R devel - Jan 1998 - netscape to become freely redistributable

I presume by now that most everyone has heard that, starting later
this quarter with Netscape 5.0's developers' release, the Netscape
browser program and its source code will become freely
redistributable.  They didn't say it would be GPL'd (GNU Public
License) but they said their source code would be available in the
spirit of the GPL.

Initially it bothered me that the start.help() function in R tried to
find netscape on your system and started that to read the .html files.
I thought it might be better to rely on a freely available browser
like mosaic or chimera2 or arena.  Even lynx would have been an
alternative.  I find I still often use lynx for browsing when I
am on a a machine with 8 bit planes of color because I don't want a
bloated netscape eating up my color table.

In retrospect the decision to standardize on netscape and to use their
extensions to the HTML standards in the R documentation looks like a
good one.
-- 
Douglas Bates                            bates@stat.wisc.edu
Statistics Department                    608/262-2598
University of Wisconsin - Madison        http://www.stat.wisc.edu/~bates/
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Douglas Bates writes:
 > I presume by now that most everyone has heard that, starting later
 > this quarter with Netscape 5.0's developers' release, the Netscape
 > browser program and its source code will become freely
 > redistributable.  They didn't say it would be GPL'd (GNU Public
 > License) but they said their source code would be available in the
 > spirit of the GPL.
 > 
 > Initially it bothered me that the start.help() function in R tried to
 > find netscape on your system and started that to read the .html files.
 > I thought it might be better to rely on a freely available browser
 > like mosaic or chimera2 or arena.  Even lynx would have been an
 > alternative.  I find I still often use lynx for browsing when I
 > am on a a machine with 8 bit planes of color because I don't want a
 > bloated netscape eating up my color table.
 > 
 > In retrospect the decision to standardize on netscape and to use their
 > extensions to the HTML standards in the R documentation looks like a
 > good one.

Yowser!  This is very good news indeed.

However, I think we should stay away from anyone's HTML extensions.
On the Mac and under Windows, the other browser may be prefereble.

	Ross
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>>>>> "DougB" == Douglas Bates
<bates@stat.wisc.edu> writes:
    DougB> I presume by now that most everyone has heard that, starting
    DougB> later this quarter with Netscape 5.0's developers'
release, the
    DougB> Netscape browser program and its source code will become freely
    DougB> redistributable.  They didn't say it would be GPL'd (GNU
Public
    DougB> License) but they said their source code would be available in
    DougB> the spirit of the GPL.

I did not know this.  Thank you for the information.
I *do* like it!

    DougB> Initially it bothered me that the start.help() function in R
    DougB> tried to find netscape on your system and started that to read
    DougB> the .html files.  I thought it might be better to rely on a
    DougB> freely available browser like mosaic or chimera2 or arena.  Even
    DougB> lynx would have been an alternative.  I find I still often use
    DougB> lynx for browsing when I am on a a machine with 8 bit planes of
    DougB> color because I don't want a bloated netscape eating up my
color
    DougB> table.
ok.
That's why we use  
	netscape -install 
which keeps its own colormap.

    DougB> In retrospect the decision to standardize on netscape and to use
    DougB> their extensions to the HTML standards in the R documentation
    DougB> looks like a good one.

That's the paragraph which made me respond:

---> Which Non-HTML 3.2  Netscape-HTML extensions are we still using?

I've once looked a little bit at it and thought I didn't see any,
at that time.

I very much agree with Ross (and Tony Rossini and ...) that we would not
want to use non-standard HTML.

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