NAME

mothra - retrieve World-Wide Web files

SYNOPSIS

mothra [ url ]

DESCRIPTION

Mothra retrieves and displays files from the World-Wide Web, by name or through hypertext links. Web names, called URLs, have a peculiar syntax:

http://netlib.att.com/netlib/1127/www/1127.html

http://akebono.stanford.edu:80/yahoo/

http://www.teleport.com/~crowell/

file:/sys/lib/mothra/help.html

file:html2.elements.html#ADDRESS

ftp://ftp.gmd.de/music/scores/harrington/Harrington.readme

gopher://gopher.bev.net/11/BevBus/King.Video

The part up to the first colon gives the protocol for retrieving the file. http:, Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol, is the usual way of accessing web files. file: names a file in the local file system. ftp: and gopher: are standard Internet services.

// begins the Internet address of the server where the file resides. The address may contain a colon and a TCP port number, which overrides the default port number for the service. Next comes a file name. Finally, the file name may be followed by # and a string giving a label within the file where the display should begin.

Mothra starts with the url given on the command line, defaulting to the environment variable $url, and finally to file:/sys/lib/mothra/start.html.

The display contains the last message from mothra, a box where typed commands appear, a scrollable list of previously visited files, the title and URL of the current file, and the scrollable text of the current file.

Button 1 selects and displays a file, either from the list of previously visited pages or from a link (indicated by underlined text or a boxed image) in the current file. Button 2 shows the URL of a file, but does not retrieve or display it. Button 3 pops up a menu of commands:

save back

Place a link to the current file in a `back list' for future reference.

get back

Retrieve and display the back list.

fix cmap

Adjust the display's color map so that images will have correct colors.

exit

Ask for confirmation and quit.

The typed commands are:

g url

Get the page with the given URL.

s file

Save the current file in the given file.

q

Quit.

?

h

Get help.

When mothra retrieves a file that is not an HTML document (for example a GIF or JPEG image), it will start up an appropriate viewer, for example fb/9v (see 9v(9.1)) for image files.

FILES

/sys/lib/mothra/*
$home/lib/mothra/back.html the back list
$home/lib/mothra/mothra.url log of visited URLs
$home/lib/mothra/mothra.err log of error messages, including HTML syntax errors

SOURCE

/sys/src/cmd/mothra

BUGS

ftp: URLs are not supported.
Files are saved in the form received, not in the form suggested by the name in an s command.
Mothra is distributed in a preliminary state; it has more than its share of bugs.