Peter Murray-Rust (pmr1716@ggr.co.uk) Glaxo Research & Development, Greenford,UK
mbglx@seqnet.dl.ac.uk, http://www.dl.ac.uk/CBMT/pmr.html (Thanks to AlanBleasby)
On Tue, 31 Jan 1995, Stephen Tate wrote:
> I would like to know the easiest way possible to start to produce home pages on
> the WWW on an SGI.
>
This is a very important question and one which has answers at
several different levels. To create a simple formatted page takes about
15 mins to learn, to create a properly linked hyperdocument takes
months. To create a *distributed* hyperresource, like this course is
formally impossible, but we're trying it anyway! I'll take them in
order, but first to say that there are a considerable number of resources
on the Web itself about all aspects of authoring. An excellent one,
which Alan showed me today is by Brian Kelly of Leeds but I haven't got
the URL. There is a good bibliography in it.
1. the syntax. A beginner's guide to HTML:
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/demoweb/html-primer.html
A good place to start. Note that you *dont* have to have a server to
test your work as you can load the files directly into most
clients/browsers. So you can create the file with a text editor and see
whether you got it right. (BTW we shall expect students to be able to do
this!!)
2. links. Putting in the syntax is fairly straightforward to learn, but
there are some additional considerations about relative addresses, etc.
However, creating a hypertree that otehrs can navigate is an art. IT's
extremely easy to make something where people get lost. We'll almost
certainly have some discussion on this.
There are 4 basic information architectures that are relevant:
- storybook (begin->middle->stop) - not very relevant here
- treestructured manual or report (chapters/sections, etc)
- dictionary/glossary
- freetext (or other) search of unstructured data.
I believe that most otehr architectures will confuse people.
3. server-side interactivity (CGI forms and imagemap). You have to know
about servers. useful to have someone to hold your hand. Don't do this
in the course if you aren't on top of it, because if it breaks it leaves
broken pages for readers.
4. dynamically changing hyperresource distributed over many sites. Well,
*I* could use some help here!!
> The unix admistrators here are a little reluctant to tell anybody how to do it
> or give any help.
Yes - you can't choose them. But be nice to them, they're
probably working themselves flat out. When you've learnt a bit, you may
find them a bit friendlier.
>
> As this is part fo the first 2 weeks of the course can somebody help???
>
I'd very much appreciate it if someone could collate these resources -
and post Brian kelly's URL, etc. We need these on a page under the course.
P.
>
> Steve Tate Warwick University, England.
>
BTW Steve, could you reduce your signature file - it looks partly
autogenerated. Trouble is that it can sometimes foul up screens (it's
just done this to me somehow. Normally I'd suggest ca 3 lines, as some
people have to pay for incoming mail.
P.