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. 

Plan 9  —  April 04, 1995