NCSA Mosaic for X 2.0 is now available
Arnold Bloemer
die neue Version von Mosaic viel Neues bringen (z.B. Fill-Out forms
(Benutzerformulare)).
Fuer alle, die sich noch nicht mit dem World-Wide Web beschaeftigt
haben, sollte jetzt ein idealer Zeitpunkt sein, dies nachzuholen.
Das World-Wide Web und der World-Wide Web Browser Mosaic haben jetzt
eine Funktionalitaet, dass man im Prinzip Mosaic als alleiniges
Benutzerinterface einsetzen koennte. Alle auf einem Rechner
notwendigen Aktivitaeten wie Starten von Programmen, Benutzeranfragen
sowie alle lokalen und internationalen Informationszugriffe auf alle
Informationsquellen des Internets, koennen von Mosaic aus erfolgen und
sind dabei in hervorragender Weise in eine Hypermedia Umgebung
integriert.
Beim Erstellen eines neuen Programms kann man jetzt gleich Mosaic als
Benutzerschnittstelle nehmen. Der Fill-Out form support beinhaltet alle
wesentlichen Motif Widgets (wie z.B. text entry areas with scrollbars,
toggle buttons, selection lists, popup menus, images as input type,
password entry, defaults, reset buttons, submit buttons ...) und Mosaic
verfuegt ueber eine Remote Control Schnittstelle.
Das Erstellen eines Benutzerinterfaces reduziert sich auf das Schreiben
einer HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) Seite. Gleichzeitig bettet man
sein Benutzerinterface damit in eine Hypermedia Umgebung ein, die nicht
nur vollen Zugriff auf alle lokalen Daten ermoeglicht, sondern
gleichzeitig weltumspannend ist. Kein anderer Interface Builder bietet
zur Zeit diese Moeglichkeiten und mit keinem System kann man zur Zeit
so schnell und einfach ein Benutzerinterface entwerfen.
Viel Spass beim Eintauchen in den Hyperspace,
Arnold
P.S.: Das RRZN (Regionales Rechenzentrum Niedersachsen) spiegelt die
WWW Directories von Cern und von NCSA. Die aktuelle Mosaic for X 2.0
Version sollte in den naechsten Tagen dort auch verfuegbar sein.
Hier die URL's (Universal Resource Locators):
CERN Mirror (ftp://info.cern.ch/pub/www):
ftp://ftp.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/pub/info-systems/WWW
NCSA Mirror (ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web (X11-Versionen);
ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/pub/PC/Mosaic;
ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/pub/Mac/Mosaic):
ftp://ftp.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/pub/info-systems/WWW-Mosaic
---
Dipl.-Ing. Arnold Bloemer Universitaet Hannover
Institut fuer Theoretische Nachrichtentechnik
und Informationsverarbeitung
blo...@tnt.uni-hannover.de Appelstrasse 9A
fax: +49 511 762-5333 D-30167 Hannover
phone: +49 511 762-5320 Germany
Announcement von NCSA Mosaic for X 2.0:
=======================================
The Uniform Resource Locator for this document is:
file://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/README.Mosaic-2.0
To: www-...@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: NCSA Mosaic for X 2.0 available
--text follows this line--
Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines...
NCSA Mosaic for X 2.0 is now available.
...ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in /Mosaic:
o Source in /Mosaic/Mosaic-source.
o Binaries for SunOS 4.1.3, Solaris (yup) 2.3, AIX 3.2, IRIX 4.x,
DEC Alpha (OSF/1), DEC Ultrix, and HP/UX 9.x (700-series) in
/Mosaic/Mosaic-binaries.
Thanks MUCH to all the prerelease testers who sent us feedback and bug
reports -- your help made 2.0 into a vastly better product than it
would otherwise have been and will no doubt continue to improve Mosaic
throughout 2.x's lifespan.
If you have any comments, questions, or problems with Mosaic 2.0,
please send mail to mosa...@ncsa.uiuc.edu. Also please drop us a
note if you enjoy using Mosaic or if you are using it in any
interesting projects or applications -- we love to hear from our
users!
The remainder of this message is a text copy of 2.0's "Help on
Version" and summarizes important changes and new features in 2.0.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The online version of this document is:
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/help-on-version-2.0.html
Introduction to NCSA Mosaic for X 2.0
*************************************
This document is intended to serve as an introduction to NCSA Mosaic for
the X Window System version 2.0. It covers new features in version 2.0, and
changes from version 1.2, that will affect most users of Mosaic.
For more information on any of the details in this document, please feel free
to send mail to mosa...@ncsa.uiuc.edu (or, alternately, to the World
Wide Web mailing list www-...@info.cern.ch or the Usenet newsgroup
comp.infosystems.www).
Status Of Documentation For 2.0
===============================
We are currently writing real Mosaic 2.0 documentation; it isn't yet
available, for which we apologize. In the meantime, this document should at
least help current users of Mosaic 1.2 upgrade to 2.0 without too much pain.
Potential Problems
==================
This section is an up-front listing of how Mosaic 2.0 is different than
Mosaic 1.2 in ways that may cause apparent trouble to existing 1.2 users.
o The Mosaic executable has been renamed Mosaic, and the new class
name for Mosaic is, predictably, Mosaic. Existing Mosaic 1.2 X
resources and application defaults files should be modified to match.
o The method by which you customize the viewers Mosaic uses for
various datatypes (e.g. MPEG movies or PostScript documents) has
completely changed.
First, the multimedia X resources (e.g. gifViewerCommand) used
by Mosaic 1.2 are totally ignored by Mosaic 2.0. (Trust me, this is
really a good thing.)
Second, you now have complete control over the types of data
Mosaic can understand and what it does with each type, as well as the
file extensions that correspond to each type (when communicating
with a HTTP0 or FTP server).
Third, Mosaic now uses the MIME typing mechanism for naming
data types (e.g., the MIME type for a GIF image is image/gif).
This provides a substantial amount of interoperability with the
present and future of multimedia email on the Internet, but will
require a little readjustment on the part of users who are used to
simply calling GIF files "type GIF", etc.
For more information on these issues, see:
o Information on mapping MIME types to external viewers.
o Information on mapping file extensions to MIME types.
o Mosaic 2.0 speaks the HTTP/1.0 protocol, while Mosaic 1.2 spoke
the pre-HTTP/1.0 protocol commonly referred to as "HTTP0" or
"HTTP/0.9".
This means that Mosaic 2.0 sends more complex queries to HTTP
servers than Mosaic 1.2 did. If you are running a fairly recent HTTP0
server (e.g. NCSA httpd 0.5), this should not be a problem -- the new
protocol is backward compatible, and Mosaic will go to great lengths
to make sure it interacts with the HTTP0 server correctly.
However, some old HTTP servers (anything pre-1993) will break
completely when sent a HTTP/1.0 query, and Mosaic 2.0 won't be
able to make things work. Such servers are actually in violation of
the final HTTP0 protocol specification and should at least be
upgraded to conform to that specification, if not HTTP/1.0.
o HTTP/1.0 servers are by now (November 1993) fairly widespread,
and many sites are using them without even realizing that they are
HTTP/1.0 servers, because they also talk HTTP0 to clients (like
Mosaic 1.2) that only talk HTTP0.
It is important to realize that HTTP/1.0 mandates server-side typing
of files. This means that the server must recognize, for example, that
the file extension ".gif" means that the file is a GIF image (i.e.,
MIME type image/gif), and must communicate this information
to the client within the HTTP/1.0 retrieval process. HTTP/1.0 clients
like Mosaic 2.0 will not look at file extensions to determine file types
when talking to HTTP/1.0 servers -- if the server gets the type
wrong, the client will not look at the suffix to try to figure out the
right type.
This means that if all of a sudden a file that Mosaic 1.2 always
handled as an HTML document is handled by Mosaic 2.0 as if it is a
binary data file, and the file is being served off an HTTP/1.0 server,
the server is (almost surely) at fault for not informing the client of
the correct type.
Related issue: Transparent uncompression is currently never done
when talking to a HTTP/1.0 server. This will be fixed in a
maintenance release. We do however discourage reliance on
transparent uncompression in general, as clients on other platforms
(e.g. NCSA Mosaic for the Mac & Windows) generally can't
uncompress files compressed using the standard Unix methods (
compress and gzip).
(Note to the skeptical: server-side typing is actually a powerful
feature of HTTP/1.0, despite any migration problems it may cause.
Also note that Mosaic 2.0 will still do file extension typing when
talking to HTTP0 servers, so you can always continue to run a
HTTP0 server in conjunction with Mosaic 2.0 if you prefer
client-side typing.)
o Mosaic 2.0 does not have the hardcoded Documents and Manuals
menus that were in Mosaic 1.2. They were removed for a number of
reasons too boring to go into here. If, however, you find yourself
"lost in cyberspace" because of the loss of those hardcoded menus,
choose the "Internet Starting Points" entry in Mosaic 2.0's
Navigate menu -- Mosaic will fetch 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.
New Features In Mosaic 2.0
==========================
OK, this is the fun part. What will Mosaic 2.0 do for you?
o Completely interruptible I/O. At any point in a data transfer process
(hostname lookups and certain stages of direct WAIS queries
excepted), you can click on the icon in the upper right corner of the
window to stop the current network action.
o Fill-out forms. As per the current HTML+ spec, documents can
specify interactive fill-out forms -- with input elements including
text entry areas, toggle buttons, selection lists, popup menus, etc. --
and Mosaic will instantiate such fill-out forms as sets of Motif
widgets embedded inside the documents.
This provides a way to provide arbitrarily sophisticated front-end
interfaces to databases and search engines, as well as other network
services -- e.g., ordering pizzas.
See details on fill-out forms.
o Authentication. Thanks to Ari Luotonen at CERN, Mosaic can now
communicate properly with HTTP/1.0 servers that demand user
authentication before accessing information -- the user is presented
with an opportunity to enter a username and password to authenticate
herself to the remote server.
Currently, the "BASIC" authentication scheme is supported, which
provides for encoded (not cleartext, but not encrypted) transmission
of password data across the network. This provides a level of security
at least as secure as, e.g., telnet.
Once a user is authenticated on a particular server, Mosaic is smart
about caching and reusing the authentication information in
subsequent transactions with the same server in the same session --
the user will be informed at any time the cached authentication fails
and will be provided with the opportunity to enter a new username
and password again.
See the CERN authentication overview for more information.
o Direct WAIS access. Mosaic can now talk directly to WAIS servers
without needing to go through an intermediate gateway. This also
means:
o Mosaic can cleanly retrieve and properly handle binary data
(images, audio, video, etc.) as well as HTML documents from
WAIS servers. Mosaic 2.0's normal customization
mechanisms can be used to customize what happens when
various types of binary data are accessed from WAIS servers.
o Mosaic natively supports freeWAIS's ability to tie together
multiple data files with different formats under a single
umbrella (e.g. as a result of a query across text, the user may
be presented with her choice of text, image, or audio).
Examples of direct WAIS access:
o Direct access to CNIDR WAIS directory of servers.
o Direct access to InterNIC RFC WAIS server.
o A search on the term "MIME" in the InterNIC RFC WAIS
server.
o RFC 1437 from the InterNIC RFC WAIS server.
o Full format/viewer/extension customizability, including the ability
to allow local shell scripts to be launched from hyperlinks.
For more information, see:
o Information on mapping MIME types to external viewers.
o Information on mapping file extensions to MIME types.
o Information on allowing shell scripts to be executed via
hyperlinks.
o Native viewing of HDF and netCDF scientific data files. Here are
some examples:
o An HDF file of a galactic jet.
o A complex HDF file containing lots of different data
elements, including hyperlinks within annotations.
o A netCDF file.
o An image of NCSA Director Larry Smarr.
o A huge (5+ megabytes) HDF file of satellite weather image
and associated metadata.
Note: since it is possible for Mosaic 2.0 to be compiled without
native HDF/netCDF viewing support, your particular copy may not
be able to view the above examples.
o URL redirection. This means that a server can return, instead of a
document, a pointer to a document anywhere on the Internet. When
this happens, Mosaic will transparently attempt to fetch the new
document.
Among other things, this enables clean graphical distributed
information space mapping -- a single image map can have hotspots
corresponding to information resources scattered throughout various
information servers across the Internet, and the user can jump to any
of those resources with a single mouse click.
For an example of URL redirection in conjunction with image
mapping, see the experimental Internet Resources Metamap.
o Inlined image caching, including customizability of the amount of
memory Mosaic will use to cache inlined images (default is 2048
kilobytes).
Use the command line flag -ics or the X resource
imageCacheSize to set the size of the image cache in kilobytes.
o Delayed image loading, for users with slow network connections.
Use the -dil command line option or set the delayImageLoads
X resource to True to enable delayed image loading by default; it can
be controlled on a per-window basis from Mosaic's Options
menu.
o HTTP/1.0 support. In addition to enabling things like fill-out forms
support, redirection, and authentication, this means that Mosaic can
talk with the new breed of sophisticated HTTP/1.0 servers being
deployed on the network to the fullest extent of their -- and
Mosaic's -- ability.
See also the CERN HTTP/1.0 spec.
o Better hypermedia document display capabilities:
o Documents can be arbitrarily long now.
o Normal document text is formatted to the width of the visible
window, not the width of the widest element (e.g. sections of
preformatted text) in the document.
o Support for <BR> (line break) and <HR> (horizontal rule)
tags.
o Sophisticated support for inlining Motif widgets into
documents, which enables the fill-out forms support
described above.
o Performance speedups.
o URL canonicalization -- a fancy way of saying that Mosaic strips
redundant or useless information (like capital letters in hostnames,
":80" in HTTP queries and ":70" in Gopher queries, and trailing dots
in hostnames) out of all URLs it accesses. This makes the global
history tracking much more consistent by improving the odds that
two slightly different URLs that point to the same document are
recognized as identical by Mosaic.
o Improved system resource management -- many memory and socket
leaks were fixed. Due to these fixes and the inlined image caching
mentioned above, Mosaic should not be terribly hard on your system
even if you use it for a long time now.
o Better PostScript output, including output of color inlined images.
o Cute little icons in Gopher and FTP interfaces.
o Enhanced remote control features, including ability to scroll through
documents from shell scripts and cleanly fire off external viewers
(e.g. images and audio).
o Mouse tracking -- see the URL for the hyperlink under the pointer.
o Menu item File->Refresh Current provides a convenient
way to restore proper inlined image colors in a given window if the
colors have been previously stolen for another window's inlined
images -- keyboard accelerator (with pointer inside the scrolled
document viewing window) is Capital-R.
o Configurable Documents menu, for local site configuration.
o Full compile-time customizability of home page, docs directory, and
all other hardcoded URLs for sites without direct Internet access.
o Lots and lots of bug fixes and minor functionality and performance
improvements.
More Information
================
You may wish to look over an exhaustive list of technical changes that took
place during the development of Mosaic version 2.0.
To take full advantage of Mosaic 2.0's capabilities, you should run a very
smart HTTP/1.0 server. We recommend NCSA httpd. If you prefer a
Perl-based server, try Plexus. Other options are CERN httpd and GN.
mosa...@ncsa.uiuc.edu
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cheers,
Marc & Eric
--
Marc Andreessen & Eric Bina
Software Development Group
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
ma...@ncsa.uiuc.edu & eb...@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Hans-Joachim Zierke
blo...@tnt.uni-hannover.de (Arnold Bloemer) schrieb am 10.11.93:
> Fuer alle, die sich noch nicht mit dem World-Wide Web beschaeftigt
> haben, sollte jetzt ein idealer Zeitpunkt sein, dies nachzuholen.
>
> Das World-Wide Web und der World-Wide Web Browser Mosaic haben jetzt
> eine Funktionalitaet, dass man im Prinzip Mosaic als alleiniges
> Benutzerinterface einsetzen koennte.
Gibt's auch eine OShalbe - Version?
hajo
Arnold Bloemer
Ich befuerchte, dass fuer OS/2 noch kein Browser angepasst wurde. Zumindest
habe ich noch nichts davon gehoert. Du koenntest aber mal eine Anfrage
in comp.infosystems.www stellen oder an die Mailingliste der WWW Gurus
www-...@info.cern.ch schicken. Das sind die beiden zentralen
Diskussionsforen fuers World-Wide Web.
Die Entwicklung im World-Wide Web ist zur Zeit geradezu explosiv. Es
kommt fast taeglich neue Software und jeden Tag gehen mehrere neue
Server ans Netz.
Ich habe im Anhang mal einige Infos ueber aktuelle Browser Software
zusammengestellt. Zwei davon sind Plaintext Versionen von
Hypertextseiten (ueber Mosaic ausgegeben). Am besten greift Ihr auf
die uebers World-Wide Web zu. Dann koennt Ihr auch ueber die Hyperlinks
den Referenzen auf die Software folgen und die Programme gleich
transferieren. Der einfachste Zugang zum Web fuer neue User geht
ueber:
telnet info.cern.ch oder telnet 128.141.201.74
Damit benutzt Ihr dann den sehr schlichten aber dafuer auch fuer dumme
Terminals einsetzbaren Linemode Browser auf dem Rechner in Cern.
Anschliessend am besten sich einen Browser besorgen (z.B. Mosaic) und
installieren. Dann geht der Zugriff wesentlich schneller und das ganze
macht aufgrund der besseren Funktionalitaet auch mehr Spass. Fuer die
meisten Browser und Systeme gibt es bereits Binaries. Es reicht dann
oft, einfach das Binary auszupacken und zu starten. Unter Umstaenden
muesst ihr (zumindest unter UNIX) die Variable WWW_HOME noch auf eine
Startseite setzen, z.B.:
setenv WWW_HOME http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
oder auf eine eigene Seite, z.B. eure home directory:
setenv WWW_HOME file:/home/username
Anschliessend koennt Ihr dann versuchen, Eure erste HTML (Hypertext
Markup Language) Seite zu schreiben und mit Links in die ganze weite
Welt versehen. Am besten abgucken wie es andere machen, z.B. ueber
View Source... im File Menue unter Mosaic.
Wer den lemacs hat, kann sich die Arbeit deutlich erleichtern und
gleichzeitig Hilfestellung beim Erstellen von Hyperlinks bekommmen,
indem er die HTML Menues von meinem Kollegen Heiko Muenkel benutzt:
ftp://ftp.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/pub/unix/editors/lemacs/contrib/hm--html-menus-2.0.tar.gz
Eine eigene Startseite koennt Ihr dann vereinbaren mit:
setenv WWW_HOME file:/home/username/startpage.html
Viel Erfolg und natuerlich Spass im Hyperspace,
Arnold
---
Dipl.-Ing. Arnold Bloemer Universitaet Hannover
Institut fuer Theoretische Nachrichtentechnik
und Informationsverarbeitung
blo...@tnt.uni-hannover.de Appelstrasse 9A
fax: +49 511 762-5333 D-30167 Hannover
phone: +49 511 762-5320 Germany
Summary of availability and features of NCSA-supplied Mosaic 2.0 binaries
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mosaic/Mosaic-binaries
-rwxr-xr-x 1 11811 wsstaff 756381 Nov 10 05:44 Mosaic-alpha.Z
-rwxr-xr-x 1 11811 wsstaff 1995413 Nov 10 05:44 Mosaic-dec.Z
-rwxr-xr-x 1 11811 wsstaff 1719076 Nov 10 05:44 Mosaic-hp700.Z
-rwxr-xr-x 1 11811 wsstaff 1859677 Nov 11 06:30 Mosaic-ibm-static.Z
-rwxr-xr-x 1 11811 wsstaff 2924967 Nov 10 05:45 Mosaic-ibm.Z
-rwxr-xr-x 1 11811 wsstaff 1442979 Nov 10 06:00 Mosaic-sgi.Z
-rwxr-xr-x 1 11811 1 1502779 Nov 10 18:52 Mosaic-solaris.Z
-rwxr-xr-x 1 11811 wsstaff 2606677 Nov 10 05:45 Mosaic-sun-lresolv.Z
-rwxr-xr-x 1 11811 wsstaff 2589890 Nov 10 05:46 Mosaic-sun.Z
Mosaic-alpha: DEC Alpha, OSF/1 version 1.3.
No DTM, no HDF, no native WAIS.
Mosaic-dec: DEC MIPS, Ultrix 4.0.
DTM, HDF, no native WAIS.
Mosaic-hp700: HP 9000/730, HP-UX 9.01.
No DTM, HDF, no native WAIS.
Mosaic-ibm: IBM RS/6000, AIX 3.2.4, X11R5.
DTM, HDF, native WAIS.
Mosaic-ibm-static: IBM RS/6000, AIX 3.2.4, linked static.
DTM, HDF, native WAIS.
NOTE: This binary is an experiment; please
give it a shot if the normal Mosaic-ibm
doesn't work on your system and let us
know how it goes. There seem to be
spurious error messages printed in the
shell window when this binary is run;
they don't seem to affect the program's
functionality.
Also note that this binary is the only
one not compiled with debugging enabled,
as the debugging binary was over 11
megabytes.
Mosaic-sgi: SGI IRIX 4.0.x.
DTM, HDF, native WAIS.
Mosaic-solaris: Sun Solaris 2.3.
No DTM, no HDF, no native WAIS.
NOTE: You may need to set the environment
variable XKEYSYMDB to point to the
XKeysymDB file on your system when
running this binary.
Mosaic-sun-lresolv: Sun SunOS 4.1.3, linked to system libresolv.a.
DTM, HDF, native WAIS.
Mosaic-sun: Sun SunOS 4.1.3.
DTM, HDF, native WAIS.
NOTE: If Mosaic-sun does not work on your
particular system, you should try
Mosaic-sun-lresolv instead (unless you
are running Solaris; then you should run
Mosaic-solaris).
All Mosaic binaries -- except Mosaic-ibm-static -- are compiled with
debugging (-g) enabled, so users can send us a core traceback if a
coredump should happen to occur. If you wish, you may strip the
binaries; however, you will then be unable to help us if something
goes wrong, and we may not be able to fix any bugs you encounter.
Note that it is relatively straightforward to compile Mosaic yourself
on, in particular, SGI, IBM, and DEC Alpha systems as shipped by the
respective vendors.
Note further that we may stop distributing any of these binaries at
any time.
==============================================================================
The Uniform Resource Locator for this document is:
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/faq-machines.html
Machines and Systems (nur Auszuege !)
********************
Why aren't binaries for {HP Snake, Linux, VMS, your platform here} being
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
distributed?
++++++++++++
Because we don't have a machine on which to compile. If you want us to regularly
distribute binaries for a particular machine, donate us a development system. Else,
there's not much we can do.
We will, subject to resource/time constraints, merge user-supplied patches for
various platforms into the Mosaic source; we will also distribute user-contributed
binaries for other systems. Contact mosa...@ncsa.uiuc.edu to contribute either.
User-contributed versions are available here.
To what systems has Mosaic been ported?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This is an incomplete list of links to unsupported versions of Mosaic.
o Available from NCSA's ftp server:
o HP700-series binary
o NeXT binary
o VMS binary
o VMS diffs
o Linux binary available at sunsite.unc.edu in
/pub/Linux/system/Network/info-systems/
o 386bsd source and binary available at gil.physik.rwth-aachen.de in
/pub/xmosaic/
o SCO ODT version available at sosco.sco.com in /TLS/, the TLS number is tls033.
o Apple A/UX binary is available at iraf.noao.edu in /iraf/v210/AUX3/auxbin/
==============================================================================
The Uniform Resource Locator for this document is:
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Clients.html
W3 Clients
**********
These programs allow you to access the WWW from your own computer. See also:
getting the files , W3 software .
Terminal based browsers
=======================
Line Mode Browser
This program gives W3 readership to anyone with a dumb terminal. A general
purpose information retrieval tool.
"Lynx" full screen browser
This is a hyhpertext browser for vt100s using full screen, arrow keys,
highlighting, etc.
NJIT's Browser
Assumes a character-grid terminal with cursor addressing, and provides a
full-screen interface to the web.
Tom Fine's perlWWW
A tty-based browser written in perl.
For VMS
Dudu Rashty's full screen client based on VMS's SMG screen management
routines.
Emacs w3-mode
W3 browse mode for emacs. Uses multiple fonts when used with Lemacs or
Epoch. See doc .
PC Running Windows
==================
Cello
Browser from Cornell LII
Mosaic for Windows
From NCSA.
Macintosh
=========
Mosaic for Macintosh
From NCSA. Full featured.
Samba
From CERN. Basic.
X-Windows
=========
NCSA Mosaic for X
Browser using X11/Motif. Multimedia magic.
"ViolaWWW" Browser for X11
Browser for X11. (Beta, unsupported)
tkWWW Browser/Editor for X11
Browser/Editor for X11. (Beta)
MidasWWW Browser
From Tony Johnson. (Beta, works well.)
NeXTStep
========
Browser-Editor on the NeXT
A browser/editor for NeXTStep. Allows wysiwyg hypertext editing. Requires
NeXTStep 3.0
Unreleased
==========
Browser on CERNVM
A full-screen browser for VM. Nonexistant. Use the line mode www. Might arrive
suddenly one day.
Dave Ragget's Browser
Unreleased. For X11, (later PC?)
Erwise
X-windows early browser. Unsupported, now of historical.
Dierk Lucyga
> Gibt's auch eine OShalbe - Version?
Leider nein (oder soll ich sagen Gott sei Dank? Von Hyper* halt ich
nicht viel...).
Falls Du allerdings stolzer Besitzer von IBM TCP/IP 2.0 und der damit
verbundenen WINSOCK.DLL sein solltest, kannst Du Dir das Teil fuer Win-
doof besorgen. Heute ist die Version 1.0b(eta) herausgekommen.
In comp.infosystems.gopher steht wo.
--
Papernet: | Internet:
Dierk Lucyga | di...@theoris.rz.uni-konstanz.de
Universitaet Konstanz | (MIME and Metamail accepted)
D-78434 Konstanz |------------------------------------
Voicenet: | God is REAL
+49 7531 88 2404 | unless declared INTEGER
----------------------------------------------------------------
Above posting does not necessarily tally with my employers point of view.
Arnold Bloemer
>Hans-Joachim Zierke (ha...@quijote.in-berlin.de) wrote:
>
>> Gibt's auch eine OShalbe - Version?
>
>Leider nein (oder soll ich sagen Gott sei Dank? Von Hyper* halt ich
>nicht viel...).
>Falls Du allerdings stolzer Besitzer von IBM TCP/IP 2.0 und der damit
>verbundenen WINSOCK.DLL sein solltest, kannst Du Dir das Teil fuer Win-
Gibt es auch anderswo, z.B.:
Aus dem Announcement von NCSA Mosaic for MS Windows 1.0:
If you do not have your own WinSock1.1, and you want a WinSock
that will be useful for programs other than only NCSA Mosaic,
then we would suggest trying the alpha release of the Trumpet
WinSock, available in the "sockets" subdirectory (although this
copy may not be the latest released.)
Trumpet wird auch von Cello, einem weiteren World-Wide Web Browser fuer
MS Windows empfohlen:
Cello runs atop a WINSOCK network layer. We recommend the use
of Peter Tattam's Trumpet Winsock, available from
ftp.utas.edu.au, if you don't have a Winsock already.
Interessant ist auch:
NCSA Mosaic for Microsoft Windows is a WinSock client program. It
requires network (TCP/IP) access through the WinSock DLL
interface. If you are using Windows NT, this is built in.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>doof besorgen. Heute ist die Version 1.0b(eta) herausgekommen.
Gestern ist die 1.0 Final Release rausgekommen (siehe Anhang)
>In comp.infosystems.gopher steht wo.
Besser in comp.infosystems.www schauen, das ist die zentrale Newsgruppe
fuers World-Wide Web und fuer Mosaic.
Attached sind die aktuellen Announcements fuer:
NCSA Mosaic for MS Windows 1.0
NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh 1.0
Cello Beta Version 0.8 (fuer MS Windows)
Arnold
P.S.: Der Heimatserver von Mosaic ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu ist zur Zeit
hoffnungslos ueberlastet. Die ganze Welt saugt. Das letzte
Mal habe ich solche Zustaende beim Announcement von X11R5
erlebt.
---
Dipl.-Ing. Arnold Bloemer Universitaet Hannover
Institut fuer Theoretische Nachrichtentechnik
und Informationsverarbeitung
blo...@tnt.uni-hannover.de Appelstrasse 9A
fax: +49 511 762-5333 D-30167 Hannover
phone: +49 511 762-5320 Germany
From mosa...@void.ncsa.uiuc.edu (Windows Mosaic Tech Support)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www,comp.infosystems.gopher,alt.winsock,comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: NCSA Mosaic for MS Windows 1.0 release notice....
We are happy to announce the official final release of NCSA Mosaic for
Microsoft Windows version 1.0.
NCSA Mosaic is a distributed hypermedia system designed for information
retrieval and discovery over the global Internet. Mosaic provides a unified
hypermedia interface to the various protocols, data formats, and information
archives used on the Internet and provides powerful new methods for discovering
and using information. Mosaic is capable of accessing data via protocols such
as Gopher, World Wide Web, FTP and NNTP (Usenet News) natively, and other data
services such as Archie, WAIS, and Veronica through gateways.
NCSA Mosaic for Microsoft Windows is a WinSock client program. It requires
network (TCP/IP) access through the WinSock DLL interface. If you are using
Windows NT, this is built in. If you are using Windows 3.1, you need to
obtain a WinSock and install it on your system. There is an alpha version of
a shareware WinSock on our FTP server. If you are running a commercial TCP/IP
stack, such as FTP Software's, you need to obtain their WinSock DLL directly
from your LAN vendor.
BUG REPORTS AND ENHANCEMENT REQUESTS should be emailed to
"mosai...@ncsa.uiuc.edu". PLEASE INCLUDE THE VERSION NUMBER YOU ARE USING
IN ANY MAIL YOU SEND US. Thank you for your interest and support.
The beta release is via anonymous FTP on NCSA's FTP server, "ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu"
(141.142.20.50), in the directory "/PC/Mosaic".
This directory contains the following files:
readme.now - General info on Mosaic.
wmos1_0.zip - executable & support files for NCSA Windows Mosaic.
sockets - This directory contains a copy (not necessarily the most
recent) of Peter Tattam's Trumpet Winsock, a shareware
WinSock sockets library.
old - This directory contains old beta versions of Windows Mosaic.
viewers - This directory contains external viewers we have found to
be useful with Windows Mosaic.
If you do not have your own WinSock1.1, and you want a WinSock that will be
useful for programs other than only NCSA Mosaic, then we would suggest trying
the alpha release of the Trumpet WinSock, available in the "sockets"
subdirectory (although this copy may not be the latest released.)
-Chris Wilson
-Jon Mittelhauser
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
New features since the 0.7b beta release:
-----------------------------------------
The scrolling bug is fixed. You shouldn't see the screen mess up due
to images or large text in the document anymore.
Network I/O is now <B>interruptable</B>. Click on the big
Mosaic icon in the upper-right corner to kill a net transfer.
Also, quitting Mosaic forces a kill of any net transfers in progress.
This means the "Can't run two instances of the same program" error message
shouldn't appear anymore.
Images can now be aligned middle, top, or bottom, instead of just top.
Considering that the default is bottom, and we only did top before, I
was pretty surprised that no-one mentioned this anomaly throughout all
our beta testing.
News articles are now readable (i.e., not all on one line.)
URL redirection (a feature of HTTP 1.0) is now supported.
Home Page loading is fixed.
If you were having problems with the first document you tried never
loading, but subsequent ones working fine, that's fixed.
Title and URL boxes are redrawn at the correct time now.
Back & Forward Assertion Failed errors are gone.
Telnet executable (used for telnet:// URLs) is now configureable - see
"telnet=" under the Viewers section of the INI file.
FTP error messages are now returned to the user.
FTP logins now use your email address when logging in (this fixes a
connect problem the CERN LibWWW was creating.
You can log in to a NON-anonymous FTP via the following method: set the
URL to be FILE://username@machine/pathname. For example, to log in
as user "jdoe" to FTP site "ftp.yoyodyne.com", in the "/usr/jdoe"
directory, give the URL:
"file://jd...@ftp.yoyodyne.com/usr/jdoe"
Mosaic will pop up a dialog box, asking to confirm the username and
give your password. <B>Your password is maintained within Mosaic
until you quit. Do <I>NOT</I> use this feature if you are
security-paranoid.</B>
Gopher and FTP now use pretty icons for files/directories/etc, and FTP
shows the file sizes.
New set of Configured Menus, with all kinds of pointers.
Horizontal rules are prettier now.
Known bugs
----------
There is a bug with local file support, particularly with directory viewing,
that causes GPFs.
Mosaic loses some GDI resources each time you run it. Restart Windows to
regain the resources lost.
Future Features
---------------
Forms support
Printing
User authorization
User Interface to Hotlist/Configureable menus
Document saving
Online documentation
Copy document to Clipboard
From tr...@cornell.edu (Thomas R.Bruce)
Newsgroups: alt.hypertext,alt.winsock,comp.infosystems.www,comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: Cello Beta .8 released
Folks:
Cello Beta Version .8 is hereby released. You can obtain it
from ftp.law.cornell.edu, directory /pub/LII/Cello.
A note on the version numbers; Distinct version discontinued
------------------------------------------------------------
Beta version r8 is the successor to Winsock version r6, and to
the Distinct version beta 7. There will be no continuation of
the Distinct version; Cello is now exclusively Winsock-based.
The files and messages on ftp.law.cornell.edu have been
appropriately adjusted.
PLEASE NOTE that documentation in the online help system still
incorporates the installation instructions for the Distinct
version, a problem which will be attacked next (this is
getting us a lot of mail).
What it is:
-----------
Cello is a multipurpose Internet browser which permits you to
access information from many sources in many formats.
Technically, it's a WorldWideWeb client application. This
means that you can use Cello to access data from WorldWideWeb,
Gopher, FTP, and CSO/ph/qi servers, as well as X.500 directory
servers, WAIS servers, HYTELNET, TechInfo, and others through external
gateways. You can also use Cello and the WWW-HTML hypertext
markup standard to build local hypertext systems on LANS, on
single machines, and so on. Cello also permits the
postprocessing of any file for which you've set up an
association in the Windows File Manager -- for example, if you
download an uncompressed Microsoft Word file from an FTP site,
and the appropriate association exists in File Manager, Cello
will run MS-Word on it for you. This same capability is used
to view graphics and listen to sound files you get from the Net.
Cello runs atop a WINSOCK network layer. We recommend the use
of Peter Tattam's Trumpet Winsock, available from
ftp.utas.edu.au, if you don't have a Winsock already.
Repaired in this release:
------------------------
-- FTP timeouts adjusted to reflect reality for those on slow
links.
-- Lagging-dot in DNS names is now removed by Cello, and won't
interfere with those Winsocks which don't understand it.
-- Several very minor bugs involving display.
Not yet repaired/enhanced:
--------------------------
--Numerous user-requested enhancements to FTP handling, including
non-anonymous login and the ability to get short ("ls" not
"ls -l") listings for servers whose long listings don't make
sense.
--Printing bugs. In particular, inlined images don't print
yet. Some minor bugs with font sizes and whatnot were repaired
in the current release, but the whole thing needs a good
going-over.
Added/enhanced in this version:
------------------------------
-- Inline image support.
Cello supports inlining of .GIF, .XBM (X bitmap), .BMP, and
.PCX images. The latter should be particularly useful to
information providers who wish to serve local files only or who
have a PC-based graphics library. Autofetching of graphics can
be turned off by menu choice, and dithering may be substituted
for quantizing in the case of 24-bit images, which ought to
speed up rendition quite a bit.
There are still a few glitches having to do with color. Cello
resolves palette differences between images by loading a
scaled, representative 256-color palette and essentially
insisting that everyone adhere to it. Most of the time this
provides fairly accurate color rendition, but experimentation
shows that some shades don't do well. The subtle oranges used
in some of the O'Reilly GNN icons seem to suffer badly, for
instance. The future alternative to this scheme will be to
mutually-resolve all images onscreen at any particular moment,
but that won't be in place for a couple of weeks yet, and is
likely to slow performance in any case. Art-book publishers
will probably want to wait.
-- DDE server support.
You can invoke Cello from other applications which support the
DDE execute command. Here's how you'd do it with an MS-Word
macro:
Sub MAIN
ChanNum = DDEInitiate("Cello", "URL")
DDEExecute(ChanNum, "http://www.law.cornell.edu")
DDETerminate(ChanNum)
End Sub
As you can see, the DDE service name is "Cello", the topic is
"URL", and the data sent in the execute command is a URL.
Needless (perhaps) to say, OLE support and DDE client support
are planned in the near future.
-- TN3270 via external application.
Cello now supports TN3270 via an external application, a
feature which was prompted by the appearance of a
freely-distributed TN3270 for Windows (see
comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc for announcements and location).
Cello expects the same #h and #p parameters used in the
"Use your own Telnet client" menu choice.
-- Locatable style and bookmark files
By popular request of long-suffering network administrators,
there are now options in the CELLO.INI file to set the location
for style and bookmark files. These are also menu-accessible.
Examples:
BookmarkFile=c:\somedir\cello.bmk
StyleFile=c:\another\dir\cello.sty
-- Bookmark-dump-to-file feature.
There is now a button in the Bookmark dialog which will dump
your entire bookmark list to an HTML file for subsequent
editing into whatever you like, possibly an alternate home page.
Coming attractions:
------------------
The sheer volume of user mail has convinced me that it's
probably time to have an online help system which reflects some
small corner of reality (grin). Documentation will be fixed
before anything else.
OLE, FTP enhancements, and DDE client features will follow.
Have fun with it.
Tb.
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
| Thomas R. Bruce 607-255-1221 |
| Research Associate FAX: 607-255-7193 |
| Cornell Law School |
| 481 Myron Taylor Hall t...@law.mail.cornell.edu |
| Ithaca, NY 14853 |
| |
| "Language -- it's a shipwreck, it's a job." |
| --Laurie Anderson |
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+
From ki...@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Kim Stephenson)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www
Subject: NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh 1.0
NCSA is proud to Announce the 1.0 release of NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh.
1.0 was released Wednesday, November 10, 1993 at 8:00 pm (central time).
NCSA Mosaic is an enabling technology that allows the user to easily access
networked information from all over the world with the click of a button.
The Internet is the primary source of networked information to the
University and scientific communities. The use of these network facilities
is growing by leaps and bounds. For example, Internet traffic is doubling
every eight to ten months. With more and more people using the Internet
the amount of information available is literally exploding. Services to
access this information are rapidly being created. A few examples of the
services currently available are; Gopher, WAIS, World Wide Web, FTP, Usenet
News, Telnet, and Archie. Without such services highly important
information could easily slip by unnoticed. NCSA Mosaic is designed to
provide transparent, seamless access to nearly all of these information
sources and services. In addition it gives the user a mechanism to
retrieve and display a wide variety of data types. These types include
text, images, movies, animations, sound and scientific data.
NCSA Mosaic for the Macintosh can be download via anonymous ftp from
ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu directory Mac/Mosaic.
The bugs and improvements of 1.0 release: For a complete list of features
check the Macintosh home page.
New Features..........
tn3270 support
Loading of binhex files in gopher
Support for HR and ALT HTML tags
Access authorization: test case http://www1.cern.ch/AAtest/Welcome.html
Full HTTP1.0 support, including redirection: test case
http://www.bsdi.com/test-cases/HTTP/
Gopher tries to guess image types by file extension now.
Bugs...............
QuickTimes is still a problem for some users. It appears to timeout
before receiving the entire file.
Better interrupt support.
All known interrupt hang-ups have been fixed.
Telnet icons for Gopher are in.
CSO gopher searches work, and do not spin forever.
Annotations can be edited/deleted again.
Temporary files are back in System Folder.
Please send any questions, comments, bugs or suggestions to
mosai...@ncsa.uiuc.edu
NCSA Mosaic for the Mac Development Team.
Aleks Totic, Tom Redman, Kim Stephenson & Mike McCool
University of Illinois
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
152 CAB
605 E. Springfield
Champaign, IL 61820
Heiko Schlichting
>P.S.: Der Heimatserver von Mosaic ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu ist zur Zeit
> hoffnungslos ueberlastet.
Das kann man wohl sagen. Die Maschine ist wirklich voellig ueberlastet,
deshalb 'Mosaic' lieber von anderen Servern holen. Rechner in Berlin
oder im WiN koennen es von uns holen:
ftp.fu-berlin.de:/pub/unix/network/Mosaic/*
Dort sind die Sources und auch die Binaries von Mosaic fuer X zu finden
(inklusive der Imake-Files von Rainer Kluthe).
Die MS-Windows und die Macintosh-Version habe ich wegen Ueberlastung des
US-Servers noch nicht erhaschen koennen. Sobald ich die bekomme, werde
ich sie ebenfalls auf ftp.fu-berlin.de ablegen.
Ansonsten kann ich Arnold nur zustimmen. Es lohnt sich wirklich, die
Version 2.0 von 'Mosaic fuer X' zu installieren und zu benutzen. Nachdem
ich der alten Version schon intern den Titel 'Programm des Jahres' verliehen
habe, weiss ich gar nicht mehr, wie ich das noch steigern soll...
Heiko
--
Heiko Schlichting, he...@Chemie.FU-Berlin.DE, Freie Universitaet Berlin
Institut fuer Kristallographie und Zentraleinrichtung Datenverarbeitung
Arnold Bloemer
ftp://ftp.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/pub/info-systems/WWW-Mosaic
Subdir: Web:
------------
alles fuer X11 und Unix
Achtung: Directories und Files der neuen 2.0 Version sind mit
Mosaic*** bezeichnet.
xmosaic*** bezeichnet die alten Files und Directories,
sollten aber bald geloescht werden, alte Versionen
(1.2), dann unter Mosaic-old
Subdir: PC:
-----------
kompletter Mirror von ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/PC
Mosaic 2.0 auf der Mosaic Subdirectory, ansonsten auch andere Programme
von NCSA fuer PC
Subdir: Mac:
-----------
kompletter Mirror von ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mac
Mosaic 2.0 auf der Mosaic Subdirectory, ansonsten auch viele andere
Programme von NCSA fuer Mac
Arnold
Arnold Bloemer
...
>-----------
>
> kompletter Mirror von ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/PC
>
> Mosaic 2.0 auf der Mosaic Subdirectory, ansonsten auch andere Programme
Sorry, das muss 1.0 heissen fuer PC und MAC. Die Versionsnummern der
X11 Version sind aber nicht vergleichbar bzgl. Funktionalitaet
zu den Versionsnummern von PC und Mac Version. Fuer X11, PC und Mac
Versionen sind bei NCSA jeweils eigene Entwicklerteams zustaendig.
Nullmeier, Markus
>Hans-Joachim Zierke (ha...@quijote.in-berlin.de) wrote:
>> Gibt's auch eine OShalbe - Version?
>Falls Du allerdings stolzer Besitzer von IBM TCP/IP 2.0 und der damit
>verbundenen WINSOCK.DLL sein solltest, kannst Du Dir das Teil fuer Win-
Kann man daraus folgern, dass OS/2 TCP/IP vor 2.0 auch mit OS/2 2.x
funktioniert oder es fuer das aktuelle OS/2 TCP/IP-Software gibt, die
nicht von IBM geliefert wird? Womoeglich bringt jemand auch die
Trumpet-Winsock-Software mit OS/2 zum laufen (laut Weber-Fahr sollen
zumindest packet driver in einer (1) DOS-Sitzung funktionieren), auch
wenn das extrem unwahrscheinlich ist. Wie dem auch sei, teurer als
kommerzielle TCP/IP-Software fuer DOS die IBMs fuer OS/2 auch nicht.
[kein OS/2-Benutzer...]
Stephan Olbrich
: Fuer alle, die bereits Nutzer des World-Wide Web (WWW) sind, duerfte
: die neue Version von Mosaic viel Neues bringen (z.B. Fill-Out forms
: (Benutzerformulare)).
Irgendwo habe ich mal gelesen, dass Mosaic auch die Integration von
3D-Graphik unterstutzt, sowohl ueber NCSA-Viewer, als auch ueber ein
Interface zu AVS.
Weiss jemand, wie das geht?
Fuer jeglichen Hinweis waere ich dankbar.
--
===============================================================================
// Stephan Olbrich voice: +511 762 3078 or \\
// RRZN/Universitaet Hannover +511 762 4720 \\
// Schlosswender Str. 5 fax : +511 762 3003 \\
// D-30159 Hannover email: olb...@rrzn.uni-hannover.d400.de \\
===============================================================================
Arnold Bloemer
>Arnold Bloemer (blo...@tnt.uni-hannover.de) wrote:
>: Fuer alle, die bereits Nutzer des World-Wide Web (WWW) sind, duerfte
>: die neue Version von Mosaic viel Neues bringen (z.B. Fill-Out forms
>: (Benutzerformulare)).
>
>Irgendwo habe ich mal gelesen, dass Mosaic auch die Integration von
>3D-Graphik unterstutzt, sowohl ueber NCSA-Viewer, als auch ueber ein
>Interface zu AVS.
>
>Weiss jemand, wie das geht?
>
>Fuer jeglichen Hinweis waere ich dankbar.
Unter http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/hdf-browsing.html
steht mehr dazu (im Anhang die Formatted Text Version).
Daraus ein Absatz mit den richtigen Stichwoertern:
You'll notice in the various screen dumps above that there will
occasionally be hyperlinks that say, "To send this data over
DTM, click here." You will see such hyperlinks for all images,
palettes, and 2D and 3D scientific datasets in HDF and netCDF
files you browse, if you have established a DTM connection with
a program such as NCSA Collage or AVS. In this way, you can use
Mosaic as a method of painlessly and interactively pulling data
out of complex data files and passing the data to analysis or
visualization programs.
Am besten Du schaust Dir die Seite mit Mosaic an. Von da aus gibt es
dann Links zu mehr Info. Auf der Help On Version ... Seite von Mosaic 2.0
sind einige Beispiele fuer den Zugriff auf HDF und netCDF Files:
<LI> Native viewing of HDF and netCDF scientific data files. Here are
some examples: <P>
<UL>
<LI> An HDF file of a <A
HREF="http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/demoweb/jet2.hdf">galactic
jet</A>.
<LI> A <A
HREF="http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/HDF/test.hdf">complex
HDF file</A> containing lots of different data elements,
including hyperlinks within annotations.
<LI> A <A HREF="http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/demoweb/z-2d.nc">netCDF file</A>.
<LI> An <A HREF="http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/demoweb/smarr.hdf">image
of NCSA Director Larry Smarr</A>.
<LI> A huge (5+ megabytes) HDF file of <A
HREF="http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/demoweb/weather.hdf">satellite
weather image and associated metadata</A>.
</UL> <P>
<i>Note</I>: since it is possible for Mosaic 2.0 to be compiled
without native HDF/netCDF viewing support, your particular copy
may not be able to view the above examples. <P>
Arnold
---
Dipl.-Ing. Arnold Bloemer Universitaet Hannover
Institut fuer Theoretische Nachrichtentechnik
und Informationsverarbeitung
blo...@tnt.uni-hannover.de Appelstrasse 9A
fax: +49 511 762-5333 D-30167 Hannover
phone: +49 511 762-5320 Germany
The Uniform Resource Locator for this document is:
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/hdf-browsing.html
HDF Browsing in NCSA Mosaic
***************************
NCSA Mosaic versions 2.0 and later will be able to natively browse scientific data files
in HDF and netCDF formats.
Right now not much information or documentation is available on this capability yet,
since version 2.0 of Mosaic is still in development. If you are particularly interested in
HDF/netCDF data file browsing via Mosaic, please contact mosa...@ncsa.uiuc.edu.
Example Screen Dumps
====================
Here is a screen dump of viewing an HDF file containing an image of a scientific
visualization within Mosaic. Here's an example of viewing an HDF file containing an
image of NCSA Director Larry Smarr.
Here are a series of screen dumps showing browsing through a complex HDF file
containing images, palettes, datasets (arrays of floating-point numbers), labels and
annotations, attributes, and structural hierarchies (Vgroups, or virtual groups, in HDF
terminology) within a single file:
o Top half of the initial interface to a single HDF file.
o Bottom half of the initial interface to the same HDF file. Notice, at the very
bottom of the window, a hyperlink to a Vgroup.
o Vgroup (hierarchical structure element) contents referenced from the hyperlink
in the toplevel interface.
o Vgroup contents referenced from above Vgroup.
Here's an example of browsing a netCDF data file.
The DTM Connection
==================
You'll notice in the various screen dumps above that there will occasionally be
hyperlinks that say, "To send this data over DTM, click here." You will see such
hyperlinks for all images, palettes, and 2D and 3D scientific datasets in HDF and
netCDF files you browse, if you have established a DTM connection with a program
such as NCSA Collage or AVS. In this way, you can use Mosaic as a method of
painlessly and interactively pulling data out of complex data files and passing the data
to analysis or visualization programs.
Hyperlinks and Annotations
==========================
HDF files can contain annotations as part of their normal structure. Now, with Mosaic
support for direct browsing of these files, if HDF annotations contain anchors (or, for
that matter, any other HTML elements), those anchors will be live when the HDF file is
browsed with Mosaic. So you can point to any piece of information on the network
(e.g., a scientific database query or a technical report) from inside your data files.
Also, Mosaic's annotation capability can be used to add annotations to various
sections of existing HDF/netCDF files without requiring the data files themselves to
change, via the usual Mosaic annotation facility. As usual, these annotations can be
textual or audio, and they can be personal or group/community annotations.
How Does It Work?
=================
The browsing functionality is built into the Mosaic client. (The alternatives are
undesirable right now; I can elaborate if anyone is really interested.)
Mosaic is linked with the HDF 3.3 library and contains special code for recognizing and
browsing HDF/netCDF files. (The HDF 3.3 library is available here; it transparently
supports the netCDF format.)
Internal anchor formats are used for setting up HTML returned from the HDF browsing
module of Mosaic to allow traversal of hierarchical structures and to enable the DTM
hyperlinks; these anchor formats are #hdfref;tag=%d,ref=%d (where %d is a decimal
value corresponding to the appropriate tag or reference number from the data file) and
#hdfdtm;tag=%d,ref=%d, respectively. Inlined images in browsed HDF files are
specified with the special IMG SRC argument hdfref;tag=%d,ref=%d.
Note that since the browsing capability is built right into Mosaic, HDF/netCDF files can
come from any network source/service, be it FTP, HTTP, WAIS, Gopher, or wherever.
(There are currently technical glitches that will make it difficult to serve HDF/netCDF
files over WAIS, but these will be fixed fairly soon.)