Category : Information about the Internet from the early 1990's
Archive   : CELFAQ.ZIP
Filename : CELLOFAQ.HTM

 
Output of file : CELLOFAQ.HTM contained in archive : CELFAQ.ZIP
FAQ FOR CELLO







CONTENTS





  1. Recent changes to this FAQ

  2. What is this document?

  3. List of Questions

  4. Answers







1. RECENT CHANGES TO THIS FAQ





All changes are recent, since this FAQ (Version 1.0) is newborn. Look

for new items to be identified in this section in the future, however.







2. WHAT IS THIS DOCUMENT?





This is the HTML version of the FAQ file for the

Cello program. FAQ stands for Frequently Asked

Questions, and fortunately for you we have also included at no extra

cost the Answers to those Questions.





The purpose behind maintaining this document is to keep discussion

forums concerned with Cello free from as much repetition as possible.

Not many people are keen on answering the same question over and over,

especially if it comes up daily. It is hoped that by keeping a list

of the most common questions for users to refer to, the quality of

discussions will be much higher.





Also available is a

plain text version of this FAQ. Look for it to be

posted about the same time as this one.





Note that this document is not meant to replace the documentation for

the program itself. Make sure you also consult it if you are having a

problem.





Both the plain text version and the HTML version are available from

the following locations:







or through periodic posting to the CELLO-L list and the

comp.infosystems.www newsgroup.















3. LIST OF QUESTIONS





Definitions







Setup







General







Complaints















4. ANSWERS







Q1.1 What is Cello?





Cello is a WWW browser that works under Microsoft

Windows and allows people with a connection to the Internet to follow

Hypertext (or Hypermedia) links to files and information services all over

the world. It displays both regular text files and files that are written

in HTML format, and will translate different Internet services like Gopher

and News and FTP into a format that appears to the user as if it were

a hypertext document. It was written by Thomas Bruce of the

Legal

Information Institute at

Cornell

Law School.





That is the technical explanation. More interesting is what Cello is

(or will be) to you. It allows you to move around the vast information

resources of the Internet with no knowledge of the service you are using,

the machine you are connecting with, or the location of the information

on that machine. You just follow the hypertext links to get the text

or hypertext or sound or image or animation or whatever information is

available. And the text that surrounds the links gives you the context

you need to know that you are moving in the right direction.





The latest

version of Cello is Version 0.9Beta. It is available via FTP

from ftp.law.cornell.edu, /pub/LII/Cello/cello.zip.







Q1.2 What is WWW?





WWW stands for World-Wide-Web, and the description given in the

WWW

FAQ is that it is a "distributed hypermedia system". It was

developed initially at CERN in Switzerland, but is now being worked

on throughout the Internet.





The Web is composed of hypertext and hypermedia links, combined

with all the files and services that are accessible through those

links. Or it can be described as all the servers that provide

those links.





There are a variety of ways that links are formed. The most prevalent

is through the use of HTML, which allows for links to

be embedded in text. Gopher menu structure provides another type of link,

and the directory structure of an FTP site provides yet another.





For more on the WWW, you can read the

technical papers stored at CERN or read the

newsgroups alt.hypertext and

comp.infosystems.www. Perhaps the best

source of information is through the Web itself. You can get general

Information on

the WWWor follow a

Guide To Cyberspace,

among others.









Q1.3 What is HTML?





HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language. It is a DTD of SGML, but

don't worry about that unless you already understand what it means.

The important thing to know is that there are codes placed in an HTML

document that define fonts, layout, embedded graphics, and hypertext

links.





If you like, you can take a look at HTML codes at any time using Cello.

From the Edit Menu, select the View Source option. You can compare this to

the displayable text contained in the file using the View as Clean Text

option instead.





Some of the HTML codes you will probably see include identifying a Title

(which Cello moves outside the window and prints in large letters), end of

paragraph markers, and hypertext links indicated with "HREF=(some

URL)".





For more information, the WWW is once again your best bet. Try The

Beginner's

Guide to HTML for more information.







Q1.4 What is a URL?





A URL is a Uniform Resource Locator (was Universal). It is the

pointer to a file or service on the Internet that the author of an

HTML

document can use to link one document to another. You can see examples

after the "HREF=" code when you View Source from inside Cello.





Another use of the URL is as a launching mechanism. If you know a URL you

would like to visit using Cello, and you do not want to try to find the

links to get there, you can use the Launch URL menu option from the Jump

menu, and type the URL directly into the program. See the online

documentation for a description of the URL structure.





Because the URL contains the service type as well as additional information

unique to that service, the same information can be presented in different

ways depending on the service specified in the URL. For example, look at

the change in the interface with each of these URL's that point to the same

place:







There is currently a movement among the people designing standards for the

Internet to change from using URLs, which require everyone following a link

to end up in exactly the same place, to URNs, which allow everyone to end

up at the place most appropriate for them. For example, if this FAQ list

is available at 20 different sites around the world, it is inefficient for

everyone in the world to retrieve it from the same place. URNs will allow

each person to get the file from the site closest to them. This change is

only planned for, however, and for the time being URLs are the state of the

art.







Q1.5 What is WinSock?





WINSOCK.DLL provides MS-Windows programs with a standard interface to

accessing a network. It insulates the program from knowing the

nitty-gritty details about how the TCP/IP network does its business, and

provides a relatively simple programming model based on the BSD sockets.

The latest versions of Cello rely on a WINSOCK.DLL being present in

order to operate.





This of course requires that your TCP/IP software provide a WINSOCK.DLL

for you. If you don't have any TCP/IP software, you can get a

shareware

version of WINSOCK.DLL that will work over either the telephone lines or an

ethernet card. It is called the Trumpet WinSock, and is

available for ftp from ftp.utas.edu.au, /pc/trumpet/winsock/winsock.zip.





There is also a

FAQ

for Winsock, available from

sunsite.unc.edu. It, along with a

lot of other files to do with WinSock, is in the

/pub/micro/pc-stuff/ms-windows/winsock directory.








Q2.1 What do I need to use Cello?





If you try to run Cello under MSDOS, you will be told that this program

requires Microsoft Windows. It is telling you the truth. You also require

a connection to the Internet and a WINSOCK.DLL compatible with that

connection.





Actually, you could use Cello without a connection to the Internet or

WINSOCK.DLL if all of your hypertext links point to local files. You'll

need to change the CELLO.INI file so that LocalOnly=yes is in there. Note

that you must use an editor to change CELLO.INI directly, since that option

can't be changed from the menus in Cello.









Q2.2 What viewers should I use?





There is no right answer to this question. Use whatever works for you, and

practice tolerance on all those ignoramuses that haven't made the same

informed choice you have.





For convenience, a

collection

of viewers has been prepackaged

for you and is available for FTP from

ftp.law.cornell.edu, /pub/LII/Cello/viewers.zip.





To help you make sure you have the right choice, here is a list of viewers

that have been recommended by CELLO-L readers (we are always soliciting

more opinions, so write

in with your choices):





IMAGES (gif, jpg, etc.) - There are all kinds of GIF and JPEG viewers

available, with many different features. The most important feature

when using Cello is generally the speed of decoding. GV057 is a

fairly good package that comes in the

VIEWERS.ZIP

file. It can handle both GIF and JPEG formats, along with a number of

others. Another choice is

LView.

It too can handle a variety of

formats, including GIF and JPEG. It can be found at

the ftp.bio.indiana.edu FTP site, in

/util/ibmpc. The most current version at the time of this writing is

LVIEW31.ZIP.

WinGIF is another popular choice, and is

available at oak.oakland.edu, in the /pub/msdos/windows3

directory. The most current version is WINGIF14.ZIP. It can only handle

GIF files, but there is another program called



WinJPEG that handles JPEG files as well as GIFs. It is available in

the same place as WinGIF. The most current version is WNJP243.ZIP.





SOUNDS (wav, voc, au, etc.) - The

VIEWERS.ZIP file

contains a program, SNDTOOL, that can handle a variety of different

sound formats. It

also has a speaker driver so that your PC speaker can play the sounds when

you are in Windows (if you don't have one already). Two other choices are

WHAM, which

is a sound player plus a whole lot more, and

WPLANY,

which is

just a sound player but a very good one (see Question

4.2 for a caveat, however). The most current version of WHAM is

WHAM131.ZIP, and of WPLANY is WPLNY09B.ZIP. And, of course, there

is the MPLAYER.EXE program that

Microsoft supplies with Windows for playing WAV files. It doesn't play any

other types of sounds, however.





ANIMATIONS (mpg, avi) - Microsoft has provided a new MPLAYER.EXE

that can handle AVI files as well as WAVs. It is installed using

a program called MFWRUN. There is also a program called

VIDVUE

which will work. Look for it under the name VIDVUE10.ZIP on

wuarchive.wustl.edu, directory /systems/ibmpc/win3/desktop. As for MPEG, there

is a program called

MFW

available on ftp.uwp.edu, in the

/pub/picture.viewers directory as MPEG2.ZIP. This is the latest Xing MPEG

viewer and all associated video drivers. It has a

problem, however, in that there are a number of MPEGs on

the Web which it can't display (they display as garbage).

MPEGW32

is another option. The latest version is MPEGW32E,

available on wuarchive.wustl.edu in the

/systems/ibmpc/win3/nt directory. It will display all the MPEGs, but there

are two other problems with it. The first is that it is really written for

Windows NT. It will work with Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups, but

it requires the installation of the Win32s extensions (which it includes).

The second problem is more difficult to solve. At least with the tests

we've done, MPEGW32 is SLOW! There is one known program that displays all

MPEGs and is reasonably fast, VMPEG, but it won't run under Windows.





DOCUMENTS (ASCII, Postscript) - For an ASCII viewer, Microsoft

provide NOTEPAD. It is an editor, but it can be used as a viewer as well.

For postscript, we have Ghostscript available. Note that you will also

require the Ghostscript viewer program as well, and probably a few fonts.





SERVICES (Telnet, TN3270) - Cello has its own built-in telnet

client. You may prefer some element of your own, however, such as the lack

of difficulty in logging in to Sun workstations (see question

4.1). If you are using the

Trumpet

Winsock, there are several

applications which come with it including TELW, a telnet client. You may

also want to consider the telnet that comes with

QVTNET, most

recent version QVTNT394.ZIP. Note that you

must have QVTNET loaded in order to get the client to work.











Q2.3 What TCP/IP packages are available?





With the right WinSock, all you really need are

packet

drivers for an ethernet connection or a

SL/IP

driver for a modem connection. Note that the

Trumpet

WinSock has it's own internal SL/IP driver.





If you want a TCP/IP package, a better place to look for information

is in the

FAQ list

for comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc. This

newsgroup is ideal for

finding out how to deal with nuisance problems with

your particular configuration as well. It is recommended reading for

anyone trying to set up a PC on the Internet.









Q2.4 What do I need to know about Cello with PC-NFS?





In fact, Cello works just fine with PC-NFS, but with a couple of conditions:







  1. You must have a version of PC-NFS (v5.0 or greater) that has WINSOCK.DLL

  2. You must have support for DNS





It is the second requirement that causes the most confusion. PC-NFS v5.1 will

have DNS support built in, but until you get your copy you can make v5.0 do

the job by ensuring that:







  • Your PC is connected to an NIS server (see the option under Network/Direct

    Connect in the NFSCONF.EXE program)

  • You have installed the

    101128-01

    patch     available from ftp.sunet.se, /pub/pc/pc-nfs/5.0/101128-01.tar.Z









Q2.5 What about using Cello with FTP Software's PCTCP?





Assuming that you have PCTCP configured correctly for your particular

machine you should not have any problems using Cello. You do need

to make sure that you have the latest release of the winsock.dll

for PCTCP. This file is available from

vax.ftp.com

in /pub/winsockapi/FTPSoftware/winsock.exe. It is a self extracting

zip file.





PCTCP will work with ODI drivers. For windows, make sure

that ethdrv is loaded before starting windows, and that you have added

the following lines to your SYSTEM.INI file in their respective sections:









 [386enh]



 device=[drive]:[path]vpctcp.386



 [vpctcp]



 MinimumCopySpace=28



 HiTSRFenceSegment=A000H





Problems with PCTCP and Cello may include, but are not limited to:





  • slow connections to machines on your local IP subnet

  • GPFs when retrieving large files

  • GPFs when retrieving many small files

  • problems retrieving files not conforming to DOS filenaming conventions





If you experience any of these, please report the specific instance to

[email protected]









Q2.6 How do I install Cello on a network so that the files are shared?





It is possible to set up Cello on a network, but there are two important

things you should consider. Do you want each person to have their own

CELLO.INI files, and do you want people to be able to edit their own

file.





Making changes to the CELLO.INI file in the event of global changes to your

network (such as your IP subnet changing) is much easier if there is only

one copy, but there are problems with doing this. There is less

flexibility since everyone must have the same set of options specified. No

one can have a personal email address specified, for example. It has to be

set to a generic address or left blank.





Whether to allow people the ability to edit their own CELLO.INI file is a

philosophical matter. Regardless whether you do it or make each person

responsible for their own, there are some things that must be set properly

for Cello to work. In the CELLO.INI file be sure that the download

directory, the cache directory, the bookmark and style files, and the email

address are all either pointed at user-writable directories, or that they

point to correct settings for everyone. Also, make sure that the network

settings are correct.





If the CELLO.INI file is placed in a location where the Cello user has write

capabilities (and it isn't flagged read only) then the user can change

these settings as they please. If you want more control, use the

Cello environment variable to set the location of the CELLO.INI file in

the system login script (use DOS SET CELLO = [path] for Netware, for example)

and do not give users write privileges in that

directory.





There are similar issues affecting the Home Page. It can be set up

so that every user on your network sees the same information

each time they start Cello, or each person can see their own customized,

editable home page.









Q2.7 What do the lines in CELLO.INI mean?





The CELLO.INI file is used by Cello to store various user configurable

parameters. Cello will look for CELLO.INI in the directory specified by

the CELLO environment variable. This variable is settable by adding the

following line to you config.sys file:









SET CELLO = [drive]:[path]







for example:







set cello=c:\cello\cello.ini




Otherwise, Cello looks for the CELLO.INI file in the WINDOWS

directory.





What follows is a typical CELLO.INI file with explanatory remarks. If you

do not know the necessary information for any of these parameters you

will need to contact someone at your local site for clarification.





 



[Cello]



NNTPServer=usenet.law.indiana.edu    #location of USENET news server



[email protected]          #Your EMAIL address (see warning below)



HomePage=g:\cello\iuhome.htm         #location of the first page Cello shows



                                     #Can be a valid URL



Bullet=183                           #Type of Bullet Character



DLDir=c:\scratch                     #location of download directory



AutoSearchBox=no                     #Sets whether Cello will automatically



                                     #display a search box on documents with 



                                     #the ISINDEX tag.



Telnet=                              #path to external telnet client



TN3270=                              #same for TN client



WaisGate=http://info.cern.ch:8001    #location of nearest WAIS gateway



MailRelay=129.79.131.8               #IP no. of SMTP MailRelay for your net



LowWaterMark=500000                  #Sets point at which cached files are



                                     #deleted from memory/disk 



BookmarkFile=c:\cello.bmk            #location of your bookmark file



StyleFile=c:\cello.sty               #same for style file



FetchGraphics=yes                    #Set this to no if using a slow connection 



CacheDir=c:\                         #Directory where Cello caches files



                                     #from memory



[Extensions]



ext=[drive]:[path]app.exe ^.ext         #use whichever viewer you like here



jpg=g:\pixfolio\pixfolio.exe ^.jpg      #these are examples



au=g:\wplany\wplany.exe -u -r 8000 ^.au








Q2.8 How do I set up an external Telnet client?





The syntax for invoking an external client is the following:





[drive]:[path]telnet.exe #h #p


#h is the placeholder for the hostname you are telnetting to

and #p is the port number.





If your telnet client doesn't support a port number on the command line,

just use the #h by itself. Your external telnet will be launched when

telnetting to a host at port 23, which is the default for most telnet

services. When telnetting to other ports, Cello will invoke its built-in

telnet.





Cello now supports TN3270 via an external application, a

feature which was prompted by the appearance of a freely-distributed TN3270

for Windows (see comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc for announcements and

location). Cello expects the same #h and #p parameters used in the "Use

your own Telnet client" menu choice.









Q2.9 How do you launch Cello using DDE?





You can invoke Cello from other applications which support the

DDE execute command. Here's how you'd do it with an MS-Word

macro:





Sub MAIN



ChanNum = DDEInitiate("Cello", "URL")



DDEExecute(ChanNum, "http://www.law.cornell.edu")



DDETerminate(ChanNum)



End Sub


As you can see, the DDE service name is "Cello", the topic is

"URL", and the data sent in the execute command is a URL.





OLE support and DDE client support are planned in the near future.









Q3.1 What other browsers are there?





Under MSDOS, there is a

line

mode browser available if you are running PC-NFS. For

MSWindows there

are Cello

and Mosaic.







Q3.2 What is the advantage of Cello over Mosaic?





The best answer to this question is one you determine yourself. Both do

largely the same job, but there are subtle (and some not so subtle)

differences that appeal to some individuals and turn others off. Many

people keep both Cello and Mosaic on their computers and use them for

different purposes.





In the end, the important thing is that the competition and

cross-pollination of ideas keep both systems advancing and improving. What

more could you want?









Q3.3 What are some good URLs to look at?





There are a lot of them, too many to list. I'm willing to take votes on which

ones people would like to see included here. Send your votes to

[email protected]

and maybe your favorite URL will be included here in the next release.





In the meantime, check the DEFAULT.HTM page that comes with Cello. Links from

that document lead eventually to most of the really interesting spots in the

WWW.









Q3.4 Are there any newsgroups for Cello?





There are not yet any newsgroups devoted exclusively to Cello, although there

is a mailing list (see the Cello DEFAULT.HTM page for subscription info).





There are several related newsgroups, however:











Q4.1 Why can't I get past the login prompt with telnet?





Because of the need on certain systems (mostly Suns) for a LF instead of

just a CR at login, Cello's telnet will not work. The temporary fix for

this is to press CTRL/ENTER instead of just ENTER after typing in your

login name. This problem will hopefully go away sometime in the near

future. Another possibility is to use the Use Your Own Telnet feature to

splice in a telnet of your own.









Q4.2 Why is sound so lousy?





If you are using the



WPLANY.EXE program to play your sound files, you will

get better performance by using the following line in your CELLO.INI file:





au=c:/your/path/to/wplany.exe -u -r 8000 ^.au









Q4.3 Why can't I see images?





There are several reasons why this might be the case. If you are

missing inline images (the ones that show up within a document), it

might be because you have the option turned off. Check the

Configure/Graphics/Fetch Automatically menu option.





If the problem is an intermittent one, where some images show up and

others don't, or the same image shows up one time and not another, it

may be because of network problems. Some machines will refuse to

accept a connection if they already have too many, for example. Or

perhaps the link to an image is stale, and the actual image has been

moved elsewhere. Maybe the document is still under construction and

the image hasn't been put in place yet.





If the images which are external to the document (you have to click on

a link to them) are causing the problem, there are a number of things

to check. If the file association is stored in your CELLO.INI file,

check that the file and path are correct, and that any required

parameters are present. Something like "^.gif" (for a .gif file)

should be one of the parameters.





If that checks out, find out what the link actually points to by

clicking with the right mouse button. This will bring up a little

window. Check that the file extension is the same as you have in your

CELLO.INI file. Remember that an extension of ".JPEG" will be

truncated to ".JPE", not ".JPG".





You might also try other viewers for that file

type.









Q4.4 Why do some inlined graphics look bad in Cello?





Try upgrading to the newest version of Cello if you don't already have it.

Currently, Cello resolves palette differences between images by loading a

scaled, representative 256-color palette and essentially insisting that

everyone adhere to it. Most of the time this provides fairly accurate

color rendition, but experimentation shows that some shades don't do well.

The subtle oranges used in some of the O'Reilly GNN icons seem to suffer

badly, for instance.









Q4.5 How do I specify search terms to an HTTP server?





Cello gives you two choices: You can either turn automatic search

dialogs on (using the main menu choice Configure/Automatic Search

Dialogs), or you can turn them off and ask for a dialog box when you

need one. If Automatic Search Dialogs is on, you'll get a new dialog

box each time you enter a searchable document. If they're turned off,

you select Search/Index document from the main menu, and Cello will

produce a dialog box for you.









Q4.6 Why does some text print in teeny-weeny type?





This seems to be a particular problem with the monospaced fonts

used for Gopher and FTP documents (and for things between <PRE> tags

in HTML). The best way around the problem is to use TrueType fonts.









Q4.7 Why does the O'Reilly GNN title page shows the

balloon in different parts?





It was designed that way.







  3 Responses to “Category : Information about the Internet from the early 1990's
Archive   : CELFAQ.ZIP
Filename : CELLOFAQ.HTM
”

  1. Daniel says:
    January 27, 2013 at 3:59 pm

    Very nice! Thank you for this wonderful archive. I wonder why I found it only now. Long live the BBS file archives!

  2. Joshie says:
    March 18, 2014 at 4:57 pm

    This is so awesome! 😀 I’d be cool if you could download an entire archive of this at once, though.

  3. DiskingRound says:
    January 14, 2015 at 10:57 pm

    But one thing that puzzles me is the “mtswslnkmcjklsdlsbdmMICROSOFT” string. There is an article about it here. It is definitely worth a read: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/mtswslnk/