[debian-user] Browser Question -- Not urgent --respond if you have time
I am trying to pin down a general kind of problem occuring with a number
of applications on both Windozzzz and Linux. This is not urgent so look
at this problem if you have time or interest.
I am having a problem with a number of capture type applications one of
which is a Firefox add-on. But this is just one application I use as an
example as it looks to me like the same or similar kind of problem is
occurring to several applications running on several machines and I have
even experiences this same or similar kind of problem on both Windozzzz
as well as Linux OS platforms.
Here goes -- remember my firefox add-on which is a capture type
application is just an example. I think I might better understand the
source of the problem if I knew better the browser protocol when
responding to a URL and the RSS protocol. One (of several) applications
I am having a problem with is called scrapbook but my question is more
general. I am trying to figure out if the problem is the result of my
limited bandwidth (dial up) because the process failure behavior closely
resembles a failed browser completion or download completion while
downloading or capturing a web page or other file and the fetch often
process just hangs part way through the process. I note that with a
browser there is the reload or equivalent operation which restarts the
browser. With my dial up ISP connection it is very common for me to
have to reload -- often several times over when the Internet traffic is
slow and some servers are also slow and the web page is large. So this
has got me thinking that my problem with the scrapbook (and other
capture type) application might be closely related to my problem with
browsers and I would like to understand that fetching process better.
For example the he scrapbook web page capture application puts out
little messages like, connecting, loading, transfer of data, and since
it is a web page capturing application it indcates capture of the web
page into a file. My question is more about the connecting, loading and
transfer of data which are probably the same kind of operations and
protocol that a browser uses. What exactly is the difference between
loading and transfer of data? I think loading involves the file names
and/or sections within the web page and transfer of data involves the
data in those files -- for example, the CSS file or the use of
Javascript or tables, etc. But this is just an educated guess based on
building web pages and I wanted to get the opinion of others more
knowledgeable on brower and capture operations. The reason I don't want
to talk about the scrapbook application specifically is because I have
the same kind of problem with other capture type applications such as
Offline Explorer and others and the problem occurs on all my computers.
All these applications involve interaction with the Internet and the
acquirement of web pages. Some of my applications are more robust and
recover from a broken dial up connection and some don't. My data
aquisition tasks are (capture of web pages) all done on 3 or 4
Windozzzzzz machines because a lot of these particular applications
either are not available on Linux. But I have several Linux machines
doing this kind of acquisition and the problem is the same but fewer
applications on Linux. For example, the firefox add-ons are often not
available on Linux. I did several years ago try to run wget and wput
and other applications inside perl and bash scripts and even then I
encountered this hanging problem.
I am looking for confirmation or other opinions from the Debian user
group because I may be missing something significant. I have this
nagging worry that perhaps OS resources (about which I know little in
the way of socket operation, etc.) on both Windozzzzz as well as Linux
may also be involved that may result is time-outs because of a slow and
crowded Internet connection. I have now waited 2 years for a fast
Internet connection and it should be soon here and I don't want to find
out to my surprise that I still have this problem to the same degree.
Any advise from anyone having had similar problems would be very welcome.
Thanks -- Ted
BTW, everyone have a nice day! Our temperature low here in North
Alberta, Canada is about -15 degrees Celsius. Add in the wind factor and
the layer of snow and we are talking COLD although I've seen it much
colder out here. The fast Internet people came out yesterday and they
could not install the connection because of the ice all over the
scaffolding and roof. Waited 2 years and now still waiting.
.
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