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Frequently Asked Questions for Cello CONTENTS 1. Recent changes to this FAQ 2. What is this document? 3. List of Questions 4. Answers 1. RECENT CHANGES TO THIS FAQ All changes are recent, since this FAQ (Version 1.0) is newborn. Look for new items to be identified in this section in the future, however. 2. WHAT IS THIS DOCUMENT? This is the plaintext version of the FAQ file for the Cello program. FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions, and fortunately for you we have also included at no extra cost the Answers to those Questions. The purpose behind maintaining this document is to keep discussion forums concerned with Cello free from as much repetition as possible. Not many people are keen on answering the same question over and over, especially if it comes up daily. It is hoped that by keeping a list of the most common questions for users to refer to, the quality of discussions will be much higher. Also available is an HTML version of this FAQ. Look for it to be posted about the same time as this one. Note that this document is not meant to replace the documentation for the program itself. Make sure you also consult it if you are having a problem. Both the plain text version and the HTML version are available from the following locations: FTP: flair.law.ubc.ca, /pub/faq/cellofaq.txt Gopher: gopher.law.cornell.edu WWW: fatty.law.cornell.edu, /cello/cellofaq.html or through periodic posting to the CELLO-L list and the comp.infosystems.www newsgroup. The online WWW version also has graphics embedded. 3. LIST OF QUESTIONS Definitions Q1.1 What is Cello? Q1.2 What is WWW? Q1.3 What is HTML? Q1.4 What is a URL? Q1.5 What is WinSock? Setup Q2.1 What do I need to use Cello? Q2.2 What viewers should I use? Q2.3 What TCP/IP packages are available? Q2.4 What do I need to know about Cello with PC-NFS? Q2.5 What about using Cello with FTP Software's PCTCP? Q2.6 How do I install Cello on a network so that the files are shared? Q2.7 What do the lines in CELLO.INI mean? Q2.8 How do I set up an external Telnet client? Q2.9 How do I launch Cello using DDE? General Q3.1 What other browsers are there? Q3.2 What is the advantage of Cello over Mosaic? Q3.3 What are some good URLs to look at? Q3.4 Are there any newsgroups for Cello? Complaints Q4.1 Why can't I get past the login prompt with telnet? Q4.2 Why is sound so lousy? Q4.3 Why can't I see images? Q4.4 Why do some inlined graphics look bad in Cello? Q4.5 How do I specify search terms to an HTTP server? Q4.6 Why does some text print in teeny-weeny type? Q4.7 Why does the O'Reilly GNN title page shows the balloon in different parts? 4. ANSWERS Q1.1 What is Cello? Cello is a WWW browser that works under Microsoft Windows and allows people with a connection to the Internet to follow Hypertext (or Hypermedia) links to files and information services all over the world. It displays both regular text files and files that are written in HTML format, and will translate different Internet services like Gopher and News and FTP into a format that appears to the user as if it were a hypertext document. It was written by Thomas Bruce of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. That is the technical explanation. More interesting is what Cello is (or will be) to you. It allows you to move around the vast information resources of the Internet with no knowledge of the service you are using, the machine you are connecting with, or the location of the information on that machine. You just follow the hypertext links to get the text or hypertext or sound or image or animation or whatever information is available. And the text that surrounds the links gives you the context you need to know that you are moving in the right direction. The latest version of Cello is Version 0.9Beta. It is available via FTP from ftp.law.cornell.edu, /pub/LII/Cello/cello.zip. Q1.2 What is WWW? WWW stands for World-Wide-Web, and the description given in the WWW FAQ is that it is a "distributed hypermedia system". It was developed initially at CERN in Switzerland, but is now being worked on throughout the Internet. The Web is composed of hypertext and hypermedia links, combined with all the files and services that are accessible through those links. Or it can be described as all the servers that provide those links. There are a variety of ways that links are formed. The most prevalent is through the use of HTML, which allows for links to be embedded in text. Gopher menu structure provides another type of link, and the directory structure of an FTP site provides yet another. For more on the WWW, you can read the technical papers stored at CERN or read the newsgroups alt.hypertext and comp.infosystems.www. Perhaps the best source of information is through the Web itself. You can get general Information on the WWWor follow a Guide To Cyberspace, among others. Q1.3 What is HTML? HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is a DTD of SGML, but don't worry about that unless you already understand what it means. The important thing to know is that there are codes placed in an HTML document that define fonts, layout, embedded graphics, and hypertext links. If you like, you can take a look at HTML codes at any time using Cello. From the Edit Menu, select the View Source option. You can compare this to the displayable text contained in the file using the View as Clean Text option instead. Some of the HTML codes you will probably see include identifying a Title (which Cello moves outside the window and prints in large letters), end of paragraph markers, and hypertext links indicated with "HREF=(some URL)". For more information, the WWW is once again your best bet. Try The Beginner's Guide to HTML for more information. Q1.4 What is a URL? A URL is a Uniform Resource Locator (was Universal). It is the pointer to a file or service on the Internet that the author of an HTML document can use to link one document to another. You can see examples after the "HREF=" code when you View Source from inside Cello. Another use of the URL is as a launching mechanism. If you know a URL you would like to visit using Cello, and you do not want to try to find the links to get there, you can use the Launch URL menu option from the Jump menu, and type the URL directly into the program. See the online documentation for a description of the URL structure. Because the URL contains the service type as well as additional information unique to that service, the same information can be presented in different ways depending on the service specified in the URL. For example, look at the change in the interface with each of these URL's that point to the same place: http://fatty.law.cornell.edu/ gopher://fatty.law.cornell.edu/ ftp://fatty.law.cornell.edu/ There is currently a movement among the people designing standards for the Internet to change from using URLs, which require everyone following a link to end up in exactly the same place, to URNs, which allow everyone to end up at the place most appropriate for them. For example, if this FAQ list is available at 20 different sites around the world, it is inefficient for everyone in the world to retrieve it from the same place. URNs will allow each person to get the file from the site closest to them. This change is only planned for, however, and for the time being URLs are the state of the art. Q1.5 What is WinSock? WINSOCK.DLL provides MS-Windows programs with a standard interface to accessing a network. It insulates the program from knowing the nitty-gritty details about how the TCP/IP network does its business, and provides a relatively simple programming model based on the BSD sockets. The latest versions of Cello rely on a WINSOCK.DLL being present in order to operate. This of course requires that your TCP/IP software provide a WINSOCK.DLL for you. If you don't have any TCP/IP software, you can get a shareware version of WINSOCK.DLL that will work over either the telephone lines or an ethernet card. It is called the Trumpet WinSock, and is available for ftp from ftp.utas.edu.au, /pc/trumpet/winsock/winsock.zip. There is also a FAQ for Winsock, available from sunsite.unc.edu. It, along with a lot of other files to do with WinSock, is in the /pub/micro/pc-stuff/ms-windows/winsock directory. Q2.1 What do I need to use Cello? If you try to run Cello under MSDOS, you will be told that this program requires Microsoft Windows. It is telling you the truth. You also require a connection to the Internet and a WINSOCK.DLL compatible with that connection. Actually, you could use Cello without a connection to the Internet or WINSOCK.DLL if all of your hypertext links point to local files. You'll need to change the CELLO.INI file so that LocalOnly=yes is in there. Note that you must use an editor to change CELLO.INI directly, since that option can't be changed from the menus in Cello. Q2.2 What viewers should I use? There is no right answer to this question. Use whatever works for you, and practice tolerance on all those ignoramuses that haven't made the same informed choice you have. For convenience, a collection of viewers has been prepackaged for you and is available for FTP from ftp.law.cornell.edu, /pub/LII/Cello/viewers.zip. To help you make sure you have the right choice, here is a list of viewers that have been recommended by CELLO-L readers (we are always soliciting more opinions, so write in with your choices): IMAGES (gif, jpg, etc.) - There are all kinds of GIF and JPEG viewers available, with many different features. The most important feature when using Cello is generally the speed of decoding. GV057 is a fairly good package that comes in the VIEWERS.ZIP file. It can handle both GIF and JPEG formats, along with a number of others. Another choice is LView. It too can handle a variety of formats, including GIF and JPEG. It can be found at the ftp.bio.indiana.edu FTP site, in /util/ibmpc. The most current version at the time of this writing is LVIEW31.ZIP. WinGIF is another popular choice, and is available at oak.oakland.edu, in the /pub/msdos/windows3 directory. The most current version is WINGIF14.ZIP. It can only handle GIF files, but there is another program called WinJPEG that handles JPEG files as well as GIFs. It is available in the same place as WinGIF. The most current version is WNJP243.ZIP. SOUNDS (wav, voc, au, etc.) - The VIEWERS.ZIP file contains a program, SNDTOOL, that can handle a variety of different sound formats. It also has a speaker driver so that your PC speaker can play the sounds when you are in Windows (if you don't have one already). Two other choices are WHAM, which is a sound player plus a whole lot more, and WPLANY, which is just a sound player but a very good one (see Question 4.2 for a caveat, however). The most current version of WHAM is WHAM131.ZIP, and of WPLANY is WPLNY09B.ZIP. And, of course, there is the MPLAYER.EXE program that Microsoft supplies with Windows for playing WAV files. It doesn't play any other types of sounds, however. ANIMATIONS (mpg, avi) - Microsoft has provided a new MPLAYER.EXE that can handle AVI files as well as WAVs. It is installed using a program called MFWRUN. There is also a program called VIDVUE which will work. Look for it under the name VIDVUE10.ZIP on wuarchive.wustl.edu, directory /systems/ibmpc/win3/desktop. As for MPEG, there is a program called MFW available on ftp.uwp.edu, in the /pub/picture.viewers directory as MPEG2.ZIP. This is the latest Xing MPEG viewer and all associated video drivers. It has a problem, however, in that there are a number of MPEGs on the Web which it can't display (they display as garbage). MPEGW32 is another option. The latest version is MPEGW32E, available on wuarchive.wustl.edu in the /systems/ibmpc/win3/nt directory. It will display all the MPEGs, but there are two other problems with it. The first is that it is really written for Windows NT. It will work with Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups, but it requires the installation of the Win32s extensions (which it includes). The second problem is more difficult to solve. At least with the tests we've done, MPEGW32 is SLOW! There is one known program that displays all MPEGs and is reasonably fast, VMPEG, but it won't run under Windows. DOCUMENTS (ASCII, Postscript) - For an ASCII viewer, Microsoft provide NOTEPAD. It is an editor, but it can be used as a viewer as well. For postscript, we have Ghostscript available. Note that you will also require the Ghostscript viewer program as well, and probably a few fonts. SERVICES (Telnet, TN3270) - Cello has its own built-in telnet client. You may prefer some element of your own, however, such as the lack of difficulty in logging in to Sun workstations (see question 4.1). If you are using the Trumpet Winsock, there are several applications which come with it including TELW, a telnet client. You may also want to consider the telnet that comes with QVTNET, most recent version QVTNT394.ZIP. Note that you must have QVTNET loaded in order to get the client to work. Q2.3 What TCP/IP packages are available? With the right WinSock, all you really need are packet drivers for an ethernet connection or a SL/IP driver for a modem connection. Note that the Trumpet WinSock has it's own internal SL/IP driver. If you want a TCP/IP package, a better place to look for information is in the FAQ list for comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc. This newsgroup is ideal for finding out how to deal with nuisance problems with your particular configuration as well. It is recommended reading for anyone trying to set up a PC on the Internet. Q2.4 What do I need to know about Cello with PC-NFS? In fact, Cello works just fine with PC-NFS, but with a couple of conditions: 1. You must have a version of PC-NFS (v5.0 or greater) that has WINSOCK.DLL 2. You must have support for DNS It is the second requirement that causes the most confusion. PC-NFS v5.1 will have DNS support built in, but until you get your copy you can make v5.0 do the job by ensuring that: Your PC is connected to an NIS server (see the option under Network/Direct Connect in the NFSCONF.EXE program) You have installed the 101128-01 patch available from ftp.sunet.se, /pub/pc/pc-nfs/5.0/101128-01.tar.Z Q2.5 What about using Cello with FTP Software's PCTCP? Assuming that you have PCTCP configured correctly for your particular machine you should not have any problems using Cello. You do need to make sure that you have the latest release of the winsock.dll for PCTCP. This file is available from vax.ftp.com in/pub/winsockapi/FTPSoftware/winsock.exe. It is a self extracting zip file. PCTCP will work with ODI drivers. For windows, make sure that ethdrv is loaded before starting windows, and that you have added the following lines to your SYSTEM.INI file in their respective sections: [386enh] device=[drive]:[path]vpctcp.386 [vpctcp] MinimumCopySpace=28 HiTSRFenceSegment=A000H Problems with PCTCP and Cello may include, but are not limited to: - slow connections to machines on your local IP subnet - GPFs when retrieving large files - GPFs when retrieving many small files - problems retrieving files not conforming to DOS filenaming conventions If you experience any of these, please report the specific instance to cellobug@fatty.law.cornell.edu Q2.6 How do I install Cello on a network so that the files are shared? It is possible to set up Cello on a network, but there are two important things you should consider. Do you want each person to have their own CELLO.INI files, and do you want people to be able to edit their own file. Making changes to the CELLO.INI file in the event of global changes to your network (such as your IP subnet changing) is much easier if there is only one copy, but there are problems with doing this. There is less flexibility since everyone must have the same set of options specified. No one can have a personal email address specified, for example. It has to be set to a generic address or left blank. Whether to allow people the ability to edit their own CELLO.INI file is a philosophical matter. Regardless whether you do it or make each person responsible for their own, there are some things that must be set properly for Cello to work. In the CELLO.INI file be sure that the download directory, the cache directory, the bookmark and style files, and the email address are all either pointed at user-writable directories, or that they point to correct settings for everyone. Also, make sure that the network settings are correct. If the CELLO.INI file is placed in a location where the Cello user has write capabilities (and it isn't flagged read only) then the user can change these settings as they please. If you want more control, use the Cello environment variable to set the location of the CELLO.INI file in the system login script (use DOS SET CELLO = [path] for Netware, for example) and do not give users write privileges in that directory. There are similar issues affecting the Home Page. It can be set up so that every user on your network sees the same information each time they start Cello, or each person can see their own customized, editable home page. Q2.7 What do the lines in CELLO.INI mean? The CELLO.INI file is used by Cello to store various user configurable parameters. Cello will look for CELLO.INI in the directory specified by the CELLO environment variable. This variable is settable by adding the following line to you config.sys file: SET CELLO = [drive]:[path] for example: set cello=c:\cello\cello.ini Otherwise, Cello looks for the CELLO.INI file in the WINDOWS directory. What follows is a typical CELLO.INI file with explanatory remarks. If you do not know the necessary information for any of these parameters you will need to contact someone at your local site for clarification. [Cello] NNTPServer=usenet.law.indiana.edu #location of USENET news server EMail=cello@law.indiana.edu #Your EMAIL address (see warning below) HomePage=g:\cello\iuhome.htm #location of the first page Cello shows #Can be a valid URL Bullet=183 #Type of Bullet Character DLDir=c:\scratch #location of download directory AutoSearchBox=no #Sets whether Cello will automatically #display a search box on documents with #the ISINDEX tag. Telnet= #path to external telnet client TN3270= #same for TN client WaisGate=http://info.cern.ch:8001 #location of nearest WAIS gateway MailRelay=129.79.131.8 #IP no. of SMTP MailRelay for your net LowWaterMark=500000 #Sets point at which cached files are #deleted from memory/disk BookmarkFile=c:\cello.bmk #location of your bookmark file StyleFile=c:\cello.sty #same for style file FetchGraphics=yes #Set this to no if using a slow connection CacheDir=c:\ #Directory where Cello caches files #from memory [Extensions] ext=[drive]:[path]app.exe ^.ext #use whichever viewer you like here jpg=g:\pixfolio\pixfolio.exe ^.jpg #these are examples au=g:\wplany\wplany.exe -u -r 8000 ^.au Q2.8 How do I set up an external Telnet client? The syntax for invoking an external client is the following: [drive]:[path]telnet.exe #h #p #h is the placeholder for the hostname you are telnetting to and #p is the port number. If your telnet client doesn't support a port number on the command line, just use the #h by itself. Your external telnet will be launched when telnetting to a host at port 23, which is the default for most telnet services. When telnetting to other ports, Cello will invoke its built-in telnet. Cello now supports TN3270 via an external application, a feature which was prompted by the appearance of a freely-distributed TN3270 for Windows (see comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc for announcements and location). Cello expects the same #h and #p parameters used in the "Use your own Telnet client" menu choice. Q2.9 How do you launch Cello using DDE? You can invoke Cello from other applications which support the DDE execute command. Here's how you'd do it with an MS-Word macro: Sub MAIN ChanNum = DDEInitiate("Cello", "URL") DDEExecute(ChanNum, "http://www.law.cornell.edu") DDETerminate(ChanNum) End Sub As you can see, the DDE service name is "Cello", the topic is "URL", and the data sent in the execute command is a URL. OLE support and DDE client support are planned in the near future. Q3.1 What other browsers are there? Under MSDOS, there is a line mode browser available if you are running PC-NFS. For MSWindows there are Cello and Mosaic. Q3.2 What is the advantage of Cello over Mosaic? The best answer to this question is one you determine yourself. Both do largely the same job, but there are subtle (and some not so subtle) differences that appeal to some individuals and turn others off. Many people keep both Cello and Mosaic on their computers and use them for different purposes. In the end, the important thing is that the competition and cross-pollination of ideas keep both systems advancing and improving. What more could you want? Q3.3 What are some good URLs to look at? There are a lot of them, too many to list. I'm willing to take votes on which ones people would like to see included here. Send your votes to cello-faq@flair.law.ubc.ca and maybe your favorite URL will be included here in the next release. In the meantime, check the DEFAULT.HTM page that comes with Cello. Links from that document lead eventually to most of the really interesting spots in the WWW. Q3.4 Are there any newsgroups for Cello? There are not yet any newsgroups devoted exclusively to Cello, although there is a mailing list (see the Cello DEFAULT.HTM page for subscription info). There are several related newsgroups, however: comp.infosystems.www - World Wide Web Info alt.hypertext - Info on Hypertext comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc - Running TCP/IP under MSDOS alt.winsock - Info on the WinSock specification Q4.1 Why can't I get past the login prompt with telnet? Because of the need on certain systems (mostly Suns) for a LF instead of just a CR at login, Cello's telnet will not work. The temporary fix for this is to press CTRL/ENTER instead of just ENTER after typing in your login name. This problem will hopefully go away sometime in the near future. Another possibility is to use the Use Your Own Telnet feature to splice in a telnet of your own. Q4.2 Why is sound so lousy? If you are using the WPLANY.EXE program to play your sound files, you will get better performance by using the following line in your CELLO.INI file: au=c:/your/path/to/wplany.exe -u -r 8000 ^.au Q4.3 Why can't I see images? There are several reasons why this might be the case. If you are missing inline images (the ones that show up within a document), it might be because you have the option turned off. Check the Configure/Graphics/Fetch Automatically menu option. If the problem is an intermittent one, where some images show up and others don't, or the same image shows up one time and not another, it may be because of network problems. Some machines will refuse to accept a connection if they already have too many, for example. Or perhaps the link to an image is stale, and the actual image has been moved elsewhere. Maybe the document is still under construction and the image hasn't been put in place yet. If the images which are external to the document (you have to click on a link to them) are causing the problem, there are a number of things to check. If the file association is stored in your CELLO.INI file, check that the file and path are correct, and that any required parameters are present. Something like "^.gif" (for a .gif file) should be one of the parameters. If that checks out, find out what the link actually points to by clicking with the right mouse button. This will bring up a little window. Check that the file extension is the same as you have in your CELLO.INI file. Remember that an extension of ".JPEG" will be truncated to ".JPE", not ".JPG". You might also try other viewers for that file type. Q4.4 Why do some inlined graphics look bad in Cello? Try upgrading to the newest version of Cello if you don't already have it. Currently, Cello resolves palette differences between images by loading a scaled, representative 256-color palette and essentially insisting that everyone adhere to it. Most of the time this provides fairly accurate color rendition, but experimentation shows that some shades don't do well. The subtle oranges used in some of the O'Reilly GNN icons seem to suffer badly, for instance. Q4.5 How do I specify search terms to an HTTP server? Cello gives you two choices: You can either turn automatic search dialogs on (using the main menu choice Configure/Automatic Search Dialogs), or you can turn them off and ask for a dialog box when you need one. If Automatic Search Dialogs is on, you'll get a new dialog box each time you enter a searchable document. If they're turned off, you select Search/Index document from the main menu, and Cello will produce a dialog box for you. Q4.6 Why does some text print in teeny-weeny type? This seems to be a particular problem with the monospaced fonts used for Gopher and FTP documents (and for things between <PRE> tags in HTML). The best way around the problem is to use TrueType fonts. Q4.7 Why does the O'Reilly GNN title page shows the balloon in different parts? It was designed that way.