Help On Mosaic v0.10

Version 0.10 includes the following changes from version 0.9:

• Support for <IMG> tag: inlined images in HTML documents.
  • Handles X bitmap and GIF formats so far.
  • New resource, colorsPerInlinedImage, can be used to restrict color use of inlined images -- default is 50.
  • Image files can be located anywhere on the net (pointed to by URL); image data is cached in memory for fast display and reuse.
  • Example of inlined bitmap: <IMG SRC="file://foobar.com/foobar.xbm">
  • Example of inlined image serving as anchor: <A HREF="http://foobar.com/ref.html"> <IMG SRC="file://foobar.com/blagh.gif"> </A>
  • A demo and more information can be found here.
• Better support for acting as binary file retrieval client.
  • Each window can either be in binary transfer mode or not; resource binaryTransferMode controls startup value (default is 'False', and you probably don't want to change this). A toggle button in the Options menu allows changing on the fly.
  • If a window is not in binary trasfer mode, data files with unrecognized types will be displayed in the window as either plain text or HTML (depending on the server type), as before.
  • If a window is in binary transfer mode, data files with unrecognized types will be dumped to a local file after being transferred over as binary data.
  • Regardless of whether a window is in binary transfer mode or not, files with recognizes types (images, sound, etc.) will be handled as usual, and uncompression will be transparent as usual.
  • The whole point of all this is to allow the user to select on the fly how a given file of an unrecognized type is to be handled.
  • Because files are currently typed by filename extension, binary transfer mode should generally be kept off, otherwise it will screw up things like WAIS searches pretty badly. Also, since Gopher does things differently from everyone else, things are different there too.
  • Setting one of the multimedia resources to the text string "dump" will cause files of that type to be dumped to local disk as though in binary transfer mode.
  • See here for a more thorough discussion of these issues.
• Audio annotations for Sun's with /usr/demo/SOUND/record (or something similar) are now enabled. Resources recordCommandLocation and recordCommand are used to specify the command used to record sound; theoretically, this approach can be used on any platform with appropriate hardware and software, although SGI Indigo & Sun Sparcstation are the only two that I know of.
• Search capability within documents: enter search term, scrollbar jumps to match and match is highlighted; repeat as desired.
• Enhanced support for various Gopher types, including binary files and CSO phonebooks (sorry, phonebooks aren't supported yet, but at least now an error message shows up).
• Spaces converted to +'s in keyword queries now.
• Scrollbar arrows now increment a reasonable amount when viewing large documents.
• Anonymous FTP password is now always user@host.domain, enabling access to every strange FTP server out there that I know of.
• Pattern-matching to determine file type based on file name now uses caseless string compare.
• Better default visited anchor color for non-SGI color displays.
• Messages from libwww now show up in pop-up dialogs like they should.
• Telnet never gets asked to use unrecognized -l flag.
• Tar files are now always retrieved to local disk (and not displayed).
• Replacement (and better) Archie interface.
• Mail Developers window is cleared on each use.
• New resource trackVisitedAnchors; can be used to turn off tracking of visited anchors altogether.
• Better transparent uncompression support:
  • Gzipped (.z) files are now recognized and uncompressed on the fly (as well as .Z files, as before).
  • New resources uncompressCommand (default 'uncompress') and gunzipCommand (default 'gunzip').
• Initial stab at instrumentation (this is turned OFF for 0.10):
  • Splash screen on initial startup gives user choice to participate or not participate in the study.
  • If participating, resource instrumentUsage or toggle button in Options menu can turn off participation for any duration of time necessary.
  • Instrumentation tracks document accesses, mail/print/save, annotation activities, other useful info.
  • Information transparently sent to NCSA mailbox without user intervention.
• As usual, little bugfixes and cleanups.

Other Information

General information on NCSA Mosaic is available here.