Some Notes on Using HTML on OS/2 with Demon

This page is now about two years out of date, but I have left it up in the hope that it may still be of use.

There are distinct advantages to using OS/2 for both viewing and authoring HTML on PCs, and a few disadvantages.

In general most authoring tools, and a few browsers, which are designed for the Microsoft Windows environment can be used with OS/2, as can many popular painting and drawing packages. The "Winsock" mechanism exists in OS/2 versions 3 (Warp) and 4(Merlin).

It is also useful to note that most of the troubleshooting tools, such as NETSTAT and PING have been ported from BSD unix to OS/2 in such a way that the unix command structures have been preserved. It is therefore very easy to identify the causes of a faulty connection in OS/2.

There are two main browsers available for OS/2. Web Explorer is available from IBM and is currently at revision 1.03. While its facilities are very limited, it is well integrated with the desktop. It is, for example, possible to create desktop objects for particular URLS, which can then be placed in folders in order to create subject specific hotlists. Netscape for OS/2 is currently at revision 2.02 and is fully frames compatible. Web Explorer can be obtained from the gopher site by using the "Retrieve Software Updates" tool. Netscape can be retreived from

Web Explorer can be run satisfactorily in an 8Mb system, Netscape really needs 16Mb. It will run in 8Mb, but causes the swap system to thrash badly, leading to very slow downloads. When using 16 colour displays to view photographs the colour mapping algorithm in Web Explorer is vastly superior to that in Netscape.

There are a number of authoring tools available, although I have to confess to preferring a straight text editor. Two shareware tools are particularly useful. John Blumel's WebWriter/2, currently at version 1.1, is a text editor which is aware of HTML and has a number of built-in tools, including a menu option which inserts a complete skeleton document. MicroVision's WebExpress is a WYSIWYG tool, which is in fact a MS Windows program. It runs satisfactorily under OS/2 and lets you see your page as it will appear while you type.

If you choose not to use an authoring tool, then a perfectly satisfactory result can be obtained in the following way.

1. Create a folder to represent your webspace.
2. Use EPM (the enhanced editor) to create index.htm or index.html. Use the .htm extension if you are using FAT and .html if you are using HPFS.
3. Start Netscape.
4. Select Open File in Netscape and load your index.htm, then bookmark it.
5. Edit your index.htm and press F2. Don't close the editor.
6. Netscape will notice that the file has changed (when you saved it with F2) and reload it.

You can now continue editing until you have constructed your home page. Place images, preferably in .gif format in the same folder, and add links to them in the form <img src="wombat.gif">. You can now repeat the process for more .htm files, and progressively build up your site in the folder. You can traverse the site by clicking on links in Netscape, and edit any number of pages imultaneously in different EPM windows.

There are a number of tools which are available to help you add images. The ones I find most useful are listed below.

Corel Draw 3 - Commercial, about twenty five pounds. This is probably the best drawing program I have ever owned, on any platform. It includes drawing, paint, trace, screen capture and thumbnailing programs, and a massive clipart library, which is amazing value for money.

PM Draw - A simple CAD program by Alan Warren of IBM, free from several FTP sites. The location maps on my site were drawn with this utility. It also permits tracing from a scanned image.

GBM - General bitmap module. IBM EWS, effectively free. I took my copy off an IBM CD rom, although I believe it is now available for FTP. This permits translation between lots of bitmap formats and also constructs transparent GIFs. It has a very clever feature which allows it to select the first colour in the map as transparent, so if you draw a graphic, and contrive that the top left pixel should be transparent, GBM will automagically do the rest for you.

Before uploading there are some things that you must check, on pain of pain when your site doesn't work. Firstly you must be aware of the differences between the way the OS/2 filing system, and the unix filing system, work. This is because the WWW servers all run unix, as do most of the backbone systems of the net.

Unix essentially allows long file names which are case sensitive, so RABBIT.TXT rabbit.txt Rabbit.TXT and RabbiT.txt could all exist in the same directory, and be four different files.

OS/2 permits you to use two different filing systems, its own HPFS and, for backwards compatibility, the old Microsoft DOS system. Whichever system is used it then allows extended attributes to be attached to any file, one of these attributes is ".LONGNAME", which is the file name as seen on the desktop. This does not need to be, and often isn't, the name seen by the shell, which is unfortunately the name seen by the FTP client that uploads your site to demon. OS/2 enforces a rule that two files which differ only in case are the same file, but does not seem to prevent two files having the same .LONGNAME attribute. HPFS permits names in mixed case up to 254 characters, and so files with long names on HPFS disks will upload to demon with the same name, although it may be forced into lower case. File names which contain embedded spaces are permitted, but are also more trouble than they are worth.

The practical result of all this is that if you create a file called index.html on a FAT disk, then the desktop will show it as .html, but the underlying file will be called index.htm, with an extended attribute to tell the desktop to display the long version. Your file will then mysteriously rename itself from .html to .htm when you upload, leaving you wondering where your links went. You can always see what has happened by opening the "details view" of your folder, and comparing the "title" and "real name" columns. Remember "title" is what you see on the desktop, and "real name" is what is going to be sent to the demon server.

You should also be aware that some client programs smash case when uploading, and so file names are likely to be forced into all lower case when uploaded. The best thing to do is let the system have its own way, and create all your files with the names entirely in lower case. However you must also check that all your links are in lower case. If you have any capitals in the links, then the links will work correctly on the OS/2 system, and explode on the unix server.

There are two programs which are useful for uploading, the BSD compatible FTP, and the more visual FTPPM. FTP makes use of a NETRC file, if one exists, to obtain its initial commands when connecting to a particular machine. You can in fact perform your entire upload with a suitable netrc script. The file should be called \tcpip\etc\netrc, and a typical set of commands is shown below.

  machine homepages.demon.co.uk login  password  macdef init
  prompt
  binary
  hash
  lcd d:\\data\\documents\\webspace
  mput *.gif
  ascii
  mput *.htm
  quit

This will send all the .gif files in binary, then switch to ASCII and send all the .htm files. To use FTPPM with homepages, make a desktop object, either from the FTP template, or by copying the FTPPM object, and make settings as follows.

       Hostname: homepages.demon.co.uk
           User: 
       Password: 
      Code Page: None

  Directories
          Local: 
         Remote:

  File Mask
          Local: *
         Remote: .

  Transfer Type: Binary
          Flags: All unset

You can then double click on this object when online, and your local directory will appear in the top split, and the directory on the server in the bottom. You can now drag and drop files between the windows in either direction, or use the menu options. Note that transferring an ASCII file in binary will, in general work, although the file may be difficult to edit afterwards, transferring a binary file in ASCII will generally smash it.

unclebob@tnglwood.demon.co.uk 20th Feb 1997
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