Dillo browser quick-start

[PDP-8]

Just some hints and tips about Dillo, especially for minimalist users running mostly flwm/fltk ..  consider these pointers and I'm NOT a teacher.

Ok, sure - I have a major browser for online interactivity.  However Dillo still has a unique charm to it that is fit for a number of purposes.  I'd like to thank the original dev, Jorge and his team, along with all the TC'ers that have submitted tcz's and kept it as up to date as possible.  True kudos to all.

But it looks so tiny!
Well if you are using a high-resolution screen of say something like 1920x1080, and using the default fltk/flwm environment, yeah, that's going to happen.  Especially since Dillo is integrated into that environment.   The solution is to reduce your screen res to keep things larger and nice and sharp - especially fonts.

Rather than just going random with resolution changes, or making fonts grossly huge to compensate, consider doing this:

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,25284.0.html

Ah, that's better!  Without being a full Dillo tutorial, here's a couple of essentials:

Install the latest dillo-beta.tcz.  It will pull in a few dependencies.

The main config file for it lives here, but you'll want to move it to a place you can better change it and futz with it:

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cp /usr/local/etc/dillo/dillorc  /home/tc/.dillo/
So most config files are hidden files, but this one in TC isn't.  Don't let it bend your mind that the home directory for it is hidden (.dillo) and the actual config file isn't.   Elsewhere you may see references to .dillorc, but here we do it in a logical manner.

Ok, I fired it up, but I don't see the true-type DejaVu fonts that the tcz pulled in!

Simply install the full-version FLTK-FULL.TCZ which supports ttf.  It will also tend to put a bolder bit of a strike on your other tool fonts too.  Nice.

Ok, better, but the fonts still aren't the size I like!
Go back to your dillorc file.
Look for the SCALE line.  Change it to something you prefer and test:
#font_factor=1.5

Change it to usually anywhere between 1 and 2.  1.1, 1.2, 1.3 etc etc. Don't forget to remove the leading hash comment character

Code: [Select]

font_factor=1.2is good enough for me.

So without getting totally into a Dillo tutorial, if you get hung up on a search, one way to do it with duckduckgo is this url:

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html.duckduckgo.com/html/
Yes, that is a leading html.  Provided as a tip if one is not used to enabling / disabling remote css and all the other options.

So what's the deal with the "beta" ?
Don't be fooled, it is actually the current stable 3.1 version, but it has not been released officially as such.  It is even recommended by Jorge the main dev as the one to use!

Whaaat?  Over the years, it appears that Jorge has to attend to real-life (tm) issues and years may go by.  It happens.  Maybe working on Dillo is like being a band that is only allowed to play a single song after all these years.  Who knows, and I don't want to conjecture about it.

So that's it.  Dillo rocks for a lot of things, but yeah you're not likely to be doing your banking with it.  Doesn't mean it is bad - it's just that the web and sites are on an endless progression of what many would say are anti-features and marketing pressures, yada yada.

There's more fun to be had by delving into it all, but this is just pointers to help anyone get to a more usable oob state with it.

[Rich]

Hi PDP-8

... So most config files are hidden files, but this one in TC isn't.  Don't let it bend your mind that the home directory for it is hidden (.dillo) and the actual config file isn't. ...

Config files in your home directory are typically hidden. Probably because it's common to do a directory listing of your
home directory and you don't need a bunch of config files cluttering it up.

There are other directories where you want them visible by default:
The files under  ~/.config/  are not hidden.
The files under  /usr/local/etc/  are not hidden.
The files under  /etc/  are not hidden. Exception,  /etc/skel/  is a template for new home directories.

[PDP-8]

Excellent!  That is going into the TC notebook.

Check this out - re duckduckgo searches and Dillo.  A minor modification one might want to do to the search paramaters in the dillorc file works really fine:

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search_url="dd DuckDuckGo (https) https://duckduckgo.com/lite/?kp=-1&kd=-1&q=%s"
The nice little fix was to manually add  &kd=-1 to make it play nice with them.

I didn't come up with this myself.  I sent my research grok bots into action to find it.

P.S. to Dillo newbs and this forum - if you make a post, and don't see it immediately like you would in another browser, just hit your Reload icon.

[nick65go]

Tip: If you use dillo often, then maybe re-build it as my-dillo.tcz, instead of bloating your mydata.gz with user-customized settings. I did it for myself, to have also some/few things like permanent bookmarks. Today storage space is pseudo-unlimited (USB/HDD) so you can keep different tcz for the same appl (dillo) in case you want to update from TC repository and not lose your precious home-made tcz.

[PDP-8]

Thanks Nick!  I just might do that, although I'm no dev, more of a "make defconfig && make" kind of user.  Toss in a make menuconfig, and I get into
trouble not truly knowing what is important and how the options all relate to each other.  But I'll look into it.

Btw, more Dillo fun.  For this TC forum one of the setting in the Dillo TOOLS options seem to work best.  Don't activate "Use embedded CSS"

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[X] Use remote CSS
[  ] Use embedded CSS
[X] Load images
[X] Load background images

[nick65go]

PDP-8, I am not a developer also. I wanted to say you could unsquash original tcz, and then squash the modified appl in a new tcz. Just that. IMHO, by re-compiling dillo you will not gain execution speed, neither size shrinked. Maybe few dependency (if ever) because less image format supported, etc.

But then we have already lynx, elinks etc. I really wander how much speed/ size does someone to squeeze from dillo, and why (what REAL device is used on, because for qemu/ VM it does not matter).

PS: maybe for another topic to be opened, what CPU (486/586/686+) and what RAM (32/ 64/ 128/ 512 KB / 1MB+) the CURRENT tc users VOTE for? I mean what they USE today. Lets see the 486 compatibility in action in year 2022 for tc forum users. Do you believe that there are only few (vocal) users, and the rest are silent tc grabbers?

[PDP-8]

Not understanding the whole ethos of what TC/picore is, a *core* to make the most out of the resources available, and the extreme flexibility that differentiates it from other distros is part of the problem for drive-by distro-hoppers.  The hardware used depends on what the end-game need is. 

If you were raised in a culture of consumption, then your only task is to see how fast TC can get to a big browser or other form of media consumption and gawk at it like those zombies in the 1984 Apple commercial.

But grandpa here came from another era - where something like TC today would be simply unobtainium unless you were at university or a major corporation.  Or had $50K or more to spend on a workstation.

And if something didn't work, you figured it out, and ideally shared that fix with others.

For example of the old-school way:  If I had a classroom full of students, I'd hand them just the bootable CORE, with no online access at all, and ask them to show me what they could do with it sitting there with nothing but the $ shell prompt.

"But I don't know VI editor"

"Ok, let's start off with a herefile just so you can get started"

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cat > myfirstfile << EOF
Um, so do I just type here?  I guess it's working...
Better type slowly, since I cant do much more than backspace or kill a whole line.

So what does cat mean?  What the heck is standard input and output?
If everything is a file, does that mean the keyboard and screen is a file too?
OHHH, so kinda virtualized.

Ah, so cat concatenates two or more file.  I see, I can make a file using nothing
but cat, rather than trying to cat actual files on the disk because to unix
the keyboard is a file which gets characters slowly from ME, and instead of
writing it out to the virtual "screen file", it will now be written to disk as
myfirstfile.

But how do I stop, I don't want to keep typing forever.  AH, its that eof thing.
got it.  On a line by itself.  Lets try it!

EOF
Ah, young paduan, it's the ultimate game.  And this worked since about 1970, so now you've learned something that will last 50 years or more.  You don't get that from gawking at multimedia.  Instead, you just picked up a skill to be a creator, and not a consumer.  Tinycore merely adds features beyond the usual "scatter disk" installation that has been around forever.

So yeah, I'm the wrong guy to ask.