In other hypermedia applications I have worked on, it has been useful to
allow users to select any text and initiate a link from it. This allows,
for example, a user to select a word s/he doesn't understand and ask that
it be looked up in a dictionary/glossary or a site name can be looked up
in an atlas. This is allowed on the "Perseus 1.0: INteractive
sources and Studies on Ancient Greece" CD-ROM. The interface on that
version is not the model for how things should be done, just one
implementation. Could there be an "<ISSELECTABLE>" tag with an
"action=" attribute that made use of the existing htbin architecture?
When this tag is present a "Link on Selection" button could appear
somewhere on the page. Obviously this is not just a client side change.
The second request may seem to go against the spirit of the web. I would
like to put Mosaic clients in a museum public gallery. This is
unrealistic with the existing set of actions that the current clients
support. I do not want users to be able to quit, open new windows, close
existing ones, open any URL, etc. On X servers, resizing windows can be
controlled by the window manager. The mac and windows? client would need to
support window type choices. What would people think of a public
access/kiosk version of the client?
-Sebastian Heath