Make dvi Files Act Like Other Browser Content

1. DVI files should appear in the main browser window.

   This is fairly natural for an applet. This is one reason I prefer the applet solution over external helper applications.

2. Links should act like links in ordinary html.

   This is partly true now. Links hilight just like html links, but don't change color after being visited. Multi-line links act as they should. Images which are links are just underlined, instead of being outlined.

   For security reasons, there will probably never be way to find out which links have been visited. The best we could do is to keep track of which have been visited during a given session; I'm not sure this is worth doing.

3. The page should display as it is being downloaded. This is essential given the bandwidth problems on the web today.

   This works. It was a royal pain in the neck to get right :-). The user can click on links, hide and show outline sections, etc., while a page is still being downloaded.

4. The user should not be aware that they are using a Java applet.

   The magnifier window sort of gives this away. Oh well. There is a grey flash in the browser window where the applet will appear, before the applet has a chance to repaint its background white. Otherwise we do pretty well.

   Allowing text selection in the applet would go a long way toward achieving this goal. Since there is currently no access to the clipboard, that may not be very useful at the moment.