Files

In this section, the configuration file and the application files of w3browse are presented. The files that are used by other components of the application are mentioned in the documentation of those components.

Configuration File

All settings that have been made within w3browse can be saved on demand to the file w3browse.rdf, which is located in the home directory of the current user. This file is an RDF/XML file and may be modified with any text editor. The configuration file is read on startup of the application if it exists. In case the file cannot be created or written to, the (modified) settings of w3browse cannot be remembered (obviously). Note that this file may contain sensitive information, so it is recommended to protect it appropriately.

Application Files

In the following, the files that are included in the distribution of w3browse are described briefly, separate for each platform. All files are located within the installation directory and are never modified by the application, so it is save to put them on a read-only filesystem.

UNIX/Linux

w3browse
The main executable of w3browse.
gethost
A helper program for resolving DNS hostnames into IP addresses, multiple instances up to a certain limit (currently 4) may be active at the same time.
w3browse-tty
A wrapper script for running w3browse on a tty, it is used to set up the terminal environment before starting w3browse and to reset it afterwards.
termxsrv
The GUI display driver, one instance is started for each GUI window of w3browse.
fonts/
A directory that contains some BDF fonts for use with the X Window System.
w3browse.rdf
A partial configuration file that predefines some Unicode system fonts in addition to the supplied fonts and that sets the initial font to one of them. Furthermore, the file also contains the definition of some external programs in order to be able to display certain types of documents, e.g. PDF, PS and many types of images. This file is automatically read first if it exists, before any user-specific configuration file.

MS-Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP

w3browse.exe
The main executable of w3browse, it contains also the GUI display driver and the fonts.
gethost.exe
A helper program for resolving DNS hostnames into IP addresses, multiple instances up to a certain limit (currently 4) may be active at the same time.
gzip.exe
A utility program for decompressing gzip-encoded content. It is based on gzip-1.2.4 with a small patch applied just in order to compile it for the target platform. This program is licensed under the GPL, see also the files gzip.txt, gzip.dif and gpl.txt of the distribution for further information.

MS-Windows CE (Pocket PC)

w3browse.exe
The main executable of w3browse, it contains also the GUI display driver and the gethost helper.

This platform imposes certain severe restrictions for no apparent reason, although the hardware by itself is rather powerful. The important missing features are given in the following list:

Because of this, the (now useless) utility programs gethost.exe and gzip.exe are not included in the distribution. The functionality of gethost.exe has been incorporated into w3browse, but with the restriction that only one DNS lookup can be performed at the same time. For the rest, no replacement is currently implemented with the result that the affected features are unfortunately not available!