Preferences

Preferences files

MMM uses two preferences files : the first one is common to all users of a system, and provides essentially a minimum common setup. The second one is personal : it is modified by the user, either with the preference control panels, or by hand-editing the file.

Preference panels

Preference panels are obtained by activating the Preferences menu. The left part selects the panel for a given family of settings. The right part shows the settings of a family.

The modification of a setting is active immediately, but does not necessarily apply retro-actively to already existing windows.

To save the preferences for further sessions, use the Save button. To revert to previously saved preferences, use the Reset button. To change the preference file, use the menu.

1- Protocols

Proxy host

Proxy port

Defines the Web proxy to contact for all protocols that MMM does not implement (ftp,wais,gopher,...), as well as for accessing unreachable machines (e.g. because of firewall restrictions)).

Always use proxy

If this setting is active, MMM never tries a direct connection to a server. This mode should be used on a slow network (e.g. PPP dialup). In general, if you have access to a caching proxy, then you should activate this setting.

HTTP Send Referer

The HTTP protocol specifies that the browser can indicate in a request to a server the context of this request (e.g. the document containing the anchor on which we clicked). This is useful for the webmasters of the sites you browser, because they can determine what servers point to her their site, trace dangling links, ...) but it's also a privacy violation. MMM will send this so-called Referer information only if this setting is active.

User Agent

The browser name given by MMM when connecting to a server.

Timeout on headers (seconds)

Defines how much time we should wait for the beginning of an answer before wondering if we should really continue. After this time is elapsed (and if nothing was received), a dialog box offers the choice to:

Retry (for again this amout of time)
Ignore (retry with no time limit, waiting either for a connection shutdown or for the document to be received)
Abort (abort the request)

Password lifetime (minutes)

Passwords used to connect to private sites have a limited lifetime.

Password save file

(not used)

Local binaries path

A colon(:) separated list of directories. When you ask for a document at a file: address, which path is included in one of these directories, MMM will execute this file as a CGI instead of attempting to display the file (see the CGI protocol for more details; this is the non-parsed-headers mode of CGI, meaning that the program must produce a complete HTTP answer with status and headers). This is a trivial example of such a program:

#!/bin/sh
echo "HTTP/1.0 200 Found"
echo "Content-Type: text/html"
echo
cat << EOF
... some valid HTML ...
EOF

2- HTML parsing and display

DTD: MMM knows several HTML DTDs. You can choose the one used to parse HTML documents.
Strict HTML lexing: The lexical analysis implements some error recovery to attempt to display incorrect documents reasonably. If this setting is active, no error recovery takes place. For example, a tag with the attribute ADD_DATE will be flagged as an error because the _ character is illegal in attribute names.
Attempt tables: Activates the display of tables. Otherwise, tables are displayed similarly to <DL>, <DT>, <DT>.
Ignore relative TD width: Since a last minute change in the HTML 3.2 specifications, it has become illegal to specify the width of a table cell (<TD>) as a percentage. Moreover the interpretation of this quantity (percentage of what ?) differs among authors and browsers. You'd better keep this setting active, meaning that percentage width in table cell is ignored.
Attempt smooth scroll: Activates the "smooth scroll" mode (a defect in Tk makes scrolling unusable when large images or tables are included in a document). This mode is costly : you should rather use the "smooth scroll" button (two arrows icon) to change scrolling mode individually for documents where normal scroll doesn't work.
Frames as links: If this setting is active, MMM does not render frames, but adds in the Links menu an entry for each frame of the document. Otherwise, frames are rendered.
Background color: Unless otherwise specified by a document's author, this is the background color (you should really put "white" here).
Entry and Textarea color: Background color of text entries in forms.
Follow document colors: Indicates if MMM should follow the color indications given by authors. It may be useful to activate this settings to spare your eyes, or simply because the document is unreadable otherwise.
Font choices: For each font, you may select the family, size in pixels, and other settings. In the case of Bold, Italic and Fixed, the settings only define a modification of the current font (so, in particular, you should not specify a size). In the case of Fixed, the font should be a fixed font (same width for all characters).

3- Images

No images at all

If this setting is active, no in-lined image will be loaded. Otherwise, one of the image loading modes is used.

Image loading

Defines the image loading mode.

After document, manual: Images are not loaded with the document. You must explicitly invoke image loading through the menu, or select a particular image with Control + Button 1. However, images already present in the cache may still be displayed automatically since they don't involved network transfer.
After document, automatic: Images will be loaded and displayed automatically, as soon as the document itself has been displayed.
During document loading: Images will be loaded and displayed as soon as they are encountered in the document.

Max image connections

Defines the maximum number of simultaneous network connections dedicated to image loading. When this number is reached, requests for image loading are queued are dealt with so as to respect the limit.

Max image connections (same host)

Defines the maximum number of simultaneous network connections dedicated to image loading on a given site. In order to save bandwith, this value should be either 2 or 3. When this number is reached, requests for image loading on this site are queued are dealt with so as to respect the limit. For other sites, the other limit applies.

Gamma correction

Corrective factor for image brightness. Use a value greater than 1 to make images brighter.

JPEG converter

Tk does not know how to load JPEG images, so we need an external converter. This converter (djpeg by default) is called with an argument (file containing the image), and must produce an image understandable by Tk (e.g. GIF or PNM) on its standard output.

4- External programs

Mailto program: Defines the name of the program to execute when the user actiaves a mailto: link. If not specified, MMM opens a simple window for composing the message, and uses the standard Unix mail command to deliver it. Otherwise, the program is executed : it is responsible both for message composition and delivery (check the examples).
Hotlist program: MMM does not provide a builtin hotlist or bookmarks system. You have to use an external program for this purpose (check the examples).
Printing program: MMM does not implement document printing. You have to use an external program for this purpose (check the examples).

External program definitions

In all these settings, you can provide an arbitrary shell command, and not simply the name of a program. In each case, the invocation of this command will involve a substitution of variables in this command. The variables defined for each of these commands are:

Mailto program

$TO: destination address
$SUBJECT: message subject

Hotlist program

$URL: document url
$TITLE: document title (or URL if the document does not provide a title)

Printing program The program receives the content of the document on its standard input.

$URL: document url

5- Cache settings

MMM keeps in a cache the more recently seen documents, up to a given limit.

Max number of documents: Defines the maximum number of documents kept in the cache
Delete how much when full: Defines how many documents should be removed from the cache when it gets full
Keep only history: If this setting is active, the cache only keeps the documents currently in the history of one of MMM's windows. When you close a window, its documents are removed from the cache (except if they are present in the history of another window). This setting should be used only of you have a good bandwidth with your cacheing proxy.
Max cached widgets per window: Defines the number of documents for which MMM should keep the graphical version in memory. If this value is large, navigation in history is fast, but MMM occupies more memory. The lowest value is 1, meaning that only the currently displayed document is kept in memory in graphical form.

6- Applets

7- Misc. settings

Use balloon helps: Self explanatory.
Use GIF animation: Self explanatory.
Automatic GIF animation display: If this setting is active, the animations are started automatically. Otherwise, you must use button 2 on each animation to start it. An image animated whenever the mouse cursor turns to a watch.

8- Internal settings and debugging

These settings are not documented and should not be modified.