NCSA Mosaic for X 0.10 released

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Date: Sun, 14 Mar 93 03:00:45 -0800
From: marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
Message-id: <9303141100.AA22479@wintermute.ncsa.uiuc.edu>
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch, www-announce@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: NCSA Mosaic for X 0.10 released
X-Md4-Signature: 0db169a5824c601861f4fd1ef360d334

Beta version 0.10 of NCSA Mosaic for the X Window System, a networked
information systems and World Wide Web browser, is hereby released:

file://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/xmosaic/xmosaic-0.10.tar.Z
                         .../xmosaic/binaries-0.10/xmosaic-sun.Z
                         .../xmosaic/binaries-0.10/xmosaic-sgi.Z
                         .../xmosaic/binaries-0.10/xmosaic-ibm.Z
                         .../xmosaic/binaries-0.10/xmosaic-dec.Z

This release of NCSA Mosaic is known to compile on the following
platforms:

  SGI (IRIX 4.0.2) 
  IBM (AIX 3.2)
  Sun 4 (SunOS 4.1.2 with stock X11R4 and Motif 1.1).
  DEC Ultrix.

More binaries will be supplied as I am able to find other
Motif-configured platforms to use.  (Contributions of working
binaries, or development systems, are welcome.)  Documentation is
available online.

Changes since 0.9 include:

 o Support for <IMG> tag: inlined images in HTML documents.
    o Handles X bitmap and GIF formats so far.
    o New resource, colorsPerInlinedImage, can be used to restrict
      color use of inlined images -- default is 50.
    o Image files can be located anywhere on the net (pointed to by
      URL); image data is cached in memory for fast display and
      reuse.
    o Example of inlined bitmap: 
      <IMG SRC="file://foobar.com/foobar.xbm">
    o Example of inlined image serving as anchor: 
      <A HREF="http://foobar.com/ref.html"> 
      <IMG SRC="file://foobar.com/blagh.gif"> </A>
 o Better support for acting as binary file retrieval client.
    o 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.
    o 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.
    o 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.
    o 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.
    o 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.
    o 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.
    o 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.
    o See http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu:80/mosaic-docs/file-typing-issues.html 
      for a more thorough discussion of these issues.
 o 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.
 o Search capability within documents: enter search term, scrollbar
   jumps to match and match is highlighted; repeat as desired.
 o 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).
 o Spaces converted to +'s in keyword queries now.
 o Scrollbar arrows now increment a reasonable amount when viewing
   large documents.
 o Anonymous FTP password is now always user@host.domain,
   enabling access to every strange FTP server out there that I know of.
 o Pattern-matching to determine file type based on file name now uses
   caseless string compare.
 o Better default visited anchor color for non-SGI color displays.
 o Messages from libwww now show up in pop-up dialogs like they
   should.
 o Telnet never gets asked to use unrecognized -l flag.
 o Tar files are now always retrieved to local disk (and not displayed).
 o Replacement (and better) Archie interface.
 o Mail Developers window is cleared on each use.
 o New resource trackVisitedAnchors; can be used to turn off tracking
   of visited anchors altogether.
 o Better transparent uncompression support:
    o Gzipped (.z) files are now recognized and uncompressed on
      the fly (as well as .Z files, as before).
    o New resources uncompressCommand (default 'uncompress')
      and gunzipCommand (default 'gunzip').
 o As usual, little bugfixes and cleanups.

We're targeting a 1.0 release for the beginning of April, so quick
feedback and bug reports will be GREATLY appreciated.

Finally, thanks *again* to everyone who's been contributing comments
and bug reports -- keep 'em coming!

Cheers,
Marc & Eric

--
Marc Andreessen & Eric Bina
Software Development Group
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu, ebina@ncsa.uiuc.edu