Chimera Help
Program Info
This is Chimera 1.50, written by John Kilburg (john@cs.unlv.edu)
and others (see the README file in the chimera distribution for more info).
The HTML widget code was originally written at
NCSA. Keep in mind that the HTML widget used by Chimera is a
modified version and any problems are John's fault.
Mailing List
The name of the mailing list is bug-chimera@cs.unlv.edu. If you want
to join the list, send email to bug-chimera-request@cs.unlv.edu. Send
bug reports to bug-chimera@cs.unlv.edu.
Mouse Button Usage
If you click on an anchor with the first mouse button then the
document will be loaded and displayed (if possible). If the second
mouse button is used then Chimera will ask for a filename and save
the document to the file.
Quit
Clicking on this button causes Chimera to stop execution. It is important
that you use this button instead of, say, control-c.
For instance, if you do not use the Quit button to exit Chimera any changes
you make to the list of bookmarks will not be saved.
Open Document
This command tells Chimera to display a requester for a document
URL. The cursor automatically warps to the text entry field so
move movement is not required after the button is pressed. A click
on the cancel button on the requester causes Chimera to discard the
requester and resume operation as before. A click on the OK button
causes Chimera to attempt to load the specified document. If the
URL is invalid or the document is unavailable then an error message
is displayed. If the document was successfully accessed then
Chimera displays the document (in the case of HTML) or executes
an external program to deal with the document.
Home
When the home button is pressed the document that was first displayed
is displayed. This is the same as pressing Back until the first
document is visible.
Back
Clicking on this button causes Chimera to ``back up'' to the previous
document.
This button will be deactivated if only one document is available.
Source
Clicking on this button causes Chimera to display the HTML source of the
currently displayed document.
Reload
Clicking on this button causes Chimera to reload the current document.
This is useful for a when the original document has changed (you are
currently working on a project, for example) and you need to refresh
the document.
Save
Clicking on this button causes Chimera to save the current document.
Before the document is saved a requester
pops up to request the filename. The save requester has 5
buttons: Save Text, Save Pretty Text, Save Postscript, Save HTML,
and Cancel. The Save Text button directs Chimera to save the document
as plain text. The Save Pretty Text button causes the document to
be saved as formatted text. The Save Postscript button causes the
document to be save as postscript. The Save HTML button causes
the document to be saved as HTML (I hope you have the idea
by now). The Cancel button cancels the operation and dismisses
the requester window.
Help
Clicking on this button causes Chimera to display the document you are
reading now.
Bookmark
When you click on this button a list of bookmarks pops up. To view a
document which has a bookmark just double click on the bookmark.
Along the button of the bookmark list window is a row of four buttons:
open, dismiss, add, and delete. The open button opens the currently
highlighted bookmark. The dismiss button hides the bookmark list.
The add button adds the title of the current document to the
bookmark list (the URL is used if there is no title). The
delete button deletes the currently highlighted bookmark.
Print
When you click on the Print button a requester is displayed which
shows the default printer name and 4 buttons. The printer name
can be changed to whatever you want. The buttons are used to
specify the print format. The Print Text button causes plain text
to be sent to the printer. The Print Pretty Text button causes
formatted text to be sent to the printer. The Print Postscript
button causes postscript to be sent to the printer. The Cancel
button cancels the operation and dismisses the requester.
It is up to you to pick the format that is most appropriate for
the selected printer.
Search
When the search button is pressed a requester appears which allows
you to enter a string for Chimera to find. If the string is found
then the document position is changed so that the string is
viewable and the string is highlighted. Chimera only allows
forward, case-insensitive searches. If the search reaches the
end of the page, it will wrap to the top of the document.
Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)
URLs are used by Web clients to access a document. URLs describe
the access method to be used to access the file, the Internet hostname
where the document is located, an optional port number on the host,
and the location of the document on the host.
The format is:
access_method://hostname:optional_port/filename
Usually the port number is not used except when someone is running a
server on a non-standard port. Do not specify the second colon
if the port number is omitted.
This may sound complicated but here are a few examples to
(hopefully) make things clearer:
Gopher server at UNLV - gopher://gopher.unlv.edu/
Web server at UNLV - http://www.unlv.edu/default.html
ftp server at wuarchive - ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/
Local file test.html - file:test.html
Hints
Chimera disconnects from a server as soon as it gets a document. While this
is efficient in that it allows the user to browse data off line, it
makes it difficult to continue access on busy servers. An example
(a really good one, actually), is ftp access on wuarchive. Wuarchive
is a very busy ftp server so it is sometimes difficult to get a
connection. The problem is that if you get a directory listing and then
select one of the items in the listing you may get a message like:
Could not load document ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub
This probably means that there are too many people on wuarchive. In this
case just press ``Back'' and try again.
When you specify a local file for Open Document be sure to use
the file access method. The reason for this is that if you give
a partial URL the current document will be used to complete
the URL. If you use file: then the current document is not used
for context.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Space - scroll forward
b - scroll backward
h - home
u - back
l - reload
? - help
q - quit
d - source
o - open
w - save
s - search
p - print
m - bookmark