Arena
This page, and pages referenced from here is
written in HTML3. Unless you already use Arena, your browser may have
trouble rendering the pages. Yes, there should be a better way to
declare this than writing a note.
Arena, W3O's testbed HTML3 browser, is now available in prerelease
0.93x. It has many bugs and shortcomings, so be sure to set you
expectations accordingly. In time, we hope to make it into a general
purpose W3 browser, but currently it is primarily a research tool for HTML3
development.
Binaries exist for a
number of unix platforms from "ftp://ftp.w3.org/pub/www/arena/". The
IP number of ftp.w3.org is 128.141.201.214.
We are working on the documentation for HTML3 as it is currently used
in Arena. A prerelease HTML3 DTD is now available from the same
directory as where the binaries are. It's not completely identical
to the one currently in use by Arena, and it's guaranteed to
change. So use with caution.
- forms: you will see that forms are partially implemented. Making
them work is high on our list of priorities
- news: the cern libww supports the nntp protocol, and Arena will
support it in future releases
- ftp works, but requires command line interaction
- user authentication works, but requires command line interaction
- opening directories doesn't work
Also, see the list of bugs for the releas you are using by pressing
the "help" button.
Features
<P align=center>
Yes, that's how you can center paragraphs.
Arena's primary purpose is to implement HTML3, which include elements like tables and maths. Check out the examples, write
some HTML3 of your own, and send us the URL!
Arena also has features which makes it interesting as a general
purpose W3 browser: HTML syntax checker, HTML text editing, client
side file caching, support for mailcap files and user customizable
icons. Many of these features are controlled with command line
options. To see the HTML errors, launch an editor with the "Edit"
button.
Arena is built on top of the CERN World-Wide Web Library of common
code. We are working on a multi-threaded version of the library, so
at some point the globe will start spinning.
HTML error flags
If Arena finds HTML errors in the document, she flags in the upper
right corner. The number in parenthesis is an internal error code. If
you want to see -- and fix -- the errors, it the "Edit" button. Arena
will start the editor specified in the EDITOR environment variable, og
using the "-editor " option. The raw HTML will be inserted in
the buffer along with short error messages camouflaged as
comments. You can set the maximum number of errors to be flagged using
the -badflags option. Correct the errors, remove the comments, save
the buffer, and Arena will display the corrected HTML. Your changes
will not affect the original document -- unless you do a "SaveAs..".
Keyboard mappings
Arrow keys work as expected, same for Page Up (XK_Prior), Page Down
(XK_Next), Home (XK_Begin) and End (XK_Home). What other
function/control keys should we support?
X11 Resources
The following font resources have a meaning in Arena: h1font, h2font, h3font, h4font, labelfont, normalfont, italicfont, boldfont, bolditalicfont, fixedfont, ifixedfont, bfixedfont, bifixedfont, symbolfont, subsymbolfont, smallfont
Example
To change the font of the H1 element, edit your resource file
(typically ~/.Xdefaults) to include a line like:
arena.h1font: -adobe-helvetica-bold-r-normal--18-180-75-75-p-103-iso8859-1
In order for the change to take effect, you need to reload the
resource file (xrdb -load ~/.Xdefaults) and restart the
browser.
Command line options |
| option | function | note |
| -icon icon | Replace default icon
in upper right corner. A file or URL pointing to a gif image can be
specified. | 
This one
is too big |
|---|
| -gamma gamma_correction | Set gamma
correction factor. | Introduced in 0.93. |
|---|
| -noterminal | Turns use of command
line interaction off. | In version 0.93, ftp and user
authentication uses command line interaction. |
|---|
| -nomailcap | Do not load any
mailcap file. | Introduced in 0.93. |
|---|
| -nocache | Turn client side file
caching off. | |
|---|
| -cache cache_dir | Set directory
for caching. Default is "/tmp". | The directory must
exist. File chaching is not persistant. Yet. |
|---|
| -printer printer_cmd | Set printer
command, e.g. "lpr -Ppr1". |
|---|
| -editor editor_cmd | Set editor
command, e.g "xterm -e vi". | The value of the EDITOR
environment variable is default. When finished editing,
save file and exit the editor. Your changes will not affect the
original document. |
|---|
| -badflags # | Set the maximum number of
HTML bad flags to be reported when editing a document. Badflags appear
as comments in the HTML source | Default is 5, maximum is 50. |
|---|
| -large | Use large font sizes. |
|---|
| -giant | Use giant
font sizes. | In comparison, the normal size is
small, see? |
|---|
| -mono | Monochrome mode. |
|---|
| -gray | Grayscale mode. |
|---|
| -color | True color mode. |
|---|
| -color8 | 232 dither mode. |
|---|
| -debug | Turn on debugging
information. | Quite verbose. |
|---|
Dave, Håkon, Henrik, Phill
arena@info.cern.ch