Technical: Setting Properly your Web reader
If you can't view some of the inline images
Please upgrade to a browser which supports inline JFIF/JPEGs!
If you are not yet a computer wizard, I would suggest choosing:
- Windows, Mac or Unix users:
Netscape
- OS/2 users:
Netscape for Windows, or
IBM WebExplorer.
Netscape appears to be better (not having to wait until a page is
completely loaded to click on a link) but isn't a native OS/2 application.
Other browsers supporting inline JFIF/JPEGs (but harder to set up) include
Chimera (Unix),
Emacs W3-mode,
and even the very latest versions of
NCSA Mosaic
after installing all the required external applications...
Audio troubleshooting
Each platform out there has its own standard:
- Windows uses Waveform files (.wav)
- Macs use AIFF files (.aiff)
- Unix machines often use SunAudio files (.au)
- There is an emerging high-quality (CD) standard called
Audio MPEG (.mp2).
There are slight chances that you encounter any such file, so maybe
you will want to skip Audio MPEG support right now and
save a bookmark to this page in case you need it later.
Windows
If you don't have a sound card, install the pc speaker driver
speak.exe available from
Dec
or
ftp.cdrom.com.
Common formats (AU, WAV, AIFF) can be handled by
Wham,
wplny11.zip.
If you need Audio MPEG capability, try out
mpgaudio.
Mac
Common formats (AU, WAV, AIFF) can be handled by
sound-machine
or
SoundApp.
If you need Audio MPEG capability, try out
mpeg-audio.
Unix
- Sun Unix (SunOS4 or Solaris2)
-
If you want to do
audio streaming
with Netscape (play the files while they are
downloading through the network) you need
xplay, which handles
common AU, WAV and AIFF formats.
Your mailcap file should read:
audio/*; xplay -forkoff -; stream-buffer-size=8000
- Other Unices
-
You will have to do manual conversions with
sox.
For instance, to do on-the-fly conversion to AU
and audio streaming through Netscape,
your mailcap file should read:
audio/x-wav; sox -t .wav - -t .au - > /dev/audio; stream-buffer-size=8000
- If you need Audio MPEG capability (SGI, Sun, Next, 16 bit soundcards/Linux)
-
Install your platform-specific
maplay
binary.
Note: Sun users will need to know if their output device is
high-quality (CD-like) dbri such as shipped with SparcStation10
(external speakerbox) or low-quality ulaw-only amd such as low-end
SparcStation IPX which must use the maplay_ulaw program
instead.
Then add in the mime.types file:
audio/x-mpeg mp2
and in mailcap:
audio/x-mpeg; maplay %s
Video troubleshooting
On Windows, you'll probably need Quicktime for Windows
(from
earthlink or
NCSA)
and a
MPEG player.
To play MPEG movies on a Mac, try out Sparkle
(utexas or
NCSA).
On a X11/Unix machine, you will need a
MPEG player, and the other formats (including quicktime+audio!)
can probably be handled by
xanim.
Make sure to have this line in your mailcap file:
video/*; xanim +Sr +Ca +CF4 -Cn -b -B %s
Warning!
xanim 2.7 and higher cannot handle the Radius Cinepak Video Codec anymore!
You can either use an earlier xanim version (for instance, xanim 2.69.7.8)
or try compiling
xanim2700+cinepak2.tar.gz
with -DXA_CINEPAK.
If the full-size images are not well rendered
If you download a full-size image, take care to view it
from an application able to access a full 256-color custom colormap.
This is not a problem when using 24bits TrueColor displays, however
common hardware does not permit it and has a total
number of allocable colors of 256.
Example: Mosaic for X11/Unix usually spawns
xv as image
viewer, so the colors of the images may get distorted.
For xv version 3, you need to add special flags, such as
"-perfect -8" (forget "-8" if you are using xv version 2)
so that xv can allocate colors as necessary. Your Mosaic mailcap
should read:
image/*; xv -8 -slow24 -perfect %s
Where are mailcap/mime.types hidden on Unix ?
Netscape users: from the Options menu, select
Preferences, then Helper Applications.
The mailcap and mime.types files should hide around
/usr/local/lib/netscape/mailcap and
/usr/local/lib/netscape/mime.types.
You can override both with the file $HOME/.mailcap
and $HOME/.mime.types
Here is my Sun config files (both SunOS4.1.3 and Solaris 2.3):
- mailcap
-
audio/x-mpeg; maplay %s
audio/*; xplay -forkoff -; stream-buffer-size=8000
video/*; xanim +Sr +Ca +CF4 -Cn -b -B %s
application/postscript; ghostview %s
application/x-dvi; xdvi %s
- mime.types
-
audio/x-mpeg mp2
If all else fails...
If the above instructions sound like Chinese to you, I suggest you
write down the references (URL) of this page and bring it to your local
system administrator or computer guru:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/wm/about/tech.html
Remember that remote troubleshooting rarely works, and that seeking
local help is often the key.
Once you're all set...
You will find all kind of junk in the
WebMuseum auditorium, including inline
JFIF/JPEGs, SunAudio files, MPEG and QuickTime movies. Enjoy!
© 11 Jun 1996,
Nicolas Pioch -
Top -
Up -
Info
Thanks to the
BMW Foundation, the WebMuseum
mirrors,
partners
and contributors for their support.