Subject: Re: Hypertext editor
From: [email-masked] (Pei Y. Wei)
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 92 02:20:10 -0700

Yup... an editor is in the works. The very current state of the viola-based
browser uses output from a standard SGML parser (sgmls), and the displaying
page is composed of multiple structured textfield/bitmap/whatever objects,
instead of the unstructured single textfield as in the currently released 
version. 

Basically I'm taking a crack at a rough 1-1 mapping of SGML document 
structure to viola objects. Allow editing in the objects (ie textfield, 
bitmap), and convert back to SGML. It'll probably be highly structured 
s.t. some people might find needing some getting-used-to. But as the 
document source is SGML, there should eventually be many alternative 
editors. I can't say when this version will be releasable, as there are 
about a zillion of things to do to get there.

In the meanwhile, however, I could release a version (HTML based) that 
displays bitmaps (XBM and XPM). I hesitate releasing that version because
it has some fundamental limitations (hence the remodeling), b/c XBM and 
XPM are very X-ish, and, and b/c it kinda affects WWW's relatively uniformed
interoperability (linemode browser may then have to say "a picture is here,
but..."). I don't know. Maybe it's better to freeze HTML now?

-Pei
			"All I know-- we've got to change what's happening
			 Something good could happen"	The B-52's