Re: IIGS specific graphics web browser for IIGS specific web sites!

[Paul Schultz <pschultz@med.wayne.edu>]

On 17 Oct 1998, Supertimer wrote:

> 
> That is a good idea, but I still feel that we should start out simple.
> 
> Since we know that there are "designed for SIS" pages that are
> to be viewed by SIS already, it follows that the people hosting
> those pages could simply "graphicatize" them by adding APF
> or SHR format IIGS graphics.  Then the IIGS can just download
> the images and display them...fully within the capabilities of the
> unit.
> 
> This is because the graphics are 32k or less in size and take
> no time to convert, unlike jpegs and gifs.

This is not as simple as you may think. Currently, the only web
browser available for the IIgs is SIS. SIS uses the TextEdit
toolset for displaying its pages. TextEdit is not capable of
embedding graphics. So, even though your idea would solve the
problem with converting from a non-IIgs graphics format it
would require writing an HTML display library which is capable
of embedding graphics and text on the same page.

I've always thought that if a programmer wanted to truly advance
the capabilities of the IIgs and at the same time write something
which would support viewing HTML, the way to go would be to
rewrite a TextEdit compatible toolset which took care of the 
shortcomings of TextEdit and also allowed embedding of graphics
as well. Sort of a 'SuperTextEdit' Unfortunately, with the state
of things now this is just too big of a project to expect it to
see the light of day.

Paul.

pschultz@med.wayne.edu
Paul Schultz