Since Dorian has been doing a splendid job of work on developing K-MeleonSM 1.0, I thought it might be worthwhile to open a topic on what things folk might deem essential to have in version 1.0, in addition to what Dorian has already done and fixing obvious bugs. I hope this might help Dorian by bringing ideas together in one place, as at the moment they seem to be spread throughout various topics and forums. This should not be a wishlist!

(I've put this topic in the General forum because I think it's important that ordinary users get the chance to state their priorities and not just developers and advanced users.)

For starters, my essentials are:
1) To add a -profile path command line option, specifying an absolute or relative (to the K-M folder) path to a particular profile.
2) To incorporate the Mimetypes Editor as standard. (I've added it to SM 1.0b5 following guenter's instructions and it seems to work reasonably well.)

To make it Unicode (and if not possible to make a very very big Umlauts macro to support anything)

For Christ sake, enough with macros already.
Im sick and tired to check every line of "very very big Umlauts macro" looking for viruses.
Just basic macro for proxies and searches and thatzit.
For bell and whistles separate macro for separate download,
Its time to recognize that not all are the same and give ppl a choice.

Well I can't see why you're so contrary to enhancing the different languages compatibility (I suppose your speak english, but here are people from all over the World). I was only asking for Unicode and if not possible to enhance the Umlauts macro to be compatible with at least russian / cirilic and asian characters.

The first basic Umlauts was like this:

$word=gsub("ä","%C3%A4",$word); $word=gsub("ö","%C3%B6",$word); $word=gsub("ü","%C3%BC",$word); $word=gsub("ß","%C3%9F",$word); $word=gsub("Ä","%C3%84",$word); $word=gsub("Ö","%C3%96",$word); $word=gsub("Ü","%C3%9C",$word);

The following was added (and is on the last official) to support french and german umlauts and accents and the spanish ñ:

$word=gsub("À","%C3%80",$word); $word=gsub("Â","%C3%82",$word);
$word=gsub("à","%C3%A0",$word); $word=gsub("â","%C3%A2",$word);
$word=gsub("ç","%C3%A7",$word); $word=gsub("è","%C3%A8",$word);
$word=gsub("Ë","%C3%8B",$word); $word=gsub("ê","%C3%AA",$word);
$word=gsub("é","%C3%A9",$word); $word=gsub("ë","%C3%AB",$word);
$word=gsub("É","%C3%89",$word); $word=gsub("È","%C3%88",$word);
$word=gsub("Ï","%C3%8F",$word); $word=gsub("ï","%C3%AF",$word);
$word=gsub("î","%C3%AE",$word); $word=gsub("ñ","%C3%B1",$word);
$word=gsub("ô","%C3%B4",$word); $word=gsub("û","%C3%BB",$word);
$word=gsub("ù","%C3%B9",$word); $word=gsub("Ù","%C3%99",$word);

I don't see it too terrible to add a few more lines to add a few more millions of potential users.

About the viruses, I'm not a virus expert at all but I have never seen a virus inserted in to macros.cfg, and even if possible, it would be most probably auto inserted at the very bottom of the file and not precisely on the Umlauts macro (Are you also against the translation macro because it's too big and makes you loose time searching for viruses?).

I've never searched specifically for viruses there but I have, as almost everybody nowadays, a secure antivirus running always and the last virus which managed to get inside my computer was the infamous "Barrotes" which infected my old 386SX 25 Mhz in 1989.

So I'm not going to check manually every file on my windows folder because I have a life out there :-)

I'm running a Pentium III 933, so I'm really interested on not overloading K-Meleon with unneeded features (I oposed to the inclussion of the Java button for the last release, but better informed people than me told me it was not going to slow it at all, and I believe them). This was the main reason for me to leave Firefox: the unneeded features which turned its speed down.

You say:

"Its time to recognize that not all are the same and give ppl a choice."

Well, why not to give this choice to the people which uses other alphabets?

PS. I have never tried it but I've heard that there's a build called K-Meleon Ninja which is very basic, you may like it.

Unicode!


p. s. i need much of the full iso 8859-1 : or Unicode! plus maybe an Umlauts macro?
good: Central Euopean = iso 8851-1 = accents = French: alain, Christofe, Dorian ...
not only es: Enaitz ...& maty - or de: Fred, kko ... me : )

Best for all = Unicode = mark 307 - Hao... also - Ulf (if he ever comes back to k-m)

Unicode support=all world.
// the rest? what Dorian did is IMHO sufficiant for 1.0
My Opinion = debug, translate and issue!

btw:. sorry Al : ) no matter whether You are sick or no!
k-m needs unicode plus (if needed) big macros for non English languages!

else: no support for... maybe results possibly = in no support from...
IMHO the storm can bend down a single grass halm - even the big English one.
So it is essential to leave out none!

Stability and speed.
Of course these are things you would expect to already know, but it's just a reminder. Thank you for your wonderful work, Dorian. I use your build or one of Hao's builds (based on yours) every day that I access the web from my computer, which is pretty much everyday. It is an essential part of my daily browsing routine and I'm glad to have such a nice browser to help me out.

Brian

@Enaitz Jar
Role of Umlauts macro is to escape URI that is defined in RFC 3986 and older RFC 2396, 1630 (much more?). This defines allowed charactors. Umlauts macro uses disallowing approach, not allowing. It approach isn't efficient. I see terrible to add a hundreds of lines to Umlauts macro.

If I wrote correctly, Jconv plugin and search.lua is based upon RFC, and they can process non ascii charactors like russian and asian.

@guenter
I think unicode isn't best solution. Someone is using still Win9X that don't support unicode. K-Meleon is best browser for them.

And we can customize for localization. I want to keep default macro in simple.
# Perhaps k-meleon needs macro preprocessor to combile macro snippets.

Thanks.

I don't know what the solution could be for the non standard languages support.

Now that I think it's true that people keeps using W98, and that these people needs light weight and non RAM and CPU hungry browsers, and K-Meleon is an obvious choice for them.

Maybe two versions?

About the stability, there's an old bug related to using zillions of layers at the same time and trying to open one before it's loaded (or something like this) which makes the browser crash and dissapear from the screen.

I think this is a major stability issue.

as far as i understood there is a dll for 95+ dos based wins.
maybe that could be activated?

- else: if unicode is not needed? - debug & issue.

then start work for 1.0.1with added features.


p. s. when i found and downloaded the unicode for old win dll - I also did find a docu written from an ex-member of our forum - Fast Jan; maybe we can ask him about it?

"Add bookmark here" on every sub-menu as in Opera.

I have heard about unicows.dll. It's great if unicode version of k-meleon with the dll works fine on old Windows.

yes mark - that was my wish - Dorian has one code base less and we all go together.
else we stay without unicode - but together. thx for Your attention & answer

@ Geo - cali-nichta (my de spelling ; ):
did You have a look at the macros & menus.

macros(FileBook, Add/Edit) does somthing similar and can be added to submenus
with editor.

also:
macros(FileFav, Add/Explore)
macros(FileHot, Add/Edit)

can be added to submenus where ever You want.
For more we have to ask Dorian. I am not sure what Opera has?

p. s. will You create Greek version/translation ; )

Mark.
I wish you wouldnt mentioned unicows, but it is too late now.
You give Dorian excuse to push unicode, and because of you, hundreds of millions win98 users will be screwed.
Winamp and emule use unicows to cover their poor programming and use of VB, to keep win98 user base. If Dorian start using unicows, those on slow machines are dead.

no Al - looks like Dorian postponed it - just so that we can all stay together?

( You were away ? guess for work ? ( in the Bush - Outback? ) - just 2 update You! )

p. s. My thinking: looks like Dorian wants us to stay together &/ but it
would be easiert 4 him to drop 95/98/ME.

Dorian did not drop older Win OS like the Rich Man in Saettle-& like like others did!

Sorry - I merely suggested that we do unicode - ifffff we can do
without loss of friends - get me ?

regards

Yes, If Unicode support will make us loose all W98 users we better keep where we are.

PS. What happened yesterday to the forums?

@Enaitz - Nobody wants it if we abandon our friends for it - as stated Dorian could be very far if he left out legacy systems - but he did not. He is not the Seattle man : )

p. s. spam as usual.

8-|

Do you mean that all the K-Meleon web was turned down the full day just because of the spam? I hope I have got you wrong.

How can this be possible?

no problem from here = DE - rift in the net or ES was down ?

there was not much spam - i think jsnj or everling cleared all : )

Yes they should have cleaned it because I was unable to reach the forums (but the rest of the Internet was OK for me, how strange).

As far as legacy goes, WinXP users are going to be 'hung out to dry' as soon as Vista is released. If you look at Vista's system requirements (do a web search), you'll know what I'm talking about. Hardware manufacturers love a new OS. RAM prices alone are expected to skyrocket. So Win95/98/ME users, the XP users will 'feel your pain'!

Well I think my Pentium III will not intimate too much with this new Vista OS. I hope that Microsoft will not stop supporting XP and releasing patches and Service Packs too early.

I'm staying with XP until I can get a free (or pirated ;-) ) copy of Windows Vista Ultimate and at least 256 MB more of RAM.

Brian

I've 512 Mb of RDRAM PC800 ECC and one of the IMHO best Pentiums III ever made (Dell Dimension XPS B933 Mhz) with a Radeon 9000 Pro 128.

I've played the impressive Mafia videogame smoothly on this PC.

I will not probably be able to run Windows Vista on it

Why should I want to run Vista on it? Specially when installing it will made everything run slower. I remember installing WXP on my old Pentium II. It worked, but worked so slow that I formatted the hard disk and went back to W98 SE which I love (even after stopping using it). W98 made us forget forever the horrible W95 and it's registry problems, I also remember uninstalling W95 and going back to MS Dosshell 6'22 (which I keep using to play Monkey Island) saying I was never ever going to install any Windows :-)

I will install Vista when I have a very good computer which guarantee not a single slowdown, or when I've no other choice (because for example K-Meleon or MAME will stop working on XP).

PS. Has anybody tryed K-Meleon on Vista?

PS. Has anybody tryed K-Meleon on Vista?

Worked fine on December's CTP.

Good!

K-Meleon was firsstly intended to work on old systems but ... well, even Vista will be old someday :-)

@gufi - sure and we will hopefully all go reactos soon ; )

so far Dorian took care that all win 32 woks.
only bill gates throws away ppl that payed after 5 years : )

UNICODE
----------------

Unicode would use unicows (or better, opencow if possible). It would make k-meleon faster on NT and safer on W9x.

It need a new plugin interface in UTF8 or UTF16 (not sure what is better, utf16 probably).

The code is full of lame copy&paste (mainly plugins) which make it very annoying to upgrade to unicode.

I added some unicode support to the macro plugin, because part of it are annoying, especially the use of the clipboard where unicode characters are lost.

For those who want to test it.
http://boisso.free.fr/kmeleon/macrospb6.zip

The changes are
- Work internally in UTF8
- Use unicode API on NT OS
- A new function: escape()

Because of other changes, it need a new k-meleon build which is included.

UTF8 may create problems with string manipulations. Currently the cfg file is still encoded in ANSI and converted when parsed.

PROFILE
----------------------------------

For the installer, I was wondering if I should ask for the profiles location when installing or just add an option to add or not the profile.ini file. Asking for the profiles location is, of course, a lot more complex to do ...

Adding a -profile option would need for k-meleon to have a build-in simple profile manager like kprofile. -profilesDir used with kprofile can almost do the same.

@Dorian
Would you happen to have added these improvements to a tabbed version yet? When I try to use the new macros plugin with the tabbed version from January 29th, K-MeleonSM spits out an error about not being able to open macros.cfg... and it has a few odd letters mixed in as well. Do I need to apply the unicode patch to the tabbed version from January 29th in order to make it work with the new plugin?
I am on Windows XP Home Edition SP2, just so you know.

Brian

@Dorian

Yes, I take your point when you say that -profilesDir used with kprofile.dll can almost do the same as a -profile option. (I assume that the -profilesDir path would always override the path specified in profile.ini.)

At install time, I think we could ask the user:

Do you want a) a static (hard drive) installation or b) a portable installation?

If a) then ask:
Do you want to use multiple profiles or just a single one?
Do you want to store the profile(s) within the program folder or AppData?

If b) then single profile and storage within the program folder are automatic.

If you have sensible defaults for the profile locations eg Profiles\ then I can't see much to be gained by asking for the explicit profiles location at installation time.

In any case, I think profile.ini and kprofile.dll should be supplied as standard, and maybe automatically renamed by the installer to something like profile.ink and kprofile.dlk if they are not needed? (profiles.dll could also be renamed to profile.ink if it is not needed.)

I hope this makes sense!

Sorry for typos at end of last post, should read:
... (profile.dll could also be renamed to profile.dlk if it is not needed.)