Chimera Overview
Chimera is a W3 browser for UNIX machines running the X Window System
(just in case you didn't know this by now). It uses the Athena
widget set so that Motif isn't required. It uses HTML
to display information in an X window. Chimera can retrieve information
from HTTP servers, FTP servers, Gopher servers, and the local filesystem.
It knows how to decode GIF images, XPM images (not reliable),
XBM images (mostly reliable), and PNM images (not reliable). It can
do these things "out-of-the-box" and will handle 90% (probably more)
of the stuff on the Web but it is a relatively small program.
Chimera is distributed as source but the author will
provide executables if requested and the phase of the moon is
right.
Extensions
It is possible to extend chimera using other programs so that if
you need something that chimera doesn't support directly you can
add yourself. Chimera does this by starting another program and
retrieving the results. You can add handlers for new protocols, data
types, viewers, and data types.
Protocols
You can "teach" chimera to handle new protocols from retrieving
information. For example, the ability to access USENET news was
added as an extension.
Data Types
Chimera can only handle a few data types directly. These include
text/html, text/plain, image/gif, and a few others. However,
chimera can be taught how to use other programs to convert unknown
data types to known data types. For example, chimera does not know
how to decode JPEG images. By using another program chimera can
convert JPEG images to GIF images.
Viewers
Like some mail programs and other W3 browsers, chimera can read
a mailcap file to determine how to display data types that are
not or cannot be converted to text/html. For example, DVI files
are displayed using xdvi.
Features
A quick feature list...
- Athena/X11 Interface. Doesn't require Motif.
- Client-side caching. Chimera allows multiple caches that are selected depending on the domain of the source. Each cache can have its own time-to-live, size, and persistance values.
- Small. You can compile it yourself on nearly any machine and not
have to deal with monster static binaries. The source is reasonably sized, too.
- Simple. Chimera's interface is really simple. No pull-down menus.
- Easy to extend. Chimera allows external programs to be used for
adding protocols, converting content-types to other content-types (allows things like Postscript inline images), and for external display.
- Incoming connections. Chimera can accept incoming connections which allows you to receive things like Zephyrgrams.
- Easy to use bookmark system. Can pipe to a separate program to allow reading/writing of any bookmark format.
- Cool name.
Borrowed Code
Chimera uses code from other programs because it is a pain in the
butt to write everything. Assume that the code below has been modified
for use in chimera and could be screwed up because of the author.
- NCSA HTML Widget (from Mosaic 2.4).
- xloadimage 4.1
- parts of the compat directory from Tcl7.3
- ScrollingText widget from aXe
- Porthole widget from the X distribution
john@cs.unlv.edu