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

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Paul Schultz <pschultz@med.wayne.edu> wrote:

>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.

Not necessarily.  You can write the web browser so that
you needed to click on a graphic to open a full screen
version of the graphic.  Similar to how the old AOL browser
works.  Simply double-click on the graphic icon and a
second window will open displaying the selected graphic.

The main thing that needs to happen is an SIS rewrite
to support Marinetti.  But supposedly, this is already in
the process.

Similarly, you can embed synthLAB music, for example.

>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.

One could always turn to assembly and write a web
browser FTA style.  I agree, it is up to the programmers,
but it is a good thing to think about possibilities.