Interface Stuff

How come NCSA Mosaic complains about not being able to find fonts on startup?

The font choices built into NCSA Mosaic were selected under the assumption that NCSA Mosaic users are running fairly standard X11R4 or later X servers. It may be that on old or nonstandard servers (e.g., Sun OpenWindows) none of the font choices will be adequate.

If this happens to you, please investigate which fonts your system contains and assemble a list that would be satisfactory for viewing formatted documents, and send the list to mosaic-x@ncsa.uiuc.edu. Or upgrade to a more recent X server (or just throw out your system's X and use stock MIT X).

Note that as of right now we are planning to pretty much stay with the font scheme NCSA Mosaic already uses, simply because the servers that don't handle these fonts seem to be pretty nonstandard. It's impossible to handle every case by default -- there's just too much variation between platforms.

If this is really frustrating you, you might consider looking at the MIT X11R5 fonts and installing them for your server like your vendor should have done in the first place. (See your X manuals for more details on font installation.)

How come NCSA Mosaic dies on startup because it can't find any usable fonts?

Because your X server is either misconfigured or broken. You should probably contact your system vendor.

(As a last resort, grab a copy of the Mosaic app-defaults template file and substitute "fixed" for all the fonts, and try to run with that.)

How come Mosaic's dialog boxes don't have titlebars or borders?

Because your window manager (probably olwm or twm, or some variant thereof) didn't see fit to put titlebars or borders around them. See the documentation for your window manager to figure out how to tell it to "decorate" transient window (i.e. dialog boxes).

For example, if you're using twm or a derivative, put the following line in your .twmrc file: 

        DecorateTransients

Do you have template app-defaults files for Mosaic?

Absolutely; see ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in /Mosaic/xmosaic-appdefaults. In particular, here are app-defaults files for color X, color X/SGI (darker colors, to compensate for SGI's higher default gamma correction value), and mono X.

Where do I put an app-defaults file?

See your system's X documentation. (Usually /usr/lib/X11/app-defaults, and call it XMosaic with a capital M.)

When I create a Mosaic app-defaults file with nothing in it, all of a sudden all the normal Mosaic defaults (colors, fonts, etc.) are no longer there. What happened?

This is an X feature. If no app-defaults file exists, then X installs the fallback resources embedded in the executable; if an app-defaults file exists (even an empty one), then X ignores all fallback resources embedded in the executable. See your system's X documentation for more details.

How do I specify the home page?

If you would rather use a certain document as your NCSA Mosaic home page (the document that you first view when you start the program), you can set the environment variable WWW_HOME to the Uniform Resource Locator of your choice.

You can also use the `-home' command-line flag or set the X resource `xmosaic*homeDocument' to the URL of your choice.

How do I customize NCSA Mosaic's menubar?

You can't. The menubar is designed to point at certain reliable and widely-available networked information resources that can provide a starting point for an uninitiated Mosaic user (and possibly even an uninitiated Internet user) sitting down in front of Mosaic for the first time. Therefore, it's not intended to be locally customized.

For local customizations, it's best if you create a local home page and reference your information services via hyperlinks from that. In this way, the Web grows, which is a Good Thing.

How did NCSA Mosaic's developers ever come up with such a horrible set of default colors (or fonts)?

We tried to pick a set of defaults that is both visually pleasing and middle of the road. If you think you have a better set of default colors, or fonts, please send them to us.

Is there a version of NCSA Mosaic that uses {OpenLook, XView, Athena, SGI Forms} instead of Motif?

No; we don't have the resources required to support more than one user interface toolkit, unfortunately. (Since Sun is moving to Motif, this should be a moot point pretty soon.)