[235] in World Wide Web
Mosaic update
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (yandros@MIT.EDU)
Thu Apr 21 11:21:22 1994
From: yandros@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 94 11:20:38 EDT
To: bug-sipb@MIT.EDU, bug-outland@MIT.EDU
Cc: webmaster@MIT.EDU, cdemello@MIT.EDU, cfields@MIT.EDU, lavin@MIT.EDU,
cdemello@MIT.EDU, svalente@MIT.EDU, jeremy@the-tech.MIT.EDU,
www@MIT.EDU, rnewman@MIT.EDU
The version of Mosaic in the sipb locker was just upgraded to verion
2.2+.
This version is slightly behind the `current' NCSA version 2.4 in a
few small ways (2.4 was an emergency release to fix the problem that
2.3 was accidentally distributed with a big chunk of debugging code
left in. 2.3 itself was rushed out the door with most of its features
still in beta in order to get around a large security hole with telnet
URLs.) I chose to upgrade to 2.2+ instead of 2.4 because of the
number of features that Sal Valente and I have added to 2.2 already
(that's the `+'). I'm moving 2.4 into testing (Mosaic-BETA in
outland) and merge in our changes that haven't yet been adopted by
NCSA, but for now:
o telnet URL's are safe again (`invalid' URL's will bring up a dialog
instead; this interface will change in the future; either to a nicer
version of my code or the uglier stuff NCSA put into 2.4 :-)
o editing of HTML in the `Document Source' window works; this window
now has an `Update' button that allows you to edit the internal
representation of the file. This, combined with the `Save As'
function from the _File_ menu will allow you to edit files quickly
and easily (BUT BE SURE TO SAVE AS HTML!!!)
o the default fonts should be more tolerant of our cluster platforms
(it's not perfect yet, but it's better)
o Native WAIS support is added for sun, decmips, and RS/6000 and
actually works for the sun and decmips; additionally, the failure
mode for all platforms is now an error message instead of the
previous `dump core' method. Native WAIS support for RS/6000 is
expected to work sometime soon.
o the resource-setting method no longer wantonly blows away any
piddling customisations you might have made before running Mosaic
(ok, it wasn't quite that bad, but almost :-) the new method makes
use of the XFILESEARCHPATH environment variable (if you can come up
with a good reason to prefer XAPPLRESDIR, XUSERFILESEARCHPATH,
XENVIRONMENT, or XEIEIO instead, let me know.)
o emacs-style keybindings (C-a, C-e, C-k, etc.) should work in all the
popups now (thanks to Ron Newman for hunting these down).
o using relative URL's (foo#bar style links to a specific name tag in
a document) now causes the target tag to be highlighted.
o on the RS/6000, Mosaic will warn you if the operating system is
about to kill it off due to low memory conditions, giving you the
option to quit or `Live Dangerously'.
o bugs involving select() under linux are fixed; the globe now spins
at `normal' speed even under linux.
o new _Documents_ menu feature enabled (not yet configured; sometime
tomorrow; suggestions welcome.)
Two other major changes (fish search and client URL translations)
weren't debugged enough to be included in this release; look for them
to appear in the next release by way of the beta.
chad
