Getting and Installing Phoenix

Phoenix -- Alpha Release 0.1.8

This is free and has been tested on SunSolaris 2.3 and is also known to compile on many other platforms.

COPYRIGHT 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995 by The University of Chicago.

Phoenix is covered by the GNU General Public License included in this distribution and may be redistributed accordingly.

Phoenix is built upon tkWWW 0.9 which is also covered by copyright.

Please Note

The Phoenix Editor has only been released as an alpha release. This means we feel that it is a little too buggy for general use. When we began our Phoenix Editor project in the summer of 1993, we did so because we needed to be able to create world-wide web pages and there were no tools available for the task. Since that time many tools have become available and since May, 1995 we have ceased all work on the Phoenix Editor.

Installation

Get the distribution
- phoenix-0.1.8.tar.gz (1.9 MB), or
- phoenix-0.1.8.tar.Z (2.9 MB).
Files ending with .gz can be expanded with gunzip from Gnu and those ending with .Z can be expanded using the UNIX program uncompress or gunzip.
The links to the current distribution may be purposely broken if a new version is imminent. In such a case, please try again the following day.
Decompress and untar the distribution.
To compile with "cc" type:
```
setenv CC cc
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
make install
```
Use "setenv CC gcc" for compiling with gcc.
This will put the executable binaries in /usr/local/bin and the Tcl scripts in /usr/local/lib/phoenix. If you wish them to be somewhere else, replace /usr/local with the full path name of the desired location. (Note that you may not use tilde-notation (~) to signify home directories.
Phoenix comes with its own Tcl interpreter so there is no need to install one on your own. If you have your own, Phoenix will neither make use of it, nor overwrite it. We hope to be able to take advantage of existing Tcl/Tk installations in future versions of Phoenix.
Phoenix can be configured so that it will understand which URL's correspond to files on your local disk. Edit lines 28-52 of /usr/local/lib/phoenix/config.tcl to tell Phoenix what it needs to know.
To run phoenix, type phoenix.

Installation Notes

Currently, if you're not directly connected to the internet, you may get into an infinite loop when you start phoenix. To prevent this, remove (or comment out) the line near the end of the installed lib/phoenix/main.tcl which reads
phxW3ModeGoto $tkW3ConfigStartPage
Many, if not all, 24-bit color displays are not supported by Tcl/Tk upon which Phoenix is built. Until this is fixed, you cannot run Phoenix on these displays.
Phoenix does not seem to compile with XFree-3.1 (X11R6). Compile under XFree-2.1.1 (X11R5) instead. You can still run Phoenix under X11R6.

Documentation

The existing help pages are old -- new documentation is not yet available. For starters:

A light gray background indicates "edit mode," a dark gray background indicates "browse mode." Browsing features are disabled while editing, and vice-versa.
The ability to edit lists is broken.
Forms are not editable except that individual pieces may be deleted from an existing page.
To create a link (in edit mode): Select some text or an image. Chose "Edit Anchor" under the "Edit" menu. Type in the URL or follow links in any other Phoenix window which is in Browse mode. Each link followed changes the URL in the Edit Anchor dialog box. Alternatively, hit the target (below the phoenix in the upper righthand corner) to cause the URL of the currently displayed page to be sent to the dialog box.