Clarence Verge ( )
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The early skinny on Arachne scripting.

This is probably a bit premature because there will be further work done in this area, but it can't hurt to become familiar with the existing scripting capabilities of Arachne so we can try to help development. If no one uses scripting, there won't be any wish list or bug reports.

An Arachne script file has an ASF extension. It is simply a list of URLs that will be visited in sequence, as rapidly as possible. Put that way, it seems pretty useless, doesn't it ? That isn't the case, because of what Arachne accepts as a URL. We naturally think first of web locations, but you can call local files such as Arachne pages, images, sound or video files, Arachne .DGIs, DOS .bats via .OOKs and .EEKs, Arachne protocols like dialer and hangup, reload and exit, and even another .ASF as long as it is the last line in the current ASF. The primary limitation with current scripting is its inability to make decisions and branch.

Your programmable hotkeys can be used to call .ASFs. You could have shiftFn programmed to call an ASF that temporarily changes your configuration to get or send mail via a different ISP or with a different email address and then restores your setup to normal. Michael suggested to me that that would be a better way to handle mail than some of the methods I proposed in earlier columns, but I had been focussing on automatic operation driven by DOS and time which made the methods described both useful and valid.

For an example of scripting, select ASF_HELP.asf in your main Arachne dir. For a list of SOME of the possible Arachne protocols that you might use in your script, view AEXTHTML.txt. This is just a starting point as some of these protocols do not work yet when used in an ASF, and there are many unlisted ones that do work.

Non-web protocols tested as working in ASFs:
file://mem.dgi
file://examples\\welcome.wav
about:
arachne:dialpage
arachne:dialer
pop3:
smtp:
arachne:hangup
arachne:history
arachne:restart
arachne:addressbook
arachne:exit
arachne:exit?errorlevel

Protocols tested as NOT yet working in ASFs:
arachne:back
arachne:reload
arachne:again
arachne:save
arachne:internal-htmledit
arachne:internal-editor
arachne:internal-config
arachne:internal-mail
arachne:fullscreen
arachne:kill-cache
arachne:kill-html

Protocols not tested:
arachne:ftp-send
arachne:ftp-upload

To test a URL or protocol for viability in a .ASF, type it into the the URL window and hit ENTER. It has been discovered that the result in a script will be the same as the result of this test. Note: Do not put blank lines in your script.

I use a script to help reduce the waste of online time caused by my forgetting to hangup before reading mail. Arachne.cfg has a variable: AfterPOP3. If this is simply set to arachne:hangup, Arachne will display an error screen after the hangup when it tries to load the inbox because it is no longer online. Instead, I set AfterPOP3 file://donemail.asf.

DONEMAIL.ASF:
arachne:hangup
reload:file://inbox.dgi

Disturbing News
Heard on local college radio: A technical commentator reports that a certain software package known as "W2000" is more stable and secure than DOS, an OS the company is now trying to hide. I tuned in late, so I didn't catch what planet he was vacationing from.
Have FUN 8-)