Re: Hypertext editor

Pei Y. Wei (wei@xcf.berkeley.edu)
Tue, 30 Jun 92 02:20:10 -0700


Yup... an editor is in the works. The very current state of the viola-based
browser uses output from a standard SGML parser (sgmls), and the displaying
page is composed of multiple structured textfield/bitmap/whatever objects,
instead of the unstructured single textfield as in the currently released
version.

Basically I'm taking a crack at a rough 1-1 mapping of SGML document
structure to viola objects. Allow editing in the objects (ie textfield,
bitmap), and convert back to SGML. It'll probably be highly structured
s.t. some people might find needing some getting-used-to. But as the
document source is SGML, there should eventually be many alternative
editors. I can't say when this version will be releasable, as there are
about a zillion of things to do to get there.

In the meanwhile, however, I could release a version (HTML based) that
displays bitmaps (XBM and XPM). I hesitate releasing that version because
it has some fundamental limitations (hence the remodeling), b/c XBM and
XPM are very X-ish, and, and b/c it kinda affects WWW's relatively uniformed
interoperability (linemode browser may then have to say "a picture is here,
but..."). I don't know. Maybe it's better to freeze HTML now?

-Pei
"All I know-- we've got to change what's happening
Something good could happen" The B-52's