term% cat index.txt 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. Fi‐
nally, 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 ti‐
tle and URL of the current file, and the scrollable text of the current
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.
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
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)