D4R

I have released an alpha version of my downloader for RISC OS
It is most definately an alpha prototype, so please treat it as such.
I’ve done a little testing and all seems to be OK, but I haven’t done any anomaly testing (e.g. interupting downloads, aborting connections etc.)
So any interuptions are likely to leave sockets open and file handles unclosed.
So if you do use it in anger be aware of that!
Just thought it may be handy for people who say want to download stuff in say BASIC off the internet.
I’m really keen to get this moving into something resembling a finished product (which will be both WIMP and CLI)
Once finished this will be merged into my module code, which is on hold until I get the downloader code finished.
There are a lot of features that need to be added before it even reaches beta quality:
1. Pause/Resuming of downloads
2. Secondary buffering
3. New resolver code
4. Drag and Drop support (so from Netsurf you can do “Object→Link→Save→Acorn URI” onto the D4R icon)

Any other suggestions would be appreciated.

Hmm, I ought to dig up my self-updater code that I wrote back in 2002ish. Originally written for a RISC OS program, the basic premise is used in several of my VB apps like VeroDes. The RISC OS one used a composite file that was squashed files wrapped together with a catalogue (a bit like a zip file). The Windows version just uses an installer exe. The system first looks for a textual control file (example → http://heyrick.co.uk/software/verodes/update.txt) to determine if there is an update, how to handle it, and a description to show to the user.

Pause and resume sounds useful. Something that would be really useful is the ability to resume an aborted download. Sometimes in fringe areas, WiFi just drops out so the download has to restart. Okay, this probably has more relevance for a 200MiB animé download than the smaller sizes of RISC OS programs, but still…

So any interuptions are likely to leave sockets open and file handles unclosed.

Looking at it in a text editor on iOS, it seems to be a C program written with RISC_OSLib (you’re brave!). Couldn’t you add an atexit() to catch unexpected terminations and close handles if they are not NULL?

It’s a good idea. I always find wget is a pain to use.

D4R?
Something to do with downloading I see, but a quick google doesn’t further enlighten, I realise that probably those most likely to use it (what ever it is) will already know but I doubt that applies to all.

D4R?

An abbreviation for “Downloader for RISC OS” as per the text of Malcolm’s link.

What I’m puzzling over is that it’s “a testing program for the foundation suite QFA.” The parent directory on the website is qfa, but going up a level just takes me to a page of RISC OS news.

An abbreviation for “Downloader for RISC OS” as per the text of Malcolm’s link.

Now is that too subtle or too obvious for me :-/

In it’s current state, D4R outperforms (on my pandaboard) netsurf downloading by a factor of 3.
i.e. I get approx. 3MB/sec downloading (using the taskwindow) a file as against 1MB/sec via netsurf.
Once 0.02a is released, this should reach 6MB/sec – as this is the maximum download speed on a pandaboard.
One of the main aims for D4R is to allow resuming of aborted downloads.
QFA will be a module that provides various services for accelerating development and speed for RISC OS.
My first target for this are networking services.

[Update] Just thought I would point out, this is not a dig at netsurf. My aim (which may not happen) would be to provide services that netsurf could use. My code is RISC OS specific, tuned and written ONLY for RISC OS. If I can make it extremely easy to integrate and update, the netsurf developers may use it as an option for RISC OS. It’s way off that at the moment and they may not like it, or may think it’s rubbish as I’m not a developer by profession.
Netsurf is an amazing browser for RISC OS.

Once 0.02a is released, this should reach 6MB/sec – as this is the maximum download speed on a pandaboard.
One of the main aims for D4R is to allow resuming of aborted downloads.
QFA will be a module that provides various services for accelerating development and speed for RISC OS.

Wow! This seems like it is going to be a very useful piece of software.
Thanks for putting the hard work into this.

QFA will be a module that provides various services for accelerating development and speed for RISC OS.

Great :)

Now is that too subtle or too obvious for me :-/

I’m also puzzled by how ‘dfourr’ becomes ‘downloader’. That said, having read the above I’m still not really clear what its purpose. Presumably because I don’t have an interest in whatever its aimed at.

Jim

I’m also puzzled by how ‘dfourr’ becomes ‘downloader’.

Isn’t it “Downloader 4 RISC OS”?

Have given it a try on the PandaRO, but haven’t been able to download anything. Testing not extensive but:

I assume it doesn’t resolve hostnames. I did try with a hostname but it just hung, needing an Alt-Break to recover. Using a numeric IP address it seems to hang for a few seconds, then issues an error

09 Feb 11:13:13 000 00000001: Error from News UK: Unable to connect to 10.11.11.109:80

I have no idea where this IP address came from – it wasn’t the one I was trying (but is the one given in the help notes as an example). After this it again needed Alt-Break to recover.

I was doing all this in a task window.

I’ll give it another whirl on a different test site later.

Have now tried downloading from a different site. No change. It hourglasses for must be around 30 s, then issues the same error as before (ip address 10.11.11.109). When the error box is cleared D4R is still ‘doing something’ – the machine is very sluggish until an Alt-Break is done.

The machine was then giving random errors from other apps (eg Printers) which were ‘idling’, including ‘abort on data transfer’. I ended up having to do a complete reset (I know it is alpha software, so am not complaining, just reporting!).

Oops, sorry about that! I’ll sort that out tonight.
It looks like the compiled version has a hardcoded IP address in it, which it shouldn’t have.
The errors that follow are an unfortunate side effect of multiple sockets being left open.
I’m kind of glad you experienced that, that’s something I’ll definitely test and stop it happening.
I’ll open a thread in “Community support” for this

Isn’t it “Downloader 4 RISC OS”?

Sounds plausible now you suggest it. However I still don’t actually know if that’s correct. Maybe this is because I never use a mobile to send ‘texts’…

My next question would be wonder what ‘D4R’ does which, say, ftp, doesn’t. Does it simply make it easier to break and resume a large download? Or is it for some more specific use that no-one has explained?

Jim

It’s shorter than saying !httpandftpdownloadmanager and I can easily make an icon with three letters on it.
There was a downloader (or is) called https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/d4x/ which is kind of what I’m after doing.
I really didn’t put that much thought into the name ;-) Quite happy to change it.

There’s nothing wrong with the name, D4R makes perfect sense. This is an area that hasn’t seen much attention in the RISCOS world, so you have some respect from me for your efforts.

I realise that for the target market of beta users !httpandftpdownloadmanager may be more than enough information to describe. But so far as a possible user I’m not sure I know under what circumstances it might be useful for me.
I’ve spotted that it improves speed of downloading compared to a browser.

It’s not even beta quality at this time!
But if you’re not sure what circumstances it might be useful, it possibly won’t be.
The use cases I’m thinking of are:
1) for command line batch downloads, e.g. an obey file to download the latest ROOL ROM
2) for downloading large files, where you may want to resume or pause the downloads – this was for the WROCC club videos (PLUG PLUG) as they are around 500MB.

But the other use maybe for people to download something and process it.
e.g. download an RSS feed, and write a basic program to interpret it.

The improved speed is a side effect to be honest.

Sounds like I could make use of it:-) Thanks for the info and your effort.
Unfortunately I’m not sure it could be used for downloading Beta ROMS as I suspect the address keeps changing i.e. Pi nightly build is currently:
https://www.riscosopen.org/zipfiles/platform/raspberry-pi/BCM2835Dev.5.21.zip?1423546613

p.s. WSS do something a bit similar
More info hear

More info hear

I turned the volume right up and still heard nothing. :)

As I suspected. Yesterday’s Pi beta ROM:
https://www.riscosopen.org/zipfiles/platform/raspberry-pi/BCM2835Dev.5.21.zip?1423546613
Today’s:
https://www.riscosopen.org/zipfiles/platform/raspberry-pi/BCM2835Dev.5.21.zip?1423719438

n.b. Yesterdays file is still there! Though you are forbidden to list the directory.

Steve: Yes my speling and typng and gramer are atrosious ;-)

I’ve already worked out how to do the downloads, that isn’t a problem ;-)

I await the information with bated breath!

It’s fairly easy, you have to download the respective page and get the URL from the page.
https://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads/pandaboard

Just noticed a major issue though, it’s https! Oh Well :-(