[ba-ohs-talk] Multivalent Browser -- first (again) look
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~phelps/Multivalent/ (01)
Finally downloaded the latest Multivalent browser. It needs jdk1.4 (which
I happened to have, but which Macs don't yet have). This one works, and
quite nicely. (02)
Looking around in the source code, it appears that the Multivalent browser
is actually an AWT (not Swing!) HTML 4.0 browser with some frills, like the
ability to open PDF files directly. That, in itself, is extremely
important to the eventual development of a HyperScope: now, in theory, you
won't need a PDF reader to open PDF files. I opened the entire 570-page
manuscript for _XML Topic Maps_, the book I edited and which Addison-Wesley
will publish this coming July!. It read that 3-meg file just fine. (03)
Multivalent also appears that you can add annotations to pages, and it
remembers them. I added an annotation to a web page, then reopened that
page and it opened my annotation along with the page. (04)
Of course, there's that magic Lens, that you can slide all over the page,
examining everything down (nearly) to the mean free path of ions bouncing
around on your video display <hehehe>. (05)
The source code indicates that there is an RTF adaptor ( I successfully
opened a Word DOC file, with just garbage interspered here and there -- it
didn't crash). There's also an SVG adaptor. I tried opening an SVG
file. I think Multivalent crashed. Not sure, though. It just went brain
dead. (06)
Multivalent doesn't do javascript (at least, it won't open
http://www.thinkalong.com -- which wants javascript around). (07)
In any case, with that "free for any use" license, Multivalent, imho, is a
worthy body of code from which to begin testing HyperScope designs. (08)
Cheers
Jack (09)