Re: Mosaic Accessories

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Date: Thu, 27 Jan 94 16:19:19 EST
From: sg04%kesser@gte.com
Message-id: <9401272119.AA20615@kesser.cisl214>
To: www-talk@www0.cern.ch, marca@eit.COM
Subject: Re: Mosaic Accessories
Cc: timbl@www0.cern.ch
Reply-To: sgutfreund@gte.com
Content-Length: 2237

I think the following will briefly clarifies more precisely
what I am getting at with this proposal:


In article HI3@lut.ac.uk, J.P.Knight@lut.ac.uk (Jon P. Knight) writes:
]
]Well I read the proposal and its pretty interesting; I'm very much in
]favour of the modular toolkit approach.  However, if TkWWW already works
]this way and its so easy to modify it using TCL, why isn't everybody
]using it already?  Why fuss about changing the whole way Mosaic works? 
]Why not leave Mosaic as a single monolithic browser for those that want
]that and use TkWWW as the extensible hackers browser?
]

You are correct. Technically, TCL/TK already correspond to this model,
and TkWWW is easier to modify.

The issue is part sociological. NCSA SDL, Marc and Eric should be
complimented many times on how their interface has "defined" the face
for which WWW is known.

While I have been an advocate inside the Telcos for Mosaic, I am truely
amazed at how fast and how high Mosaic is being recognized.  This
Mosaic has become a by-word - moving very rapidly up to the top
executive offices. And these people are not technical, and so they
don't even know what WWW is, they only know Mosaic. The success is
phenomenal, but the name it goes under is the GUI: Mosaic.

But there is more to this than just sociology. The interface that I am
proposing (call it ACI - Accessory Client Interface) can be thought of
as a universal "extension" cord to any info-bot. Thus, I see it as
connecting to: gopher, lotus notes, news, and calender clients. Indeed,
why not to any info-bot?

And if we can hammer out a standard. Then I can have an accessory (on
my PDA, Pager, Notebook or whatever) and that accessory could talk to
any of these info clients (gopher, mosaic, lotus notes).

This would clearly be the dawn of Ubiquitous Computing.  I could walk
around with a portable device. Loaded with accessory programs and plug
into Mosaic and Lotus Notes clients at will.

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Yechezkal-Shimon Gutfreund		 	   sgutfreund@gte.com [MIME]
GTE Laboratories, Waltham MA        http://www.gte.com/circus/home/home.html
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