From: Jan-Erik Larka
Date: 2008/08/02
source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eComStati ... MzNzA2Mw--
Neil:
There have been shemes for downloading around for years. Here's one of the latest: PMDownloader: http://www.eros2.info
Can someone explain what it is for? I've tried a few external downloaders but not one even comes close to being as good as the download built into Firefox. Ten years ago, I used one (AWGET) and it was sort-of useful on dialup because downloads would take hours and the browser wasn't particularly stable.
Jan-Erik Larka
PMDownloader and AWGet should basically do the same thing. I use AWGet by GlassMan as it's very handy to fetch files, is very stable and fetch things as fast as the connection allow, but one has to configure the parameters somewhat to tune it a bit. New homepage structures, blogs and protected sites (cookies and/or passwords or just cross site linking) make it less useful now though.
It would be nice if the community could focus on solving things once and for all and not compete with different themes of the same thing. ->
"Develop the wheel once"
=====And now for something else, almost at least======
Am a long time bittorrent user (several years) on OS/2 and eComStation but have thought about this for a long time...
eros2 also ported one of the available versions of ctorrent.
I'd like to see ONE unified download manager for the whole OS, that one can write plugins for.
Output info about parts downloaded so that GUI apps can show Б√┬Б√┬Б√┬ Б√┬Б√┬ Б√┬ Б√└ Б√┬ etc. Create a folder class for WPS that will show files beeing downloaded, hopefully a combination similar to http://www.xn--lrka-loa.com/progressbar ... sbars.html and
http://www.xn--lrka-loa.com/Progress.html DOS users get horrified when they see what may come from the proposed ideas, as function is the primary objective, not necessary usefulness and how easy it should be to get a fast overview of the situation.
The idea with the download folder is to create a common download manager to attach e.g. a ctorrent plugin as the bittorrent engine, "wget" or "cURL" for http and ftp, "mms" for multimedia streams etc. and the whole system could use that. We'll have to write new plugins as new download techniques emerge, but not whole apps, and have one common way to deal with downloads. We can write rexx scripts to fetch the files using the download manager, software developers won't have to write/port their own versions of download engines etc. but rather use
what others wrote once thus save several man hours in projects that do almost the same. The wps class should be available as a template that
one can tear off, set common download params for and then drag links (unless one set override info on each link/file etc.) and downloadfiles to and it'll take care of the rest.
We'd get a neat, compact, unified, native way to show files if it where a wps folder. I often start and keep more than 10 bittorrents at once,
another as http download but want all the info in one view, preferably as progressbars, but sometimes want more detailed info. Research in the area mention that it's harder and take longer to get an overview with numerical presentation of data than a progressbar, but is less
accurate, provided that accuracy is what the user want. How about the power that the wps offer, not for eye candy, "just because we can" as
in some OSes, but because wps-folders provide the OS/2-eCS way of doing things? It won't hurt if it's useful and reveal ways to be productive.
How about rewriting it somewhat and create a .dll that also would be callable by rexx?! Hey why not ask "all" developers to add rexx calls
to their dll's (within reasonable limits of course)?! The rexx part should be quite easy actually and would make it really useful to many, not to mention how well software for OS would integrate with the rexx scripts.
What do you think?!
Cliff Scott:
I can heartily recommend PMDownloader. It works very well, had adjustable download speeds and lots of options including capturing the clipboard if you desire as well as a plugin. It has a free trial period I believe. I've used it for at least 3 years and it is the best I've seen. It's so much better than the one in FireFox that there's no comparison. The only limitation I have found is that it can't figure out the download system for the eCS BetaZone. I suspect that the author doesn't know about that limitation as he probably would fix it if several of us requested it. I know he has added features that I've requested.