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MOTHRA(1)                  General Commands Manual                  MOTHRA(1)

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  syn-
      tax:

              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 access-
      ing  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  cur-
      rent file.

      Button  1  selects  and displays a file, either from the list of previ-
      ously 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  com-
      mands:

      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 exam-
      ple fb/9v (see 9v(9.1)) for image files.

      To  deal  with  sites  that  use  `basic  authentication',  make a file
      $home/lib/mothra/insecurity, containing lines of the form

              security-domain<tab>account-name:password

      The method of registering an account  varies  with  site  and  may  not
      reveal  the  security-domain  string.  To learn the name, summon a pro-
      tected page and get the name from the resulting error message.

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  syn-
      tax errors
      $home/lib/mothra/insecurity authentication data

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.

                                                                    MOTHRA(1)