovery. Jump to a description of how to implement the better solution.

And yes, the options inspired by Kenneth Kwok are still valid, but there are now less scenarios to use them.

• The operating system is Windows xp SP3, other Windows operating systems may also apply, but exact instructions on how to change environment variables were gleaned from this version of Windows.

Unlike in the linked article, it turned out that I didn't need to use a .mailcap file to associate a helper app.

The interesting part is that Windows Lynx (still) requires batch files to send requests for an external application and a path to them must be set as a global or user environment variable.

• Create a folder that will hold batch files. I created one in
  

  C:\Program Files\Lynx\Batches

• Create an environment variable pointing to that path:
  
  In My Computer/System Properties > go to Advanced tab > click "Environment Variables" button > in the relevant window's "System variables" section > scroll down to Path, select it, click the Edit button;
  
  In the path editing window, the Path string is long, but you can add a semicolon to the end of the string (if it's missing), then right after the semicolon add
  
  C:\Program Files\Lynx\Batches
  
  and that's it. (No additional semicolon required.)
  
  Click OK to close the window, click OK in Environment Variables window — This will save and update the path in Windows xp (maybe 2000, too) or newer; click OK for System Properties window.
  
  You won't need to restart unless it's a Windows 9x OS, for which you'd need to edit autoexec.bat, enter a short-form path à la C:\PROGRA~1\Lynx\Batches and restart the system for changes to take effect.
  
• Now, in the C:\Program Files\Lynx\Batches folder itself, assuming you only want an image viewer program to be associated, create paint.bat, edit it as follows:

  @ECHO OFF
  C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\Mspaint.exe %1

  ^ In addition, you may wish to add %2 %3 %n — if you know that there may be more arguments passed from Lynx, but there's usually one.

  Save the batch file.
• In lynx.cfg (opened either via WordPad or Notepad2 or something that supports both CR & LF newlines), go to a certain place in the file by searching for the image/png pattern. There, you will see which MIME types you must activate for each filetype suffix.
  
  I uncommented (deleted a hash # from the start of the line) all that were web images, such as those concerning .png, .gif, .jpg and .jpeg.
• Then in lynx.cfg, go to part of the file using the VIEWER: search pattern. There, you will see a list of program commands associated with a particular MIME-type (they are short by default, because they're typically UNIX-specific).
  

  N., 15.09.2011.:
  Uncomment, or rather, copy, paste, and uncomment those for image formats, and modify the commands to look like this:
  

  VIEWER:image/gif:start mspaint %s
  VIEWER:image/png:start mspaint %s
  VIEWER:image/jpeg:start mspaint %s
  VIEWER:image/tiff:start gimp-2.6.exe %s #special case

  • The superb catch ^ is where one must use the start command to invoke a program that's located in the Windows Path environment variable.
  • mspaint is the command-line name of the Windows Paint program, which is located in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 and that address is typically set as one of the locations in the Path environment variable.
  • gimp-2.6.exe is a different case, where I separately had to include C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\bin in the Path environment variable to make it launch, as for some reason it was impossible to use the full program path in the Lynx config file.

  Uncomment, or rather, copy, paste, and uncomment those for image formats, and modify the commands to look like this:
  

  VIEWER:image/gif:paint.bat %s&:NON_XWINDOWS
  VIEWER:image/png:paint.bat %s&:NON_XWINDOWS
  VIEWER:image/tiff:gimp.bat %s&:NON_XWINDOWS
  VIEWER:image/jpeg:paint.bat %s&:NON_XWINDOWS

  • Up here ^, add paint.bat right after a colon that follows the mimetype;
  • %s is the wildcard for the filename to be entered;
  • The ampersand & is there to leave the program in the background. It can be there in Windows, but it's useful in Unix-like systems.
  • :NON_XWINDOWS [sic] basically specifies that the targetted application is not an X Window System program and this option can be there, too. In Windows it may mean that the batch program is not exactly a graphical program either.

• Save the configuration file and I think you should be done.
  Launch Lynx, go to a page with an image file, then on it, press Enter/Return or the left key to activate.

Similar steps can be made for other filetypes and MIME-types (which can be added, btw, since the list in lynx.cfg is non-exhaustive) and you can add programs different than Paint for other filetypes. Above, I have setup a batch file to run The GIMP for the TIFF filetype.

What's left of sidebars for Netscape

Ed Mullen has a great page on Netscape and Mozilla tips and even a page that includes installable links to sidebars that can still be added to SeaMonkey 1.1.xx, a successor to Netscape 7/8 and Mozilla Application Suite.

Unfortunately, some of the sidebars are now outdated, half-work, redirect, cannot be found anymore or are completely offline.

Below is a selection of sidebars I found to be interesting to check them out.

Sidebars that still work:

• The Google sidebar works! Yay!
• The Real.com Guide sidebar only offers search for audio, video, and radio stations (no actual Guide to speak of).

...That are outdated:

The CNN Expanded Sidebar is still live, but stopped having updates since two years ago on March 2, 2009: The Dow Jones index dropped below 7000 on that day, because AIG had a record loss, tech gadgets had become a luxury, and "Twilight" stars were huge.

The links to news sites don't work, because they use a redirect via info.netscape.com (which now redirects to netscape.aol.com ).

In terms of context, the "Last updated" text in the sidebar is inaccurate, because it's most likely a script. That sidebar page is now a virtual time capsule of World news.

Netscape Sidebars

...that redirect:

• Netscape WebCenter Travel (webcenter.travel.netscape.com) — Ah, well, this at least redirects to travel.aol.com, but that's it. At least it's topical.
• Netscape Celebrities (celebrities.netscape.com) — redirects within the sidebar to netscape.aol.com.
• Netscape TV Listings (tv.netscape.com) — redirects in-sidebar to netscape.aol.com.

...that don't work anymore:

(in descending order of importance)

• Netscape Time Zone Converter (cgi.netscape.com) — "Not found" — Ed Mullen's screenshot of it is now a historical artifact;
• Netscape Netbusiness — because netbusiness.netscape.com is completely offline (no 404 page, even);
• Netscape Netbusiness Industry Headlines (netbusiness.netscape.com) — domain is offline;
• Netscape Netbusiness Search (netbusiness.netscape.com) — offline;
• Netscape DevEdge (developer.netscape.com): "This tab is not available right now." — Taken offline since about 11.10.2004 and then moved to devedge-temp.mozilla.org/index_en.html
   
• Netscape Home Improvement (homeimprovement.netscape.com) — "Not Found";
• Netscape Home Improvement House and Home (homeimprovement.netscape.com) — "Not Found";
• Netscape Lifestyles Pet tools (lifestyles.netscape.com) — "Not Found".
   
• American Greetings (lifestyles.netscape.com) — "Not Found"

• The OS/2 sidebar does not work either, because os2.org cannot be reached.

Speaking of which — OS/2 has officially outlived Windows 9x, because according to screenshots, Mozilla Firefox 3.5.4 works in it. OS/2 can also run OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 and OS/2 now lives on as eComStation, where Firefox 3.6 and 4.0 (beta) can also be run.

eComStation is capable of running OpenOffice.org 3.2, VLC Media Player 1.1.4, and CUPS, a free software printer framework (modern printer support).

While Windows 9x only supports Mozilla Firefox 2.0, OpenOffice.org 2.4, and has ageing support for printers (I admit as much that some printers useless with CUPS are supported in Windows 9x)...