155 lines
7.6 KiB
HTML
155 lines
7.6 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML//EN">
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<html> <head>
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<title>A New Web-Browser/Editor</title>
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</head>
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<body bgcolor="#ffefd5" text="#181871">
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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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</H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<center><h1>Amaya</h1></center>
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<center><h3>Introduction</h3></center>
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<center><h4><a href="mailto: layers@vax2.rainis.net">by Larry
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Ayers</a></h4></center>
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<P> <HR>
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<p>For several years a group of programmers in France have been developing
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an elaborate text-processing system known as Thot. Thot has some
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resemblances to Tex, in that it is a structural document-editing system
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capable of very high-quality output. One major difference is that Thot is
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more WYSIWYG; the formatting tagging is hidden and doesn't have to be
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explicitly written by the user. The output formats are more varied as well.
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Thot can produce Postscript files, as Tex can, but it can also produce plain
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ASCII text and HTML.
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This last formatting capability attracted the attention of the W3
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Consortium a couple of years ago. (W3 is an international research
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organization which attempts to set standards for Internet documents; their
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flexibility and patience have been sorely tried in recent years by the flood
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of HTML innovations introduced by Microsoft and Netscape, among others).
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Using the Thot system as a core, the W3 group in collaboration with the Thot
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developers have been developing a combined web-browser and HTML editor known
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as Amaya.
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<center><h3>Source and Installation</h3></center>
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<p>Amaya, as is the case with much Linux software, is a work-in-progress.
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Until recently the source code was restricted to members of the W3
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Consortium and only binary versions were available to the public. In early
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February the source was made freely available, both at the
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<a href="http://www.w3.org/amaya ">Amaya web-site</a> and also at the
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Sunsite archive site, currently in the <i>/pub/Linux/Incoming</i> directory.
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<p>Amaya can be installed anywhere as long as the directory structure is
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preserved. It is a Motif application, so unless you have the Motif
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libraries and header files installed you will have to get the
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statically-linked binary distribution. Compiling the source necessitates
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obtaining and compiling the Thot toolkit as well, which is available from
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the same locations as Amaya. I compiled it from source and found the
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instructions to be somewhat unclear; after several false starts I found that
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the Thot source should be unarchived first, then the Amaya source should be
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unarchived so that the Amaya directory is a subdirectory of the top-level
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Thot directory. This is a very large source tree and needs about sixty
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megabytes of free disk-space over and above that required for the source
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itself. It compiled without errors but there was no evident means provided
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for cleaning up the object files, etc. I resorted to moving subdirectories
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which looked un-essential to another drive, then moving back the essential
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ones which it turned out Amaya needs. You might want to try the binary
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version first in order to determine if it suits you before going to the
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trouble of obtaining and compiling the source.
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<p>One caution: the first time you start Amaya, point it at a local file;
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otherwise it will attempt to load a file from http://www.w3.org and if
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you're not on-line at the time, it will die with a segmentation fault. The
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default home-page can be set to one on your local disk in the
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initialization file if you'd like.
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<center><h3>Editing and Browsing With Amaya</h3></center>
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<p>As an HTML editor Amaya is WYSIWYG all the way. There is no view of the
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file being edited which shows the actual HTML tags. The main window
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<a href="./gx/ayers/amaya_main.gif">(take a look!)</a> is a typical browser
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window complete with in-line graphics, with the major difference being that
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you can enter text. The various HTML tags are invisibly inserted by means
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of mouse-driven menus. I much prefer hot-keys and found that, though few
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are included by default, any number of them can be set up in the
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<i>~/.thotrc</i> file. The behaviour of the <kbd>enter</kbd> key is
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interesting. Pressing the key while just typing text will start a new
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paragraph, whereas if you are entering list-items, table-fields or other
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sequential tags another one is created.
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<p>There are two alternative file views available: the first is the
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"Structure View" <a href="./gx/ayers/amaya_struc.gif"> (here's a
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screenshot)</a> which presents a tree-like diagram of the HTML file. I
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suppose this could be useful with large files, just to get an overview.
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Another window, the "Alternate View"
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<a href="./gx/ayers/amaya_alt.gif">(another screenshot)</a>, shows you what
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your file will look like when displayed by a text-mode browser such as Lynx.
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I thought this was a nice touch. It's all too easy to work up an HTML file,
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test it with Netscape or Mosaic, and never even consider that it may be
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illegible viewed with a text-mode browser.
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<p>As a web-browser Amaya has some limitations. It is confused by many of
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the newer Netscape tags, though on relatively simple pages it does a good
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job. As an example, the Linux Gazette table-of-contents page is displayed
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in a garbled fashion. The spiral-notebook graphic on the left side of the
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page isn't rendered, and the table formatting isn't interpreted
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correctly. In contrast, the bulk of LG's content pages display well, but
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they are usually simpler in format.
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<p>Amaya wasn't really created to be a full-fledged browser, though it may
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approach that status in future releases. The W3 "position statement" on
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Amaya says that it is intended to be a test-bed platform for HTML
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development.
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<p>I never have become comfortable using Amaya, or any WYSIWYG HTML editor
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for that matter, to create HTML files from scratch. What I have been using
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it for is to experiment with already-written files. Sometimes when the
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precise tagging I want eludes me, I've loaded the file into Amaya just to
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see how it approaches the problem. It might be wise to begin using Amaya on
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copies of files. I favor lower-case tagging but when Amaya saves a file it
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will replace all of the tagging with its own, and this is all uppercase.
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Some of its other choices may not be what you want as well, so working with
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a copy allows you to incorporate the changes you like into the original
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file, leaving the rest alone.
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<center><h3>Conclusion</h3></center>
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<p>Amaya is an interesting project, and even at this early stage it's stable
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enough to be usable. I wouldn't want to have to rely on it solely, but it
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has proved useful to me on several occasions. Now that the source has been
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made public perhaps other programmers will make contributions; it's likely
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that in future months new releases will be made, amd its capabilities will
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increase.
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<hr>
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<address><a href="http://vax2.rainis.net/~layers/">Larry Ayers<layers@vax2.rainis.net></a></address>
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<!-- hhmts start -->
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Last modified: Thu Feb 27 18:50:42 CST 1997
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<!-- hhmts end -->
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<P> <hr> <P>
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1997, Larry Ayers <BR>
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Published in Issue 15 of the Linux Gazette, March 1997</H5></center>
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<!--===================================================================-->
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