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Software for Macintoshes

This document contains information about WWW browsers and associated viewers, HTML editors and document-to-HTML converters. The areas covered are:

WWW BROWSERS

There are several browsers for Macintoshes, the most popular (at least now) is Netscape for Macintosh. Other browsers are also available, in particular MacWeb and MacMosaic.
Netscape for Macintosh
Developed by Netscape Communications, this is a fast and full-featured browser, and is the most popular Web browser currently in use. There are equivalent versions for Macintosh, PC/Windows and various UNIX platforms. You can get copies at the Netscape Anonymous FTP server, or by doing an archie search for the word netscape. Netscape is free for academic use only, and moderately priced (<$40US, I believe) otherwise.
Mosaic for Macintosh (MacMosaic)
This package is developed by NCSA, and is quite full featured. NCSA maintains a MacMosaic Home page. This is very useful for gettin MacMosaic up and running. Note also that there are currently two versions of MacMosaic 1.3 and 2.0Alpha. The 2.0Alpha is a bit buggy, but it does have FORMS capabilities (which MacMosaic 1.3 does not).

MacMosaic is available via anonymous ftp from ftp.NCSA.uiuc.edu in the Mosaic/Mac directory. Alternatively use archie and look for MacMosaic. Note that this ftp site is very busy - you may not be able to access it. Alternatively look at sunsite.unc.edu and look in the /pub/packages/infosystems/WWW directory. (This section last revised June 29 1994)

Samba
From CERN. This is a very basic browser, and is not heavily supported. Available by anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch in the directory /ftp/pub/www/bin.
MacWeb
From EINet. Has features that Mosaic lacks, and lacks some features that Mosaic has. It is generally faster, and smaller. It is available by anonymous FTP from ftp.einet.net in the directory einet/mac/macweb.

HTML EDITORS

There are several public domain packages that can help you create and edit HTML documents. Note, though, that not all follow the HTML definition rigorously. This can be a problem, in the long run. Here is a more-or-less untested list of these editors:
HTML SuperText Editor
HTML SuperText is reputedly a hypertext editor for the Mac, with nice pull-down menus to control editing. The program is available from Info-mac and its mirrors, or from the link given above - the archive comes complete with an on-line HTML manual. Thanks to Leslie Stewart for bringing this editor to my attention.

(This entry updated 22 February 1995)

HTML.Edit
HTML.edit is a Macintosh HyperCard 2.2 standalone application -- it doesn't need HyperCard to run. It follows closely to the HTML DTD, and with current versions, implements almost all features of the HTML 2.0 DTD, excluding forms support. It includes substantial internal help documentation in a HyperText format.

The program can be downloaded directly from:

NOTE
The following sites are currently non-functional. Please consult the HTML.edit home page document indicated above for a fuller list of appropriate archive sites. (Thanks to T. Holtz for bringing this to my attention).

(This entry updated 12 January 1995)

HTML Editor
A pretty near WYSWYG Macintosh based editor. You can find out more at the above URL (http://dragon.acadiau.ca:1667/~giles/HTML_Editor) I have never used it, but it comes highly recommended.
BBEdit HTML extensions
This is the first of two BBEdit extension macro packages. This package allows the BBEdit and BBEdit Lite text editors for the Macintosh to conveniently edit HTML documents. The URL is URL is http://www.uji.es/bbedit-html-extensions.html. The macros can be accessed by ftp from ftp.uji.es in /pub/mac/util/bbedit-html-ext.sea.hqx. These packages are also available (anonymous ftp) from sumex-aim.stanford.edu in info-mac/bbedit-html-ext-b3.hqx. Of course you need the BBEdit program to begin with.
Another BBEdit Extension Package
Similar to, but different from the above packaged. it is available by FTP at the URL ftp://ctipsych.york.ac.uk/CTI_FTP/pub/BBEdit/BBEdit_HTML_Tools.sea.hqx.
A Hypercard-based pseudo-editor
This Hypercard template serves as an HTML editor template. It is not WYSWIG but it is a significant help in doing the conversion to HTML. Descriptive information can be found at the above URL. The source code is "supposed" to be here (ftp) , but the last time I looked I could not accees this site (a Macintosh). I did succesfully FTP a copy from this alternate site , but check the other one first.

IMAGE VIEWERS

There are several image viewers that you can use with MacWeb or MacMosaic to view Jpeg images, PostScript images, mpeg movies, etc. Here are most of them:
jpegview v3.21
Jpegview is a public-domain Jpeg-format image viewer for Macintosh computers. It is available at a number of anonymous ftp sites -- just use archie to look for it.
GhostScript v2.6
This public-domain program allows you to view PostScript files. You can find it using archie, and then get it using anonymous FTP. GhostScript is part of the Gnu software system.
Sparkle
This public-domain program allows you to view MPEG-encoded movies and convert MPEG files to Mac QuickTime format (as of Version 2.0). You can find this program using archie.

DOCUMENT TRANSLATORS

There are several filters available for converting documents from one format to another. Here is a summary of the ones available for Macintoshes.
Rtftohtml
Rtftohtml converts Microsoft RichText Format to HTML. The most recent version supports WORD 6.0 RTF files. Note that this program is most useful for MS-Word document, as these use RTF format as the document code. See the above link for more details, and for information on how to get it. This code can be used on Macintoshes, PC's or on Unix boxes. The installation package tells you how to do all these things. You can find out more about this package from a CERN based description file.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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