Chimera Help

Program Info

This is Chimera 1.54, written by John Kilburg (john@cs.unlv.edu) and others (see the README file in the chimera distribution for more info). The HTML widget code was originally written at NCSA. Keep in mind that the HTML widget used by Chimera is a modified version and any problems are John's fault.

Click here to see the chimera home page.

Bug Reports

The name of the mailing list is bug-chimera@cs.unlv.edu. If you want to join the list, send email to bug-chimera-request@cs.unlv.edu. Send bug reports to bug-chimera@cs.unlv.edu.

When you send a bug report please include the version of chimera that you are using, the type of machine/OS you are using, and one or more URLs that expose the bug.

Mouse Button Usage

If you click on an anchor with the first mouse button then the document will be loaded and displayed (if possible). If the second mouse button is used then Chimera will ask for a filename and save the document to the file. If the third mouse button is used then the anchor's URL is displayed.

Quit

Clicking on this button causes Chimera to stop execution. It is important that you use this button instead of, say, control-c. For instance, if you do not use the Quit button to exit Chimera any changes you make to the list of bookmarks will not be saved.

Open

This command tells Chimera to display a requester for a document URL. The cursor automatically warps to the text entry field so move movement is not required after the button is pressed. A click on the cancel button on the requester causes Chimera to discard the requester and resume operation as before. A click on the OK button causes Chimera to attempt to load the specified document. If the URL is invalid or the document is unavailable then an error message is displayed. If the document was successfully accessed then Chimera displays the document (in the case of HTML) or executes an external program to deal with the document.

You can also edit the URL display field which is located between the main document window and the document title display.

Home

When the home button is pressed the document that was first displayed is displayed. This is the same as pressing Back until the first document is visible.

Back

Clicking on this button causes Chimera to ``back up'' to the previous document. This button will be deactivated if only one document is available.

Source

Clicking on this button causes Chimera to display the HTML source of the currently displayed document.

Reload

Clicking on this button causes Chimera to reload the current document. This is useful for a when the original document has changed (you are currently working on a project, for example) and you need to refresh the document.

Save

Clicking on this button causes Chimera to save the current document. Before the document is saved a requester pops up to request the filename. The save requester has 5 buttons: Save Text, Save Pretty Text, Save Postscript, Save HTML, and Cancel. The Save Text button directs Chimera to save the document as plain text. The Save Pretty Text button causes the document to be saved as formatted text. The Save Postscript button causes the document to be save as postscript. The Save HTML button causes the document to be saved as HTML (I hope you have the idea by now). The Cancel button cancels the operation and dismisses the requester window.

Help

Clicking on this button causes Chimera to display the document you are reading now.

Bookmark

When you click on this button a list of bookmarks pops up. To view a document which has a bookmark just double click on the bookmark. Along the button of the bookmark list window is a row of four buttons: open, dismiss, add, and delete. The open button opens the currently highlighted bookmark. The dismiss button hides the bookmark list. The add button adds the title of the current document to the bookmark list (the URL is used if there is no title). The delete button deletes the currently highlighted bookmark.

Print

When you click on the Print button a requester is displayed which shows the default printer name and 4 buttons. The printer name can be changed to whatever you want. The buttons are used to specify the print format. The Print Text button causes plain text to be sent to the printer. The Print Pretty Text button causes formatted text to be sent to the printer. The Print Postscript button causes postscript to be sent to the printer. The Cancel button cancels the operation and dismisses the requester. It is up to you to pick the format that is most appropriate for the selected printer.

Search

When the search button is pressed a requester appears which allows you to enter a string for Chimera to find. If the string is found then the document position is changed so that the string is viewable and the string is highlighted. Chimera only allows forward, case-insensitive searches. If the search reaches the end of the page, it will wrap to the top of the document.

Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)

URLs are used by Web clients to access a document. URLs describe the access method to be used to access the file, the Internet hostname where the document is located, an optional port number on the host, and the location of the document on the host. The format is:

access_method://hostname:optional_port/filename

Usually the port number is not used except when someone is running a server on a non-standard port. Do not specify the second colon if the port number is omitted.

This may sound complicated but here are a few examples to (hopefully) make things clearer:

Gopher server at UNLV - gopher://gopher.unlv.edu/

Web server at UNLV - http://www.unlv.edu/default.html

ftp server at UNLV - ftp://ftp.cs.unlv.edu/

Local file test.html - file:test.html

Hints

Chimera disconnects from a server as soon as it gets a document. While this is efficient in that it allows the user to browse data off line, it makes it difficult to continue access on busy servers. An example (a really good one, actually), is ftp access on wuarchive. Wuarchive is a very busy ftp server so it is sometimes difficult to get a connection. The problem is that if you get a directory listing and then select one of the items in the listing you may get a message like:

Could not load document ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/pub

This probably means that there are too many people on wuarchive. In this case just press ``Back'' and try again.

When you open a local file be sure to use the file access method. The reason for this is that if you give a partial URL the current document will be used to complete the URL. If you use file: then the current document is not used for context.

If for some reason there is a document that will not load correctly try doing a reload. If chimera was not configured correctly for some reason, it is possible for the cache to be incorrectly processed. After verifying the configuration, press Reload to make sure that the cache is processed correctly.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Space - scroll forward b - scroll backward h - home u - back l - reload ? - help q - quit d - source o - open w - save s - search p - print m - bookmark

Environment variables

Chimera uses the following environment variables: CHIMERA_CACHE This is used to specify the directory where cache files are stored. X resource is cacheDir. CHIMERA_CACHE_OFF The existence of this variable tells chimera not to cache documents. X resource is cacheOff. CHIMERA_DOC_TTL This specifies the time-to-live for documents. If a document is opened and the cache has not been modified since the time-to-live then it is reloaded from the net. If zero then documents are never reloaded (unless the reload button is pressed). X resource is docTTL. CHIMERA_CACHE_SIZE This specifies the maximum size of the cache. If the maximum size is exceeded then the least recently accessed cache file/document is removed to make room. If zero then the cache is allowed to grow to any size. X resource is cacheSize. WWW_HOME This is used to specify the first document to be loaded. X resource is homePage. USER This is used to determine the username of the person running chimera. PRINTER This is used by chimera to determine the default printer. X resource is printerName. http_proxy This is used to specify the server to use for proxied HTTP requests. The format is the same as an HTTP URL. gopher_proxy This is used to specify the server to use for proxied Gopher requests. The format is the same as an HTTP URL. ftp_proxy This is used to specify the server to use for proxied FTP requests. The format is the same as an HTTP URL. wais_proxy This is used to specify the server to use for proxied WAIS requests. The format is the same as an HTTP URL. no_proxy This is a comma separated list of domains that should not be proxied.

X Resources

Chimera uses the following X resources (some are omitted because they are presented in the environment variable section): contentPath A colon separated list of directories to search for viewer and conversion programs. helpDocument The URL of the help document. contentFile The name of the file that describes the viewers and image converters. showURL Boolean variable used to specify whether or not the URL should be displayed on the screen. showTitle Boolean variable used to specify whether or not the title should be displayed on the screen. button1Box A comma separated list of buttons to appear on the first button row. Possible button names are quit, open, home, back, source, reload, save, help, bookmark, print, and search. button2Box A list of buttons to appear on the second button row. cleanUp If True then chimera will remove the cache files that it creates when it exits. userContentFile Used to specify a content file to be read after the regular content file.