NCSA Mosaic for X 1.2 available.

Marc Andreessen (marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu)
Wed, 30 Jun 93 03:05:50 -0500


Version 1.2 of NCSA Mosaic for the X Window System, a networked
information systems and World Wide Web browser, is now available:

file://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mosaic/xmosaic-source/xmosaic-1.2.tar.Z
.../xmosaic-binaries/xmosaic-sun.Z
.../xmosaic-binaries/xmosaic-sun-lresolv.Z
.../xmosaic-binaries/xmosaic-sgi.Z
.../xmosaic-binaries/xmosaic-ibm.Z
.../xmosaic-binaries/xmosaic-dec.Z
.../xmosaic-binaries/xmosaic-alpha.Z
.../xmosaic-diffs/xmosaic-1.1-1.2-diffs.Z

I'm flirting with fate by putting this out right before I fly to a
conference for the rest of the week, but it seems to be stable. Any
serious bugs will be fixed this weekend.

Changes since 1.1 include:

o Binary transfer mode, when on, now forces all files to be treated as
binary, whether or not their extensions are recognized. (Due to
overwhelming popular request.)
o Gopher file types are now picked up on the basis of file extension, if a
file extension exists, with the default being the normally assumed
type. This means that "foo.ps" returned as type '0' (text) is interpreted
as PostScript, etc. Resource tweakGopherTypes (default True) can be
set to False to turn this off and interpret Gopher documents stricly by
the Gopher typing system.
o Resource postscriptViewerCommand is now "dump" by default. This
is because ghostview (the previous default), as currently shipped, runs
ghostscript in unsafe mode and a malicious PostScript file could cause
damage to your filesystem as a result.
o Added fullHostname resource to allow explicit setting of the fully
qualified hostname (machine.domain). We recommend you don't use
this resource (allow Mosaic to determine your full hostname on the
fly) unless your system chokes on gethostbyname().
o Fixed problem with annotationServer resource set and annotation
server not available or network down.
o Fixed problem with missing title (or author) in annotation.
o Fixed occasional coredump in File->Reload.
o Fixed occasional crash with inlined images after windows have been
closed.
o Made failure of gethostbyname() robust (coredumps actually inside
gethostbyname() must still be dealt with by the gethostbynameIsEvil
resource).
o Fixed coredump when checking for editable annotation property when
document contains no text.
o Fixed coredump when closing window if hotkey is hit while window
is still open but in the process of being destroyed.
o Local files should now always be automatically canonicalized into a
full URL of form file://hostname/full/path/filename -- this applies to
command-line arguments and to filenames passed through
File->Open.
o Now recognize file://localhost/ scheme for expressly accessing local
files.
o Fixed problem with multiline FTP server responses (courtesy John
Ockerbloom).
o Fixed problem with ".." in FTP directory resulting in slash falling off
of toplevel URL and subsequent jumps failing.
o Fixed problem with trailing slashes in FTP directory specifications
that were causing part of the directory name to be used twice.
o Changed sgimoviePlayerCommand default to movieplayer, which
actually exists on some SGI systems.
o Made a few changes to menubar Documents and Help menus.
o Cleaned up lots of typecasting warnings in Xmx code.
o Fixed problem with Motif 1.2 and file insertions in annotate window.
o Fixed problem with double quotes in titles of group annotations.
o Added resource reverseInlinedBitmapColors to allow reversal of
foreground and background colors in inlined XBM bitmaps.
o Fixed problem with group annotations on URL's containing pound
signs (normally this never happens, but it will happen for HDF files in
Mosaic 2.0).
o Added confirmation box for deleting annotations from the menubar;
added resource confirmDeleteAnnotation, defaults to true.
o Correctly recognizes mis-suffixed HTML files starting with <head>,
<html>, and <HTML> tags also now.
o XPM3-format inlined image support fixed.

This release of NCSA Mosaic is known to compile on the following
platforms:

SGI (IRIX 4.0.2)
IBM (AIX 3.2)
Sun 4 (SunOS 4.1.2 with stock X11R4 and Motif 1.1).
DECstation 5000-200 (Ultrix).
DEC Alpha (OSF/1 1.2).

Rumor has it that Mosaic will compile on systems like:

Hewlett Packard HP/UX 7.x, 8.x, 9.x.
Dell SVR4
Sun Solaris 2.x
SCO Open Desktop
Harris Nighthawk
NeXT BSD

Documentation is available online within Mosaic. Comments, questions,
and bug reports should be sent to mosaic-x@ncsa.uiuc.edu. Thanks in
advance for any feedback you can provide.

Cheers,
Marc & Eric

--
Marc Andreessen & Eric Bina
Software Development Group
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu, ebina@ncsa.uiuc.edu