## Chimera Help

### Program Info

This is version 1.70 of Chimera, written and watched over by John Kilburg (john@cs.unlv.edu) and added to by many others. Chimera 1.70 was put together by Winston Edmond, incorporating contributions from a number of other people. (See the README and CHANGES files in the chimera distribution for more info). It should serve as a stable lightweight browser for daily use in the late 1990s while version 2.* is still in alpha development.

Check out the chimera home page, and find out about known bugs and latest fixes from the Beyond 1.65 site.

### Bug Reports

If you think you have discovered a bug, please send email to bug-chimera@cs.unlv.edu with a description of the bug, the machine/OS that you are using, the version of chimera that you are using, and one or more URLs that expose the bug.

### Mouse Button Usage

If you click on an anchor with the first mouse button then the document will be loaded and displayed (if possible). If the second mouse button is used then Chimera will ask for a filename and save the document to the file.

### Quit

Clicking on this button causes Chimera to stop execution. It is important that you use this button instead of, say, control-c.

### Open

This command tells Chimera to display a requester for a document URL. The cursor automatically warps to the text entry field so mouse movement is not required after the button is pressed. A click on the cancel button of the requester causes Chimera to discard the requester and resume operation as before. A click on the OK button causes Chimera to attempt to load the specified document. If the URL is invalid or the document is unavailable then an error message is displayed. If the document was successfully accessed then Chimera displays the document (in the case of HTML) or executes an external program to deal with the document.

You can also edit the URL display field which is located between the main document window and the document title display.

In both cases, you can use the shortcut `some.website.com` to access the URL `http://some.website.com/`. (This shortcut expansion is applied whenever the string you typed in contains neither a colon nor a slash, so you can still access relative URLs like `otherdoc.html` by typing `./otherdoc.html`; the shortcut expansion feature can be turned off entirely by setting the X resource `Chimera*openButtonShortcut` to `False`).

### Home

When the home button is pressed the document that was first displayed is displayed. This is the same as pressing Back until the first document is visible.

### Back

Clicking on this button causes Chimera to ``back up'' to the previous document. This button will be deactivated if only one document is available.

### Source

Clicking on this button causes Chimera to display the HTML source of the currently displayed document.

### Reload

Clicking on this button causes Chimera to reload the current document. This is useful for a when the original document has changed (you are currently working on a project, for example) and you need to refresh the document.

### File

When this button is pressed a popup window appears which can be used to tell chimera to save or print the currently displayed document.

### Help

Clicking on this button causes Chimera to display the document you are reading now.

### Bookmark

When you click on this button a list of bookmarks pops up. To view a document which has a bookmark just double click on the bookmark. Along the button of the bookmark list window is a row of four buttons: open, dismiss, add, and delete. The open button opens the currently highlighted bookmark. The dismiss button hides the bookmark list. The add button adds the title of the current document to the bookmark list (the URL is used if there is no title). The delete button deletes the currently highlighted bookmark.

### Search

When the search button is pressed a requester appears which allows you to enter a string for Chimera to find. If the string is found then the document position is changed so that the string is viewable and the string is highlighted. Chimera only allows forward, case-insensitive searches. If the search reaches the end of the page, it will wrap to the top of the document.

### Cancel

The cancel button can be used to stop the loading of the currently loading document. Note that cancel doesn't work while chimera tries to make a connection to a remote host. It only works once the transfer has started (most of the time).

### DeferPix

This determines whether or not Chimera delays loading non-local images. Click on the button to toggle it on or off. When selected, the DeferPix box will be darkened and Chimera will not show images that require downloading until the user clicks on the icon that is located in place of the image. When DeferPix is not selected, Chimera automatically loads all images. Images that come from local or cached files are always displayed.

### Keyboard Shortcuts

    Space - scroll forward
    b     - scroll backward
    h     - home
    u     - back
    l     - reload
    ?     - help
    q     - quit
    d     - source
    o     - open
    f     - file
    s     - search
    m     - bookmark
    i     - toggle deferpix

Also, cursor up and down keys can be used for scrolling.

### Uniform Resource Locators (URLs)

Chimera uses URLs to locate information. Although a discussion of URLs is beyond the scope of this document, here are a couple of examples:

    ftp://ftp.cs.unlv.edu/pub/chimera - Retrieve a listing of the directory
                                        /pub/chimera on the anonymous
                                        FTP server ftp.cs.unlv.edu.

    file:~john/.mailcap               - Retrieve and display John's mailcap file.

    http://www.unlv.edu/chimera/      - Retrieve and display the chimera home
                                        page.

    mailto:john@cs.unlv.edu           - Send email to John, either using an
                                        external mailer or via a form appearing
                                        in chimera's own window.  (This will work
                                        only if you have perl installed.)

### Environment variables

Chimera uses the following environment variables

    WWW_HOME               This is used to specify the first document to be
                           loaded.  X resource is homePage.

    USER                   Used to determine the username of the user running
                           chimera.

    PRINTER                This is used by chimera to determine the default
                           printer.  X resource is printerName.

    EMAIL                  Email address used for anonymous FTP.  This is needed
                           for users of TERM.

    HOME                   Used by the mailto helper script to find out where
                           to store a dead.letter if necessary.

    MAIL_CLIENT            Used to tell the mailto helper script which external
                           mail program to run, if any.  Could be something like
                           'xterm -e pine'.  The recipient address will be passed
                           to the client as a commandline argument.  If this
                           variable is not set in the environment, the mailto
                           script will bring up a mail composition form in the
                           chimera window itself.

    REPLYTO                Used by the mailto helper script to obtain a default
                           value for the Reply-To mail header when it brings up
                           the form.

    SIGNATURE              Used by the mailto script to find the user's signature
                           file when it brings up a form.  If SIGNATURE is not set
                           and a file $HOME/.signature exists, it will be used.
                           You can always discard the signature when filling in
                           the form.

    http_proxy             This is used to specify the server to use for
                           proxied HTTP requests.  The format is the
                           same as an HTTP URL.  For example,
                           http://firewall.blah.edu/

    gopher_proxy           This is used to specify the server to use for
                           proxied Gopher requests.  The format is the same
                           as an HTTP URL.  For example,
                           http://firewall.mumble.com/

    ftp_proxy              This is used to specify the server to use for
                           proxied FTP requests.  The format is the same
                           as an HTTP URL.  For example,
                           http://foo.bar.ca/

    wais_proxy             This is used to specify the server to use for
                           proxied WAIS requests.  The format is the same
                           as an HTTP URL.  For example,
                           http://barp.nv.us/

    no_proxy               This is a comma separated list of domains that
                           should not be proxied.

    all_proxy              This is the default proxy host for all protocols.

### X Resources

Here is a list of Chimera-specific X resources. Default values for these and many more internal ones can be found in Chimera's app-defaults file and in the Common.tmpl file in the source tree.

    homeURL                URL of the first document to load.

    helpURL                URL of the help document.  Defaults to this page
                           (if it was installed where we expect it to be).

    convertFiles           A colon separated list of files that describe the
                           converters.

    path                   A colon separated list of directories to search
                           for viewer and conversion programs.

    showTitle              Boolean variable used to specify whether or not
                           the status/title display should appear on the screen.

    showURL                Boolean variable used to specify whether or not the
                           document URL display should appear on the screen.

    showLiveAnchors        Boolean variable used to specify whether or not the
                           HREF contents of hyperlink anchors should be displayed
                           on the fly as the mouse moves over them.  The display
                           will also show ALT strings and ISMAP attributes of
                           delayed images.  These three default to True.

    button1Box             A comma separated list of buttons to appear on the
                           first button row.  Possible button names are quit,
                           open, home, back, source, reload, file, help,
                           bookmark, search, cancel, and deferpix, all of which
                           are used  (in this order)  by default.

    button2Box             A list of buttons to appear on the second button
                           row.  Defaults to empty.

    openButtonShortcut     Boolean variable used to specify whether user input
                           in the URL field or Open Document box should be assumed
                           to refer to a WWW site if it contains neither a slash
                           nor a colon.  Defaults to True, so you can go to
                           http://www.hot.site.com/ by typing www.hot.site.com
                           (but take care:  when typing in a filename as a relative
                           URL you must then precede it with ./).

    localIndexFiles        A colon separated list of files which Chimera should
                           try to display in this order when pointed at a directory
                           via a file:... URL.  When empty or when nothing matches,
                           a directory listing will be generated.  Defaults to
                           index.html .

    printerName            Used to specify the name of the default printer.

    cacheOff               If True then chimera will not cache documents.
                           Performance falls way off if you set this to true.

    cacheDir               This is used to specify the directory of the default
                           cache.  Chimera will not create the directory if it
                           does not exist and caching will then not occur.

    cacheTTL               This specifies the time-to-live for the default cache.
                           If a document is accessed and the cache entry for that
                           document is more than cacheTTL seconds then the
                           document is reloaded from the source.  If zero then
                           documents are never reloaded (unless the reload
                           button is pressed).

    cacheSize              This specifies the maximum size of the default cache
                           in bytes.
                           If the maximum size is exceeded then the least
                           recently accessed cache document is removed
                           to make room.  If zero then the cache is allowed to
                           grow to any size.

    cacheClean             If True then chimera will remove the files from the
                           default cache that it creates when it exits.  Defaults
                           to True.  If several chimeras are running at once, and
                           some of them have been pointed at the same documents,
                           each upon exiting will happily purge these common
                           documents from the cache behind the others' backs.

    cacheInfoFiles         It is a colon delimited list of cache info files.

    cacheIgnoreExpires     If this is set to True then chimera will ignore
                           'expires' data from the information server.  Defaults
                           to False.

    mimeTypeFiles          A colon separated list of files that map file
                           extensions to MIME content-types.

    mailCapFiles           A colon separated list of MIME mailcap files to be used
                           by chimera.

    protocolFiles          A colon separated list of files that describe the
                           programs to be used for handling protocols.
                           These three have compile-time defaults.

    bookmarkFile           The location of the bookmark file.  Defaults to
                           ~/.chimera_bookmark .

    statusUpdate           The number of times to update the download status
                           per read (or something).  Setting this to 1 gives
                           the most frequent updates while higher numbers give
                           fewer updates.  (Default is 10.)

    html.truncateALT       Long ALT strings will be truncated to at most this many
                           characters before displaying them  (so the HREF if any
                           is still visible to the right of them).  Defaults to 60.
                           When set to 0, it will act like 1024  (effectively no
                           truncation),  when set to anything else less than 7,
                           it will be increased to 7.

    html.htmlErrorMsgCutoff    If negative, never display the "# HTML errors
                           found in document" message.  If non-negative, only
                           display the message if the number of errors found
                           is greater than this cutoff.  (Default value: 0)

    html.useBodyColors     If True (the default), color attributes of HTML BODY
                           tags will be honored;  otherwise we'll stick to our
                           default color scheme.

    html.delayImageLoads   This determines the initial state of the DeferPix
                           button.  Defaults to False  (images not delayed).

    inPort                 The port number that chimera listens on for
                           incoming information from other programs.
                           By default, this is set to zero which disables
                           the feature.

    languageDB             Specifies the language database file.  The language
                           database is a file with a name/value pair per line.
                           The name and value are separated by a colon.  By
                           default, Chimera uses the built-in English database
                           which you'll find in src/lang.c  (the names are all
                           there, but note this is in C, not in the language
                           database format).

    httpProxy              HTTP proxy URL.

    gopherProxy            Gopher proxy URL.

    ftpProxy               FTP proxy URL.

    waisProxy              WAIS proxy URL.

    nntpProxy              NNTP proxy URL.

    newsProxy              News proxy URL.

    urnProxy               URN proxy URL.

    noProxy                Domains with no proxy.

    allProxy               Used to specify the default proxy for all protocols.

    maxColors              Specify the maximum number of colors that a single
                           inline image can have.

    gammaCorrect           Set the gamma correction for inline images.  Default
                           is 0.0 (gamma correction turned off).

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