Chimera Help

Program Info

This is Chimera 1.65, written by John Kilburg (john@cs.unlv.edu) and others (see the README file in the chimera distribution for more info). Check out the chimera home page for more information.

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 move movement is not required after the button is pressed. A click on the cancel button on 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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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

homeURL                URL of the first document to load.

helpURL                URL of the help document.

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

showURL                Boolean variable used to specify whether or not the
                       URL should be displayed on the screen.

showTitle              Boolean variable used to specify whether or not
                       the title should be displayed on the screen.

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, and cancel.

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

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 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.

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.

bookmarkFile           The location of the bookmark file.

protocolFiles          A colon separated list of files that describe the
                       programs to be used for handling protocols.

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

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.

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 colors that a single inline
                       image can have.

delayImageLoads        This determines whether or not chimera delays loading
                       images.  If Chimera*delayImageLoads is True then
                       chimera will not download images until the user
                       clicks on the icon that is located in place of the
                       image.

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.

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