Re: Calling MetaCard stack from the WWW

emlowe@fsa.ca
Tue, 28 Nov 1995 09:32:36 -0700 (MST)

>
>
> Does anyone have any experience calling a MetaCard stack
> from the WWW? (Netscape Browser in particular)
>
> I would like to distribute demos & CBTs produced on MetaCard
> throughout the company, via the WWW. So far we have been
> able to do so only on my local account, with some problems
> maintaining the proper colors (can we use a private color
> map?).
>

>From the FAQ:

51. Why do my images look washed out or miscolored

MetaCard uses the system colormap unless the global property
"privateColors" is set to true. If you're running another application
that uses lots of colors (WWW browsers are notorious color hogs) Note
that if you set the privateColors property to true, it may cause all
the other applications on the display to "go technicolor" when MetaCard
gets the keyboard focus.

The best solution to this problem is to use the same colors for all of
your images, and to select colors for all the other objects from this
palette. You may also want to color quantize any images in your stacks
to reduce the number of colors they use. Most image conversion
packages have filters for performing these operations.

I suspect the other problem you are having is related to the
permissions either on the engine, the stack you are trying to run, or
something involved with the home stack. If the users need to edit the
stacks (i.e. save them) then they need to own a copy of mchome.

> Also, can we rename the "mc" engine - it conflicts with
> existing software of the same name.
>

There isn't any trouble with changing the name (as far as my experience
shows), but keep in mind that stacks try to "exec mc $0 "$@" (this is
near the top of the file), so you will need to change this in the stack
using some binary capabable editor like emacs.

-Earle

-- 
Earle Lowe
emlowe@fsa.ca
FSA Corporation
Performance and system software for UNIX networks.