What comes to most peoples mind when you say DOS? Most people generally Windoze lusers would say, "DOS is crap. It's just text and nothing else." But it's not. DOS is one of the most graphical OS's out there. Every game designed for PC is designed for DOS. (Well they used to, now they need Winbloat$ DirectX and crap to work making them "Windoze games") But games like Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake and Quake2 are actually DOS games. Now is that "just text" ?

Not only are games graphical for DOS. There are countless programs that are graphical or use graphics for viewing images etc. Consider these examples:

• Arachne Graphical WWW browser for DOS
• DOS DESKTOP2
• NeoPaint
• PictView

Arachne is a graphical WWW browser designed for DOS. It has been tested on M$-DOS 3.3 or higher and various other flavours of DOS such as DR-DOS from Caldera, and DOSEMU for UNIX systems. Arachne development is still currently focused on the DOS version of Arachne but a Linux port should be seen in the near future.

Here's what Arachne offers [clipped from some Arachne text files]:
Arachne will attempt to render HTML tags according to HTML/4.0 specification. Arachne can view hypertext documents with inlined images, written in HTML language, it can connect to WWW servers using HTTP protocol on TCP/IP connections and it doesn't require any Windows, OS/2 or Unix to run on your PC. But that's not the end! Arachne can also send and recieve Internet e-mails (MIME compatible), edit source code of local HTML pages, perform FTP downloads and uploads & call any DOS application as plug-in.

Unlike many other browsers, Arachne does not need any Windows, OS/2 or UNIX operating system on your computer to run. It only needs a DOS. And also unlike other browsers, Arachne does not have very high systems requirements. See Arachne's system requirements page. $30US registration fee if you use Arachne after 30 days for commercial use. Private & NON-commercial use of Arachne is free. It can also be freely distributed in it's original package form.

DESKTOP2 is a graphical file and program manager for DOS. It allows the user to create a "folder and file" system on the screen desktop, which can be navigated through using mouse clicks or arrow key, enter key and escape key. DESKTOP allows configuring program start up for use with command line parameters as well.

DESKTOP also has a file management system similar to Norton or Midnight Commander, only graphical. It can also view Windoze3.x icon files (.ICO) and extract them from Windoze EXE and DLL files. DESKTOP can internally format, check & compare floppy disks, show File Allocation Table of drives. It also allows editing of text files and viewing in ASCII or Hexdecimal code. File extensions can be configured to have associated programs run them when clicked on in the file manager.

DESKTOP is no longer under development, but has been translated from German to English and the source is available under the GPL for any interested developers.

NeoPaint is a very nice image viewing/editing application for DOS. It allows opening of multiple images at once, zooming, stamping, scaling, flood fill, brush thickness, gradient flood fill, circular editing, 3D image creation, text insertion, selection of fonts, image effects and so on. It supports various types of image format including GIF, Win/OS-2 BMP, TIFF, PCX but no JPG. :-(

If you are after a nice image editor for DOS, this is your pick. But it's down side is it's shareware and annoyware. Grrrrrr.

PictView is a very good piece of software written for DOS. It allows viewing of many image formats, and lets you view them in different resolutions. Image manipulating is also possible, reducing the number of colours in the image, greyscale, image zooming, and file format conversion. This is also a must for anyone with a DOS box.

PictView is free! Yay!