Features added

Improvements and progress made to the line mode browser are listed in reverse chronological order. (See also bug list )

15 August 1991 version 0.11

July 91 version 0.10

June 91 version 0.9

24 May 91 version 0.8

21 May 91 version 0.7

Parameters avaliable on the command line :-
-v
Shows trace comments, including the pathways taken to locate a file.
-n
Makes the program non interactive with the user. No prompts are shown, and after the node is displayed it exits the program
-p
Turns off the paging. The page size can be selected by adding the value immediately after the 'p'.
-a
Stops positions of anchors being shown in the text.
These options are particulary useful when redirecting the input into either a file or to the printer. They can also be used in any order on the command line, as long as 'WWW' is the first arguement.

When the recall command is used to view what files have been visited, the titles of the files are used, rather than the file name. If there is no title then the file name is used.

14 May 91

The function HTOpen() called from HTAccess has been changed so that it takes two parameters instead of one. This extra one being a pointer to an address where the format style is stored as an integer. The translations of the integers to the formats can be seen in WWW.h. At the momment this extra parameter is not used but will be in the near future so that more files can be accessed.

10 May 91

WWW now reads the formatted text into a double linked buffer one screen full at a time and then produces it on the screen. This enables checking of documents so that splitting of small paragraphs or titles does not occur at the bottom of the screen.

An option is offered to return to the top of the present document being viewed.

Tim added the necessary code so that WWW can now access remote files using anonymous FTP.

17 April 91

Modified WWW so that it is also executable on the SUN machines., i.e. using ordinary C.

First version realeased on PRIAM, for testing by a few users, to gain feedback.

Accepts keywords with the execute command.

8 April 91

Keywords can be entered on the command line.

The input file is copied into a buffer as soon as it is opened, so that the input channel is closed as soon as possible and the server freed. The first 23 lines of the document are read into the buffer and produced onto the screen. As soon as this is done, the remaining file is read into the buffer so the input channel is closed.

7 March 91

Created an array called 'string_space' which is filled with blank spaces to be used for printing out margins etc. This method of printing a string was found to be faster than individually printing spaces.

A history mechanism has been included so that a list of all the documents viewed are stored so that the user can refer back to them using the BACK, HOME and RECALL commands.

Changed code so that the browser can handle text which contains long words which exceed the allowed line length on their own. This is just done by continuing the word on the following line.

Read titles and headings into a buffer before outputting so that in cases where the title has a word longer than the allowed line length can be dealt with (for example above).This could also be useful in helping to solve the above problem. Maybe extend the length of headings.

5 March 91

Handles a "LISTING" tag by treating it in the same way as an "XMP" tag. This is because, in the case of the line mode browser, the screen is limited to 80 columns and so the browser is unable to work with the 132 columns which the "LISTING" tag normally expects.

Handles an "ADDRESS" tag, which left justifies the text.

27 Feb 91

Lists and the help menu are not so spread out, as before.

The browser works with file numbers rather than the file pointers.

Tidied up paging, with the last line of a page repeated at top of next.

Deals with tags within anchors.

11 Feb 91

HTTP access to cernvm server, including FIND and NEWS tested.

Browser can be executed by 'WWW' , 'YP' (yellow pages), 'XNEWS', or 'FIND'.

"PLAINTEXT" tag added. Prints out the node exactly as it finds it in the file.

Prompt only contains appropriate options, as does the help message.

Keyword search option added.

Before Feb 91

Text formatting and line wrapping completed to a reasonable standard.

Removed section of program where 'r'has to be entered in order to select a reference.

When no hypertext references have been found, the browser informs the user, and doesn't offer the list option in the help menu.

Produces an error message if the user tries to select a reference or menu, when no references have been found.

Records whether an anchor is a NAME or an HREF.

Stop **** END **** (now [End]) appearing in the wrong places. This problem appears due to the lines in the html file being too long, so this causes an error in the 'C' run time.

Handles a glossary.

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Nicola P , Tim BL