Begin
File:vedit316.tgz
Description:vedit version 3.16 editor
Keywords:editors vedit
Version:3.16
Entered-date:14-02-97
Author:
Ported-by:
Original-site:
Copying-policy:
Supplemental:
_______________________________________
| |
| Welcome to VEDIT 3.16 |
| For QNX Ver. 4.0 and later |
|_______________________________________|
===> Before you get started, please read these notes in their entirety.
QNX 4.0 through 4.2 are supplied with version 2.3 of VEDIT and a QNX
specific VEDIT manual.
The new VEDIT version 3.16 is now available for QNX and may be freely
distributed among all QNX 4.0 (and later) users. The latest version of VEDIT
can be downloaded from QUICS in the "usr/free/editors/vedit" directory.
NOTE: Since VEDIT 3.x is not currently supplied with QNX, QSSL requests
that you treat it as "beta-test" software.
Following installation, the file "whats.new" describes the numerous new
features in VEDIT 3.16. Due to the many enhancements and changes, it was not
practical to create an "errata" file for the QNX supplied VEDIT 2.3 manual
you already have. Fortunately, the new VEDIT 3.16 has much better on-line
help and covers the new features in great detail.
Those of you that prefer an up-to-date printed manual can purchase the
VEDIT 3.16 manual from Greenview Data for $20. (Call 1-800-458-3348.)
VEDIT is a subset of our VEDIT PLUS product. VEDIT PLUS gives you full
access to the powerful macro language which is ideal for automatic editing
tasks such as file translations and conversions. VEDIT PLUS is usually
needed to develop and debug new macros; VEDIT can then run the macros. The
new VEDIT and VEDIT PLUS have a "C like" macro language. The older VEDIT
2.3 used a very terse (and less poweful) macro language.
While VEDIT 3.16 completely replaces VEDIT 2.3 in terms of functionality and
performance, we have set it up to coexist with the older VEDIT 2.3. Whereas
VEDIT 2.3 is installed in the directory "/usr/lib/vedit", VEDIT 3.16 is
installed in the directory "/usr/lib/vedit3". You can then link the command
"vedit" or "ved" to the executable "vedit" in either directory.
NOTE: vedit installs to ./vedit and you should move the usr/...
files to /usr/... before using it.
Greenview Data, Inc.
P.O. Box 1586
Ann Arbor, MI 48106
Toll Free: 1-800-458-3348
Telephone: (313) 996-1300
Fax: (313) 996-1308
E-mail: support@vedit.com
Web: http://www.vedit.com
5.1: HOW CAN I PROVIDE INFORMATION TO THE WEB?
Information providers run programs that the browsers can obtain
hypertext from. These programs can either be WWW servers that
understand the HyperText Transfer Protocol HTTP (best if you are
creating your information database from scratch), "gateway" programs
that convert an existing information format to hypertext, or a
non-HTTP server that WWW browsers can access -- anonymous FTP or
gopher, for example.
To learn more about World Wide Web servers, you can consult a www
server primer by Nathan Torkington, available at the URL
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Nathan.Torkington/ideas/www-servers.html .
If you only want to provide information to local users, placing your
information in local files is also an option. This means, however,
that there can be no off-machine access.
5.2: Obtaining Servers
Servers are available for Unix, Macintosh, MS Windows, Windows NT,
OS/2, and VMS systems. If you know of a server for another operating
system, please contact me.
See http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Overview.html for more
information on writing servers and gateways in general.
5.2.1: UNIX SERVERS
NCSA httpd
NCSA has released a server, known as the NCSA httpd; it is
available at the URL ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/ncsa_httpd .
EIT httpd
EIT has created the Webmaster's Starter Kit, which installs
their WWW server on your system via the web through a painless
forms interface. Recommended for those unfamiliar with server
installation. You can learn more about the starter kit and the
EIT httpd at the starter kit site (URL is
http://wsk.eit.com/wsk/doc/ ).
CERN httpd
CERN's server is available for anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch
(URL is http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Status.html ) and
many other places. Use your local copy of archie to search for "www"
in order to find a nearby site.
GN Gopher/HTTP server The GN server is unique in that it can
serve both WWW and Gopher clients (in their native modes). This is a
good server for those migrating from Gopher to WWW, although it does
not have the server-side-script capabilities of the NCSA and CERN
servers. See the URL http://hopf.math.nwu.edu/.
Perl server There is also a server written in the Perl scripting
language, called Plexus, for which documentation is available at the
URL http://bsdi.com/server/doc/plexus.html .
5.2.2: MACINTOSH SERVERS
There is a server for the Macintosh, MacHTTP, available at the URL
http://www.uth.tmc.edu/mac_info/machttp_info.html .
5.2.3: MS WINDOWS AND WINDOWS NT SERVERS
HTTPS (Windows NT)
HTTPS is a server for Windows NT systems, both Intel and Alpha
-- based. It is available via anonymous FTP from emwac.ed.ac.uk
in the directory pub/https (URL is
ftp://emwac.ed.ac.uk/pub/https). (Be sure to download the
version appropriate to your processor.) You can read a detailed
announcement at the FTP site, or by using the URL
ftp://emwac.ed.ac.uk/pub/https/https.txt.
NCSA httpd for Windows
The NCSA httpd for Windows has most of the features of the Unix
version, including scripts (which generate pages on the fly
based on user input). It is available by anonymous FTP from
ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the Web/ncsa_httpd/contrib directory as
the file whtp11a6.zip, or at the URL
ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/ncsa_httpd/contrib/whtp11a6.zip.
SerWeb
A simple, effective server for Windows writtten by Gustavo
Estrella. Available by anonymous ftp from
winftp.cica.indiana.edu (or one of its mirror sites, such as
nic.switch.ch), as the file serweb03.zip, in the directory
/pub/pc/win3/winsock.
There is also a Windows NT version of SerWeb, available by
anonymous FTP from emwac.ed.ac.uk as /pub/serweb/serweb_i.zip.
WEB4HAM
Another Windows-based server, available by anonymous FTP from
ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de as /pub/net/winsock/web4ham.zip.
OS2HTTPD
An OS/2 server, written by Frankie Fan. See the home page (URL
is ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/kfan/overview.html ) for details,
or fetch the package by anonymous FTP from ftp.netcom.com in
the directory pub/kfan.
5.2.4: MSDOS SERVERS
KA9Q NOS (nos11c.exe) is a internet server package for DOS that
includes HTTP and Gopher servers. It can be obtained via anonymous FTP
from one of the following sites:
inorganic5.chem.ufl.edu
biochemistry.cwru.edu
5.2.5: VMS SERVERS
CERN HTTP for VMS
A port of the CERN server to VMS. Available at the URL
http://delonline.cern.ch/disk$user/duns/doc/vms/distribution.ht
ml .
Region 6 Threaded HTTP Server
A native VMS server which uses DECthreads(tm). This is a
potentially major performance advantage because VMS has a high
overhead for each process, which is a problem for the
frequently-forking NCSA and CERN servers that began life under
Unix. A multithreaded server avoids this overhead. Available at
the URL http://kcgl1.eng.ohio-state.edu/www/doc/serverinfo.html
.
5.2.6: AMIGA SERVERS
NCSA's Unix server has been ported to the Amiga, and is bundled with
the AMosaic browser. See the URL
http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/AMosaic/home.html for details.
5.2.7: VM/CMS SERVERS
A VM/CMS web server is available; see the URL
http://ua1vm.ua.edu/~troth/rickvmsw/rickvmsw.html for more
information. If you don't yet have a web browser to try this URL with,
check out the VM/CMS Browsers section.
5.2.8: YEAH, BUT WHICH IS BEST?
To find out which server is best for your needs, you will want to
consult Paul Hoffman's Server Comparison Chart (URL is
http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/chart.html ). That document is also
available by anonymous FTP from ftp.netcom.com in the directory
pub/bo/boutell/faq.
5.3: Producing HTML documents
HTML is the simple markup system used to create hypertext documents.
There are three ways to produce HTML documents: writing them yourself,
which is not a very difficult skill to acquire, using an HTML editor,
which assists in doing the above, and converting documents in other
formats to HTML. The following three sections cover these
possibilities in sequence.
5.3.1: WRITING HTML DOCUMENTS YOURSELF
You can write an HTML document with any text editor. Try the "source"
button of your browser (or "save as" HTML) to look at the HTML for a
page you find particularly interesting. The odds are that it will be a
great deal simpler than you would expect. If you're used to marking up
text in any way (even red-pencilling it), HTML should be rather
intuitive.
A beginner's guide to HTML is available at the URL
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html . You
can also find a plain text version (at the URL
ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ncsapubs/WWW/HTMLPrimer.txt) and a compressed
Postscript version (at the URL
ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ncsapubs/WWW/HTMLPrimer.ps.Z). (Since the
latter two are FTP URLs, you can fetch them by hand using FTP if you
do not yet have a web browser.)
There is also an HTML primer by Nathan Torkington at the URL
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Nathan.Torkington/ideas/www-html.html .
5.3.2: HTML EDITORS
Of course, most folks would still prefer to use a friendlier,
graphical editor. Some editors are WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You
Get), or close to it; others simply assist you in writing HTML by
plugging in the desired markup tags for you from a menu.
Fans of the EMACS editor can use EMACS and html-helper-mode , an EMACS
"mode" for HTML editing (URL is http://www.reed.edu/~nelson/tools/).
There is also another Emacs HTML mode, html-mode.el (URL is
ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/html/elisp/html-mode.el).
For Microsoft Windows users, there is an editor called HTML Assistant
with features to assist in the creation of HTML documents. It can be
had by anonymous FTP from ftp.cs.dal.ca in the directory /htmlasst/.
Read the README.1ST file in this directory for information on which
files to download.
ANT_HTML.DOT is a Word for Windows 6.0 template designed to convert
Word documents into HTML documents in a WYSIWYG environment. It
includes a demo version of the ANT_PLUS utility, which converts HTML
files to WYSIWYG. ANT_PLUS also converts HTML files to ASCII, RTF, or
any other format possible in Word 6.0. Contact jswift@freenet.fsu.edu
if you need more information.
A WYSIWYG editor for the Web, SoftQuad HoTMetaL, is available for
downloading at NCSA and numerous other sites. Many mirror sites exist;
if you can't get through to one, try another, don't give up! That's
what mirror sites are for. (Also be sure to use the copy closest to
you geographically if possible.) Hotmetal is available for both Sun
Sparc systems and Windows systems; note that Windows users need at
least 6 megabytes of free memory. (A 2-megabyte swap file should just
barely do the trick on a 4MB machine.)
Known mirrors:
* ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/html/hotmetal/
* ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/SGML/HoTMetaL
* ftp://sgml1.ex.ac.uk/SoftQuad
* ftp://src.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/WWW/ncsa/html/hotmetal/
*
ftp://askhp.ask.uni-karlsruhe.de/pub/infosystems/mosaic/contrib/Sof
tQuad
* ftp://ftp.cs.concordia.ca/pub/www
*
You need a Sun SPARC or Microsoft Windows system and 6MB of disk (6MB
of RAM minimum for MS Windows; swap files count). Other Unix systems
may be supported by the time you read this; have a look on one of the
sites above.
Because it is context-sensitive, HoTMetaL guides users in creating new
HTML documents and in cleaning up old ones. A Publish command changes
appropriate SRC and HREF attributes from local paths to http
locations. For more information, FTP the README file from the same
directory, or send email to hotmetal@sq.com. A HoTMetaL Pro
commercially supported version is available for purchase from SoftQuad
and its resellers.
Also see Gabriel White's reviews of MS Windows HTML editors (URL is
http://werple.apana.org.au/~gabriel/information/html/html-editors.html
). Another option, if you have an SGML editor, is to use it with the
HTML DTD (URL is
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/DTDHeading.html ).
An editor for all X users: TkWWW (listed above under X browsers)
supports WYSIWYG HTML editing; and since it's a browser, you can try
out links immediately after creating them.
Another editor for X users: Phoenix (URL is
http://www.bsd.uchicago.edu/ftp/pub/phoenix/README.html ) is a fully
WYSIWYG HTML editor which insulates the user from direct control of
the HTML tags. Available by anonymous FTP from www.bsd.uchicago.edu in
the pub/phoenix subdirectory.
Also for X users, there is a package called htmltext which supports
WYSIWYG HTML editing. More information is available at the URL
http://web.cs.city.ac.uk/homes/njw/htmltext/htmltext.html .
For Macintosh users, there is a near-WYSIWYG package called HTML
Editor (URL is http://dragon.acadiau.ca:1667/~giles/HTML_Editor).
ANT_HTML is a Word for the Macintosh template designed to convert Word
documents into HTML documents in a WYSIWYG environment. It includes a
demo version of the ANT_PLUS utility, which converts HTML files to
WYSIWYG. ANT_PLUS also converts HTML files to ASCII, RTF, or any other
format possible in Word. At the time of this writing it was scheduled
to have been released on the Macintosh (it has long been available for
Windows). Contact jswift@freenet.fsu.edu for more information. Also
for Macintosh users, the BBEdit HTML extensions allow the BBEdit and
BBEdit Lite text editors for the Macintosh to conveniently edit HTML
documents. (URL is http://www.uji.es/bbedit-html-extensions.html .)
You can also obtain the extensions package by anonymous ftp from
sumex-aim.stanford.edu as info-mac/bbedit-html-ext-b3.hqx.
There is an alternative BBEdit extension package available as well
(URL is http://www.york.ac.uk/~ld11/BBEditTools.html ). it is
available by FTP from ftp.york.ac.uk in the directory
/pub/users/ld11/BBEdit_HTML_Tools.sea.hqx.
NCSA's List of Filters and Editors, for which the URL is
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/faq-software.html
#editors, mentions several editors, including two for MS Windows. In
some cases, the "editor" amounts to a set of macros for an existing
word processor, which can provide a near-WYSIWYG environment.
Note that this URL contains uppercase and lowercase letters; certain
operating systems won't allow mixed case on the command line, or will
only allow it if it is quoted (VMS), so if you are launching Lynx or
another client and specifying a URL at the command line, try quoting
the URL in double-quotes ("URL").
5.3.3: CONVERTING OTHER FORMATS TO HTML
There is a collection of filters for converting your existing
documents (in TeX and other non-HTML formats) into HTML automatically,
including filters that can allow more or less WYSIWYG editing using
various word processors:
Rich Brandwein and Mike Sendall's List at CERN (URL is
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Tools/Filters.html ).
(Note that this URL contains uppercase and lowercase letters; certain
operating systems such as VMS require you to quote mixed-case URLs
when launching a borwser from the command line. This is NOT a bug in
the browser.)
There is also a Word for Windows template for writing HTML documents,
available at the URL http://www.gatech.edu/word_html/release.htm .
5.3.3: CHECKING YOUR HTML FOR ERRORS
Tools to validate your HTML documents (check them for errors) are
available. There is a form at the URL
http://www.hal.com/%7Econnolly/html-test/service/validation-form.html
which will check HTML documents for errors according to the latest
specification; note that you are encouraged to set up the program on
your own system if you make heavy use of the form. There is also a
tool which will check the links in your documents for links to
nonexistent resources, such as pages that have moved (URL is
http://wsk.eit.com/wsk/dist/doc/admin/webtest/verify_links.html ).
Also try weblint (URL is
http://www.khoros.unm.edu/staff/neilb/weblint.html ), a Perl script
that checks your HTML for errors; you can even try it out over the web
through an HTML form. The script is available by anonymous FTP from
ftp.khoros.unm.edu in the directory pub/perl/www.
5.4: How do I publicize my work?
There are several things you can do to publicize your new HTML server
or other offering:
* Submit it to the NCSA What's New Page at the URL
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-new.html
(see the page for details on how to submit your listing!).
* Post it to the newsgroup comp.infosystems.announce. Please read
the group first to get a feel for the contents. You should not
post to comp.infosystems.www.users,.misc,.providers, etc., but if
you feel compelled to do so, please choose .misc as announcements
are of interest to both providers and users (and those who wear
both hats).
* Submit it to the maintainers of various catalogs, such as the WWW
Virtual Library (at the URL
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/bySubject/Overview.html
) and the ALIWEB index (at the URL
http://web.nexor.co.uk/aliweb/doc/aliweb.html ).
* Read Gareth Rees' guide to publishing on the World Wide Web. (URL
is http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/gdr11/publish.html ).
5.5: Can I buy space on an existing server?
Yes, you can. A list of sites offering WWW space for lease is
available (at the URL http://union.ncsa.uiuc.edu/www/leasing.shtml ).
5.6: How fast does my net connection need to be?
The following response to this very-frequently-asked-question was
provided by Mike Meyer (mwm@contessa.phone.net).
The answer is "It depends." What it depends on is what kind of
things you want to provide on your server. Here are some rules of
thumb to use when deciding what kind of connection you need for your
server.
The first rule of thumb is:
Don't worry about simultaneous access.
Unless you have a very large site, simultaneous access is not a
problem. If you have a very large site, you need as much bandwidth
as you can afford. There is a bit more about this below.
The second rule of thumb is:
It should take at most 5 seconds to send a page.
The five second rule dates from command line days, when that was
about how long people would wait before getting impatient with the
system. It seems like a reasonable number to use now.
Since external images/audio/etc. are somewhat exceptional, allow
more time for them. If you think they should have the same
restrictions as above, buy the bandwidth your site will need to do
so. However, the rule of thumb for external images/audio/etc is:
It should take at most 30 seconds to send an external file.
Given these rules, it's pretty straightforward to work out how large
an HTML page and external files can be. At least, it's easy after
you simplify things by ignoring IP overhead on the line, compression
on modem lines, and anything that's less than 10% of the total (or
even a little bit more than 10%).
The one simplification not to ignore is the multiple packet
round-trips it takes to get data flowing through an HTTP channel.
For modem lines, this is nearly a second for each HTTP connection,
which is significant. For leased lines, it's more like .1 or .2
seconds, which is not significant.
On a 14.4 line assumed to be sending 1.4K bytes of data/second, with
a 1 second startup, you get 4 * 1.4 or 5.6K of HTML. If you want to
include a single inline image, that's 2 seconds of startup, so
you're down to 3 * 1.4 or 4.2K of HTML + image. This means smallish
HTML pages, and simple inline images. For external files, you get 29
* 1.4 or 40K, which is still a small image. If you have a 28.8 line,
you get to double those figures; for a 9600 line, figure 2/3rds of
that size.
On a 56K leased line assumed to be sending 5K/second, you get 25K of
HTML, or mixed HTML/data. For external images, it's 150K. That
should cover any reasonable HTML document, and small to medium
external files. An MPEG movie might be a bit much.
With a T1 line assumed to be sending 150K/second, you get 750K of
HTML, or 4.5 megabytes in an external file. Barring very large
animations, this should be sufficient for anything you want to
serve. More would be faster, but it also gets drastically more
expensive.
Given the above guidelines, let's look at simultaneous access again.
Under the worst case conditions, you're using all of your line for
HTML pages, each of which takes 5 seconds to send, so your server is
sending 12 pages a minute, or 720 pages an hour, or 17,000 pages a
day (pages, not accesses; each inline image in a page generates an
access, unless the client cached it). This makes you one of the
busier sites on the web. While you'll have contention problems
before you get to this point, anything but a modem connection will
be sending most pages in a small fraction of five seconds, which
should leave plenty of bandwidth with no contention. If you have
this kind of access rates on a modem line, you should seriously
consider upgrading your connection.
The bottom line on simultaneous access is that the WWW server is
more likely to have contention with other uses of the line than with
itself. Since I don't know what else you use your line for, I can't
factor it in. You'll have to consider that issue yourself.
5.7.1: HOW DO I SET UP A CLICKABLE IMAGE MAP?
There are really two issues here: how to indicate in HTML that you
want an image to be clickable, and how to configure your server to do
something with the clicks returned by Mosaic, Chimera, and other
clients capable of delivering them.
You can read about image maps and the NCSA server at the URL
http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs/setup/admin/Imagemap.html .
Using imagemaps requires that you create a map file; you can do this
by hand or with a WYSIWYG tool. I wrote Mapedit (URL is:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/mapedit/mapedit.html ), which is such a
tool for Microsoft Windows and the X Window System.
For Macintosh, you may want to use WebMap (URL is
ftp://ftp.uwtc.washington.edu/pub/Mac/Network/WWW ). . It produces
both NCSA and CERN-compatible maps, which can also be used with
MacImagemap and a Macintosh-based server (MacImagemap is found in the
same directory). Alternatively, you may want to use MacMapMaker, also
available from ftp://ftp.uwtc.washington.edu/pub/Mac/Network/WWW (the
same directory).
Important Note: Creating imagemaps requires a cooperative server
administrator and a real web server. Don't waste time making maps
before making sure you have the necessary tools to deliver them.
5.7.2: HOW DO I MAKE A "LINK" THAT DOESN'T LOAD A NEW PAGE?
Such links are useful when a form is intended to perform some action
on the server machine without sending new information to the client,
or when a user has clicked in an undefined area in an image map; these
are just two possibilities.
Rob McCool of NCSA provided the following wisdom on the subject:
Yechezkal-Shimon Gutfreund (sg04@gte.com) wrote:
: Ok, here is another bizzare request from me:
: I am currently running scripts which I "DO NOT" want to return
: any visible result. That is, not text/plain, not text/HTML, not
: image/gif. The entire results are the side effects of the
: script and nothing should be returned to the viewer.
: It would be nice to have an internally supported null viewer
: so that I could do this, more "cleanly" (ok, ok, I hear your groans).
HTTP now supports a response code of 204, which is no operation. Some
browsers such as Mosaic/X 2.* support it. To use it, make your script
a nph script and output an HTTP/1.0 204 header. Something like:
HTTP/1.0 204 No response Server: Myscript/NCSA httpd 1.1
(You can learn more about nph scripts from the NCSA server
documentation at the URL http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs.)
Essentially they are scripts that handle their own HTTP response
codes.
5.7.3: WHERE CAN I LEARN HOW TO CREATE FILL-OUT FORMS?
You can read about the Common Gateway Interface (at the URL
http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu:80/cgi/). In addition to documenting the
standard interface for which scripts can now be written for both NCSA
and CERN-derived servers, these pages also cover HTML forms and how to
handle the results on the server side. See the section on email forms
for a simple solution to the most commonly desired form.
5.7.3.1: How can I create hidden fields in forms (keeping state)?
Use INPUT TYPE=hidden. An example:
By now, most if not all browsers can handle the hidden type. Note that
"hidden" doesn't mean "secret"; the user can always click on "view
source".
5.7.3.2: How can users send me email through their browsers?
If you have access to the server's configuration files, or if your
server administrator permits users to create their own CGI scripts,
you can arrange it. I've written a simple email forms package (URL is:
http://siva.cshl.org/email/index.html ), which does it in ANSI C.
There is also a package floating around in Perl (URL, anyone?).
5.7.4: HOW DO I COMMENT AN HTML DOCUMENT?
Use the tag. Note that comments do not nest,
and the sequence "--" may not appear inside a comment except as part
of the closing --> tag. (It's officially allowed, but some browsers
won't handle it properly.)
You should not try to use this to "comment out" HTML that would
otherwise be shown to the user, since some browsers (notably Mosaic)
will still pay attention to tags inside the comment and close it
prematurely.
Thanks to Joe English for clearing up this issue.
5.7.5: HOW CAN I CREATE DECENT-LOOKING TABLES AND STOP USING
...
?
Tables are a standard feature in HTML Level 3, a new version of HTML.
Unfortunately, they are at present implemented only by the Viola and
Emacs-W3 browsers, to my knowledge.
However, there is a way to use HTML Level 3 tables now and convert
them automatically to HTML, allowing you to design proper tables and
install those pages directly when table support arrives in the
majority of clients. You can do this using the html+tables package, by
Brooks Cutter (bcutter@paradyne.com), which is available for anonymous
ftp from sunsite.unc.edu in the directory
pub/packages/infosystems/WWW/tools/html+tables.shar. This package
requires the shell language Perl, which is primarily used on Unix
systems but is also available for other systems (such as MSDOS
machines). html+tables accepts HTML Level 3 and outputs html using the
...
construct to represent tables, allowing you to write
HTML Level 3 now, knowing that it will look better when clients are
ready for it.
5.7.6: WHAT IS HTML LEVEL 3 AND WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT IT?
HTML Level 3, also known as HTML+, is an enhanced version of HTML
designed to address some of the limitations of HTML. HTML Level 3
supports true tables, right-justified text, centered text, line breaks
that do not double space, and many other desired features.
However, most clients support only a handful of HTML Level 3 features
(such as forms in Mosaic) at this time.
You can access information about new developments in HTML at the CERN
server (at the URL
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/MarkUp.html ).
(HTML Level 1 is the original version. HTML Level 2 is essentially the
same, but with the addition of forms.)
5.7.7: HOW CAN I MAKE TRANSPARENT GIFS?
Transparent GIFs are useful because they appear to blend in smoothly
with the user's display, even if the user has set a background color
that differs from that the developer expected.
There is a document explaining transparent GIFs available at the URL
http://melmac.corp.harris.com/transparent_images.html . You can fetch
the program giftrans by anonymous ftp from ftp.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de at
the path /pub/net/www/tools/giftrans.c.
There is also a Perl Script (URL is:
http://www.omron.co.jp:80/~jfriedl/perl/ ) which makes transparent
GIFs.
There is also a utility for the Macintosh, Transparency (URL is:
http://www.med.cornell.edu/~giles/projects.html #transparency).
5.7.8: HOW COME MAILTO: URLS DON'T WORK?
The mailto: URL is an innovation found in Lynx, Netscape, Spry Mosaic,
Emacs w3 mode and many other browsers. However, it is not in numerous
common variants of Mosaic. Hopefully it will be present in future
versions. In the meantime, you can set up forms which send mail to
you; there is a documented example of this at the URL
http://siva.cshl.org/email/index.html .
5.7.9: HOW CAN I RESTRICT AND CONTROL ACCESS TO MY SERVER?
All major servers have features that allow you to limit access to
particular sites, and many clients have authentication features that
allow you to identify specific users. There is a tutorial on security
and user authentication with the NCSA server and Mosaic available,
written by Marc Andreessen (URL is
http://wintermute.ncsa.uiuc.edu:8080/auth-tutorial/tutorial.html ).
See your server documentation for further information.
5.7.10: WHICH FORMAT IS BETTER FOR WWW IMAGE PURPOSES, JPEG OR GIF?
JPEG does a better job with realistic images such as scanned
photographs. Most browsers cannot handle inline JPEGs, however, so you
must link to them as external images (using a regular <A HREF...>
instead of .
GIF does a better job with crisp, sharp images, such as those
typically used to construct buttons, graphs and the like. All browsers
that can display graphics at all can display GIFs inline.
5.7.11: HOW CAN I MIRROR PART OF ANOTHER SERVER?
Scripts are available to do this, but at this time they are not very
friendly to the server you are attempting to mirror; their behavior
resembles that of the more poorly written WWW robots. If you are
trying to improve access times to a distant server, you will likely
find the "proxy" capabilities of CERN's WWW server to be a more
effective and general solution to your problem.
5.7.12: HOW CAN I KEEP ROBOTS OFF MY SERVER?
Programs that automatically traverse the web can be quite useful, but
have the potential to make a serious mess of things. Every so often
someone will write a "depth-first" searching robot that brings servers
to their knees. See the section on writing robots (4.10) for details.
Fortunately, most robots on the web follow a simple protocol by which
you can keep them off your server if you wish, or keep them out of
portions of your server which are robot traps (ie, they contain an
infinite number of possible links). Read the document World Wide Web
Robots, Wanderers and Spiders (URL is:
http://web.nexor.co.uk/mak/doc/robots/robots.html ) and learn about
the emerging standards for exclusion of robots from areas in which
they are not wanted. You can also read about existing robots there,
including useful cataloging robots you probably do not want to keep
off your server.
5.7.13: HOW CAN I KEEP STATISTICS ABOUT MY WEB SERVER?
There are several tools which can generate statistics about your web
server:
getstats
getstats is a versatile log analyzer, also written in C, which
provides reports for various time periods with a high degree of
flexibility. Add-on packages have been written to generate
reports in HTML and also to generate graphs. You can access the
getstats home page for more information (URL is
http://www.eit.com/software/getstats/getstats.html ), or obtain
the package by anonymous FTP from ftp.eit.com in the directory
/pub/web.software/getstats.
WebStat
WebStat is a package written in the language Python which
supplies statistics on usage by domain, country, etc., with
daily, weekly, monthly and annual reports available. You will
need Python in order to use it. See the WebStat home page (URL
is
http://www.pegasus.esprit.ec.org/people/sijben/statistics/adver
tisment.html ) for details, or obtain Python from ftp.cwi.nl in
the directory /pub/python and WebStat from
ftp.pegasus.esprit.ec.org in the directory /pub/misc.
Wusage
Wusage, which I wrote, is a C program which generates simple
weekly reports in HTML, with inline image graphs displaying
server growth and the distribution of accesses by continent.
You can also exclude irrelevant accesses (inline images, local
machines, etc.) from the results. Read the Wusage home page
(URL is http://siva.cshl.org/wusage.html ) for more
information, or obtain Wusage by anonymous FTP from
isis.cshl.org in the directory pub/wusage.
wwwstat
wwwstat is a full-featured log analyzer written in the language
Perl. (See the newsgroup comp.lang.perl for more information
about the language.) See the wwwstat home page (URL is
http://www.ics.uci.edu/WebSoft/wwwstat/) for more information,
or obtain the package by anonymous FTP from liege.ics.uci.edu
in the directory /pub/arcadia/wwwstat. See also gwstat (URL is
http://dis.cs.umass.edu/stats/gwstat.html ), a package which
produces GIF graphs from the output of wwwstat.
6: WHAT NEWSGROUPS DISCUSS THE WEB?
You can find discussion of World Wide Web topics in three newsgroups,
and one newsgroup which will soon be removed:
comp.infosystems.www.users
A forum for the discussion of WWW client software and its use
in contacting various Internet information sources. New user
questions, client setup questions, client bug reports,
resource-discovery questions on how to locate information on
the web that can't be found by the means detailed in the FAQ
and comparison between various client packages are among the
acceptable topics for this group. Please specify what browser
and what system type (Windows, Mac, Unix, etc.) your post is
about if you are asking questions about a specific program.
comp.infosystems.www.providers
A forum for the discussion of WWW server software and the use
of said software to present information to users. General
server design, setup questions, server bug reports, security
issues, HTML page design and other concerns of information
providers are among the likely topics for this group.
comp.infosystems.www.misc
A forum for general discussion of WWW (World Wide Web)- related
topics that are NOT covered by the other newsgroups in the
hierarchy. This will likely include discussions of the Web's
future, politicking regarding changes in the structure and
protocols of the web that affect both clients and servers, et
cetera.
comp.infosystems.www (DEFUNCT)
The old catch-all newsgroup, which may still exist on your
system but was officially removed on September 7th, according
to David Lawrence, moderator of news.announce.newgroups. If
your system still carries this group, ask your administrator to
remove it.
7: I WANT TO KNOW MORE
To find out more, use the web. This FAQ hopefully provides enough
information for you to locate and install a browser on your system. If
you have system specific questions regarding FTP, networking and the
like, please consult newsgroups relevant to your particular hardware
and operating system!
Once you're up and running, you may wish to consult the World Wide Web
Primer by Nathan Torkington. It is available at the URL
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Nathan.Torkington/ideas/www-primer.html .
Later you may return to this FAQ for answers to some of the more
advanced questions. I encourage you to check out the changes listed
early in the document each time the FAQ appears.
8: CREDITS
Maintainer (11/93 to present): Thomas Boutell, boutell@netcom.com
Former Maintainer (until 11/93): Nathan Torkington,
Nathan.Torkington@vuw.ac.nz
archive contents:
drwxrwxr-x 0 briane support Feb 14 15:22 ./vedit
drwxrwxr-x 0 briane support Feb 14 15:22 ./vedit/etc
drwxrwxr-x 0 briane support Feb 14 15:22 ./vedit/etc/version
-rw-rw-r-- 0 briane support 65 Feb 9 16:53 ./vedit/etc/version/vedit3
drwxrwxr-x 0 briane support Feb 14 15:22 ./vedit/usr
drwxrwxr-x 0 briane support Feb 14 15:22 ./vedit/usr/lib
drwxrwxr-x 0 briane support Feb 14 15:22 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3
-rwxr-xr-x 0 briane support 180809 Apr 30 15:12 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/vedit
-rw-rw-r-- 0 briane support 4255 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/veditrc
-rw-rw-r-- 0 briane support 3795 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/vedrc
-rw-rw-rw- 0 briane support 132935 Apr 30 12:28 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/vhelp.hlp
-rw-rw-rw- 0 briane support 7594 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/box-draw.vdm
-rw-r--r-- 0 briane support 4422 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/cfunc.vdm
-rw-r--r-- 0 briane support 7305 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/color.vdm
-rw-rw-rw- 0 briane support 895 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/colorkey.vdm
-rw-r--r-- 0 briane support 15331 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/compare.vdm
-rw-rw-rw- 0 briane support 4444 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/dbase.vdm
-rw-r--r-- 0 briane support 770 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/display.vdm
-rw-r--r-- 0 briane support 3605 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/print.vdm
-rw-rw-rw- 0 briane support 5481 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/sallbuff.vdm
-rw-r--r-- 0 briane support 13829 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/sort.vdm
-rw-rw-rw- 0 briane support 3419 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/splitter.vdm
-rw-rw-rw- 0 briane support 7184 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/srchincr.vdm
-rw-r--r-- 0 briane support 557 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/stripper.vdm
-rw-rw-rw- 0 briane support 10837 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/veditsav.vdm
-rw-r--r-- 0 briane support 9768 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/wildfile.vdm
-rw-rw-rw- 0 briane support 746 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/wordstar.vdm
-rw-r--r-- 0 briane support 21830 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/key-mac.lib
-rw-rw-rw- 0 briane support 1453 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/user.mnu
-rw-rw-rw- 0 briane support 521 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/ansi.tbl
-rw-rw-rw- 0 briane support 521 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/ebcdic.tbl
-rw-rw-rw- 0 briane support 521 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/user.tbl
-rw-rw-r-- 0 briane support 3174 Apr 30 12:05 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/brief.key
-rw-rw-r-- 0 briane support 7164 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/wordstar.key
-rw-rw-r-- 0 briane support 3359 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/wordperf.key
-rw-rw-r-- 0 briane support 12399 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/brief.doc
-rw-rw-r-- 0 briane support 6395 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/wordstar.doc
-rw-rw-r-- 0 briane support 4433 Feb 29 04:16 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/wordperf.doc
-rw-r--r-- 0 briane support 4644 Feb 19 13:44 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/readme.doc
-rw-r--r-- 0 briane support 19163 Mar 13 21:33 ./vedit/usr/lib/vedit3/whats.new
-rw-r--r-- 0 briane support 171 Feb 9 16:52 ./vedit/install_msg
-rwxr-xr-x 0 briane support 319 Feb 19 12:34 ./vedit/setup
End