Mosaic 2.0 prerelease 2 status

Marc Andreessen (marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu)
Sun, 8 Aug 93 16:13:08 -0500


Hi folks,

I meant to get prerelease 2 out yesterday to satisfy the many requests
for various things (see list below), but I'm being stalled by a nasty
little bug in RS/6000 Motif, so it will probably be a few days before
it makes it out the door.

Sorry for the delay,
Marc

o Added searchIndexInDialog resource. If false (default), Search Index
field (from 1.2) pops up on searchable pages and pops down on
non-searchable pages. If true, Search Index button (from 2.0 prerelease
0/1) allows user to call up dialog box.
o The "Reload" option now clears out cached image data for the current
document before reloading the document, thus causing the images to be
reloaded also, if resource reloadReloadsImages is set to true (default is
false).
o The "Clear Image Cache" menu option wipes out all cached images
(reclaiming memory).
o "Clear Global History" also clears the image cache now.
o Fixed bug with internal bitmaps used in Gopher menus failing on
non-8-bit displays.
o Ripped out Window Per Document option (middle button still causes
new window to be opened on anchor activation).
o Toplevel Makefile (configure one file, type 'make', and you're done), as
well as Makefile.sun, Makefile.ibm, Makefile.dec, Makefile.alpha for
common configurations.
o Configurable Documents menu. By default there isn't one. Places to
look in order of preference at program startup are the value of the
resource documentsMenuSpecfile (by default
/usr/local/mosaic/documents.menu), the value of the environment
variable MOSAIC_DOCUMENTS_MENU_SPECFILE, and the value
of the compile-time #define DOCUMENTS_MENU_SPECFILE (by
default /usr/local/mosaic/documents.menu).

The specfile itself consists of alternating lines of title and URL; a single
line starting with two dashes ("--") between any two title/URL pairs
counts as a separator. By default up to 80 things (title/URL pairs +
separators) can be in a specfile; this can be increased in
src/gui-menubar.c if you're crazy. An example specfile is distributed
with the source code (but is not intended to be a default).

The developer who implemented this feature disagrees with its presence
in the program; the contents of such a customizable menubar ought to be
in a hypermedia page (so you can actually format, lay out, and explain
the various hyperlinks) that in turn ought to be served to the network (so
others can benefit from your organization of information).
o Added simpleInterface resource to allow menubar and bottom button
configuration to be considerably pared down (default is false).
Comments on what should and shouldn't be in the simple user interface
should be sent to cbushell@ncsa.uiuc.edu.
o Added "Network Starting Points" document pointer in Navigate menu
(to make up for disappearance of Documents & Manuals menu); the
URL is customizable at compile time (see src/mosaic.h).
o Fixed yet another libwww bug -- coredump on malformed URL
gopher//mother.cs.bham.ac.uk:2070/.