NCSA Mosaic for X 2.0 prerelease 2 available

Marc Andreessen (marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu)
Tue, 10 Aug 93 03:04:59 -0500


......ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in /Mosaic/prerelease. Source, plus binaries
for Sun, IBM, SGI.

This prerelease fixes problems with prerelease 1 and provides some new
(experimental) functionality. Changes include:

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 trackPointerMotion can now be set to false to inhibit pointer/URL
tracking.
o Fixed yet another libwww bug -- coredump on malformed URL
gopher//mother.cs.bham.ac.uk:2070/.

Comments and feedback appreciated -- THIS IS UNSUPPORTED CODE,
however; if you want stability, get Mosaic 1.2
(/Mosaic/xmosaic-binaries and /Mosaic/xmosaic-source). In particular,
the next few prereleases will be dramatically different as they will
involve new HTML widget functionality and libwww2 integration.

Cheers,
Marc

--
Marc Andreessen
Software Development Group
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu