Menus

The menu items of the WWW application operate in the usual NeXTStep way in most cases. Where the menu item has a character at the right hand end of the menu item, typing that character while holding down the Command key will have the same effect as the menu item: see the list of such keys . There follows a list of the menu items in the application, under the top level items: Info , Links , Navigate , File , Edit , Print , Page Layout , Style , Keyword search , Help , Hide , Quit .

Info

This displays a little information about the particular version of WWW which you have. The submenu has two items:

Panel

This displays a single panel with information such as the version number of your software - you can check this against the history to find out whether you're missing any serious improvments in the latest copy.

Help

This takes you to a small document shipped with the application, which has pointers to the user manual (part of which you're reading now). The help page is local to your machine -- you can edit it. The user manual is, by default, on a central server machine, unless you have changed the links in your help page. (Taking a private copy of the user manual means it might become out of date, but it will be quicker to access).

Links

Items in this menu are used to manipulate the connections, or links , between different hypertext documents.

Creating a link is done in two stages. Firstly, the destination of the link (the bit which will be jumped to ) is "marked". Secondly, the source of the link is selected, and "Link to mark" used. The source and destination regions are known as anchors .

If you want to make a link to a document whose address you know, but which you can't access through other links, then first open it using its address, then mark it and link to it.

Mark All

This marks the whole document as the destination of a link. Use this to refer to a whole document rather than any part of it, or when the server does not allow you to make an anchor within it.

Mark Selection

This marks just the area you have selected as the destination of the next link(s) you might create.

Link To Marked

This creates a link from the selection to the marked text. First, select the piece of text you wish to be sensitive, and then use this item. From then on, clicking on that piece of text will take you to the previously marked document or anchor.

Link to File

This allows you to link the selected text to any file. You are prompted for the name with an "Open" panel. The file need not be a hypertext file. If is not a file type which WorldWideWeb recognizes and handles itself, then following the link will cause the file to be opened from the workspace. You cannot link to a directory (yet).

Link to New

This creates a link from the current selection to a new node to be stored as a file. A panel opens to allow you to select the name of the file.

Unlink

This remove link information from the selection. ALL link information (coming or going) is removed from the selected text, which then becomes ordinary text.. This may be used to trim an anchor whose sensitive area is too big, or to remove an anchor entirely.

Navigate

These options allow you to move through lists of items, for example, with ease, and should prevent you geting lost.

Back

The applicatioin keeps a record of every link you jump through. This item allows you to retrace your steps. Each time you use it, you go back one link, until you get to the first link you used.

This has the same effect as using "BackUp", and then selecting the next link from that last document. For example, if you had just selected the first of a list of references, then using "NeXT" would allow you to move through successive one by one. It you select a news conference and then a news article in it, NeXT allows you to move to the next article directly, without going back to the conference.

This is like " Next ", but goes to the link before the one you last selected rather than the one after.

Home

This goes back to the document which is first loaded when you run the application.

Panel

This brings up a navigation panel. The buttons in the panel are mostly the same as the functions in the menu.

File

The items in this menu allow hypertext documents ("nodes") to be loaded explicitly and saved.

Open file

This allows a file to be opened explicitly by file name. An HTML file (.html filetype) will be read as hypertext. A Rich Text Format (.rtf) file will be read as rich (ie formatted text). Files without extension or with .txt extensions are read as plain text. All other files are opened as the workspace manager considers fit.

Open using full hypertext reference

This option allows not only files, but also news groups, news articles, and information on remote hypertext servers to be loaded. You need the complete hypertext reference for the information. See Address Formats for a description of the various formats.

New file...

This creates a new hypertext file. A panel appears to prompt you for a filename.

When you have created a new file, you should make links from existing files to it so that you can later reach it by browsing. See also the "Link to New" menu item which makes a link at the same time.

The file is generated from a master blank file. If you have a "blank.html" in the WWW subdirectory of your home directory, that will be used: otherwise, a copy will be taken of the file "/usr/local/lib/WWW/blank.html". Therefore, you can customise the blank file.

Diagnostics

You don't have to use these: they are for debugging the software. They will (typically) dump a load of information onto the standard output device, which will be the system console. These functions are not guarranteed.

Save

When a file is editable, this allows it to be saved back. Until this is used, your changes are not safe. This condidtion is indicated by the close button (X) in the top right of the document window becoming a broken cross.

Save a copy in

This option allows documents to be saved as a file, whether or not they were originally loaded from a file. Note that the window will continue to be associated with the original (network) document (This is different from some other NeXT applications' "sav as".). If you want to open the new file for editing, you must use the Open command. Before you get a save panel, a submenu is presented which allows you to select the format:

HyperText Markup Language: This is the normal storage format for WWW files. It includes the style and anchor information. The file extension is mandatory and is ".html". You can use the copy as the basis for a new document by later open ing it.
Rich Text Format: This is a transfer format allowing you to export WWW files to other word processors such as Microsoft Word, WriteNow, etc. Beware that the copy saved in rtf, although it is formatted, has no style name or anchor information left. The file extension is mandatory and is ".rtf".
Plain Text: This is plain ASCII text, without formatting except for line breaks to mark paragraph ends. Normally, your style sheet specifies some white space between paragraphs so the plain text version has more than one line feed character. This format may be suitable for mailing, for example - though you may want to chop the long lines. The file extension is mandatory and is ".txt".

Save all edited windows

This perfoms a Save operation on all windows which have been edited since they were last saved. This is a wise thing to do from time to time, and certainly before you quit.

Miniaturize

This will shrink the current window down to a miniature window. The text in the window will still be loaded. Clicking on the miniature window, or following a link which leads to that document, will bring it back up immediately.

Open Master template

This allows you to edit the template file which is used as a basis whenever you use " New " or " Link to new " commands.

Close other windows

The number of windows can rapidly become very large when one follows links through the web. This command (also key Cmd/W) allows all windows to be closed except for the main window and any windows which have been modified but not yet saved.

Close

This closes the current window. The contents are removed from memory. WorldWideWeb remebers that you had been there, so (unless you have already backtracked over it) you will be able to find it by backtracking with BackUp . When you reaccess the document, it is reloaded from the server or file. This is therefore a way of picking up changed information. If you don't want to have to wait for this (if it a slow server for example), you could always Miniturize the window instead.

Edit

This menu is the standard NeXTStep edit menu, allowing you to cut, copy and paste text to and from hypertext documents. You can also select the whole document. (Not all hypertext documents are writeable, so paste won't always work).

Print...

This brings up the print panel, which allows you to print the current window. You can also preview what it will look like printed, and you can save an image of the document in the window in postscript format.

See also the Page Layout panel. You may also want to load a different style sheet for printing.

Page Layout...

This brings up a panel for choosing the size and orientation of the paper you may want to print on.

The paper type you select is remebered between invokations of WorldWideWeb. The other parameters revert to their default values when you start WorldWideWeb. They are not stored in documents.

The margins which you can specify in this panel are the regions of white paper around the edge of each page on which nothing is printed. What you see on the screen window is the area between the margins.

Note that when a window is created, it is generally made wide enough to contain a document. This means that the paper type and left and right margins you select will affect the size of new windows.

Style

This item brings up the Style submenu for changing the formatting of characters in the text. (More on Styles)

Copy style

The style of the currently selected text is picked up for later use in "Apply style"

Apply style

The style previously picked up with "copy style" is applied to the paragraph or paragraphs which include the selected text.

Panel

This brings up the style editor panel. (More on styles.) The style editor allows you to format your document using styles, edit the format represented by each style, and load and save style sheets. Clicking on the >> buttons allows you to scroll through the available styles.

The buttons " Load " and "Save" allow you to load and save the entire set of styles (" stylesheet ") you are using. When loading a style sheet, any styles which were originally present but do not exist in the new style sheet remain defined, while those which do exist in the new sheet are redefined.

Style of selection

This button sets the style editor to the style of the text which has been selected in the main window (if any).

Apply style to selection

This applies the style in the style editor to the currently selected text. If the style is a paragraph style, it will be applied to all paragraphs which contain any selected text

(or the caret is the selection is of zero length).

Two buttons are provided to help in converting existing unstyles documents into HTML:-

Find unstyled text

This will highlight the first peice of text inthe document which has not been given a style.

Apply style to all similar text

This will apply the selected style to not only the selected text, but also all that text which has the same paragraph layout (indents, etc) and font. If you have a document which is formatted in rtf, but not styled, you maybe able to pick up all the headings, for example, in this way.

Editing of styles is not currently supported (Nov 1990).

Keyword search

This brings up the keyword search panel. You can only use the keyword search panel when the main window (the one with the dark title bar) is an index document. (Index documents normally say that they are indexes and very little else).

To search an index, enter one or more keywords on the keyword field of the panel, and press return. The result will be a page of (virtual) hypertext which gives you a list of references satisfying your search. You can click on one of these to select the one which you are interested in. Alternatively, you can change your keywords, and try again.