If this happens to you, please investigate which fonts your system contains and assemble a list that would be satisfactory for viewing formatted documents, and send the list to mosaic-x@ncsa.uiuc.edu. Or upgrade to a more recent X server (or just throw out your system's X and use stock MIT X).
Note that as of right now we are planning to pretty much stay with the font scheme NCSA Mosaic already uses, simply because the servers that don't handle these fonts seem to be pretty nonstandard. It's impossible to handle every case by default -- there's just too much variation between platforms.
If this is really frustrating you, you might consider looking at the MIT X11R5 fonts and installing them for your server like your vendor should have done in the first place. (See your X manuals for more details on font installation.)
A new solution for Sun OpenWindows users; append this text to the file /usr/openwin/lib/fonts/Families.list (thanks to Preston Mullen).
How come NCSA Mosaic dies on startup because it can't find any
usable fonts?
Because your X server is either misconfigured or broken. You should
probably contact your system vendor.
(As a last resort, grab a copy of the Mosaic app-defaults template file and substitute "fixed" for all the fonts, and try to run with that.)
How come Mosaic's dialog boxes don't have titlebars or borders?
Because your window manager (probably olwm or twm, or some variant
thereof) didn't see fit to put titlebars or borders around them. See
the documentation for your window manager to figure out how to tell it
to "decorate" transient window (i.e. dialog boxes).
For example, if
you're using twm or a derivative, put the following line in your
.twmrc file:
DecorateTransients
When I create a Mosaic app-defaults file with nothing in it, all
of a sudden all the normal Mosaic defaults (colors, fonts, etc.) are
no longer there. What happened?
This is an X feature. If no app-defaults file exists, then X installs
the fallback resources embedded in the executable; if an app-defaults
file exists (even an empty one), then X ignores all fallback resources
embedded in the executable. See your system's X documentation for
more details.
How do I specify the home page?
If you would rather use a certain document as your NCSA Mosaic home page (the
document that you first view when you start the program), you can set the
environment variable WWW_HOME to the Uniform
Resource Locator of your choice.
You can also use the `-home' command-line flag or set the X resource `Mosaic*homeDocument' to the URL of your choice.
More details here.
What happened to the
The version 1.2 Documents and Manuals
menus?Documents and Manuals menus have
been removed from Mosaic's menubar. Selecting Internet
Starting Points from the Navigate menu now retrieves a
document from NCSA that contains the contents of Mosaic 1.2's hardcoded menus
in HTML form.
Also see the new Internet Resources Meta-Index, also under Mosaic 2.0's
Navigate menu, for an alternate set of Internet starting points
perhaps more suitable to the task of locating any specific piece of information
on the network.
How do I customize NCSA Mosaic's menubar?
For local customizations, it's best if you create a local
home page and reference your information services via hyperlinks from that. In
this way, the Web grows, which is a good thing.
As an alternative, Mosaic 2.0 provides:
Documents menu.
simpleInterface resource, which allows the 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.
Is there a version of NCSA Mosaic that uses {OpenLook, XView,
Athena, SGI Forms} instead of Motif?
No; we don't have the resources required to support more than one user
interface toolkit, unfortunately. (Since Sun is moving to Motif, this
should be a moot point pretty soon.)
Why don't my multimedia X resources work anymore?
The multimedia X resources that worked with Mosaic 1.2 (e.g.
gifViewerCommand, audioPlayerCommand) are completely
ignored by Mosaic 2.0.
See here for more information.
How do I set an X resource?
If you want to configure Mosaic using X resources,
simply add something like the following entries to your .Xdefaults file: