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Creating World Wide Web documents, Frequently Answered Questions
CONTENTS
Introduction -- 0 (zero)
Authoring -- 1 (one)
Conversion -- 2 (two)
Sources -- 3 (three)
Subject: 0 -- Introduction
Iain O'Cain <ec@umcc.umich.edu> originally created this document.
Please direct your complaints, suggestions, and other comments about
the content of this document to him. This version was released
15.Apr.1994, and is provided without any warranty as to its accuracy or
applicability.
This FAQ (Frequently Asked/answered Questions) list covers the two
sides of World Wide Web (WWW) document creation: Authoring and
Conversion. The former is the practice of sitting down to create a new
document with the intent of providing it via WWW. The latter refers to
creating WWW documents based on existing material.
The default, primary WWW document format is HTML (HyperText Markup
Language). Since HTML is an SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language)
Document Type, there are many tools available that are intended to be
generic enough to serve the WWW. There are also preexisting tools that
are flexible enough to be configured for HTML authoring or conversion.
Still another category of tools consists of those which are dedicated to
HTML creation.
You won't find a complete definition of HTML in this FAQ, but there are
some concepts you should be familiar with. A URL (Uniform Resource
Locator) is an identifying string for a document's location. This FAQ
is available at URL "http://www.umcc.umich.edu/~ec/www/html_faq.html"
and probably others. Hyperlink Anchors contain URLs to provide
transparent access to various documents. An example of such an anchor
is here.
The word "here" in the last sentence is hypertext.
Subject: 1 -- Authoring
SGML tools:
- Author/Editor from SoftQuad, Inc., 56 Aberfoyle Crescent, Suite 810,
Toronto, Canada M8X 2W4, voice: +1 416 239 4801, FAX: +1 416 239
7105, mail@sq.com. According to dlc@gasco.com (Darci L. Chapman,
Northwest Natural Gas) and pflynn@curia.ucc.ie (Peter Flynn,
University College, Cork), this SGML editor works well with HTML.
- Intellitag from WordPerfect, Inc., 1555 North Technology Way, Orem,
Utah, USA 84057, voice: +1 801 222 5310, paule@WordPerfect.com.
Paul Eddington is the Intellitag Product Manager. WordPerfect has
tested Intellitag with HTML and reported specific improvements in the
newest version of the product that affect HTML.
- Interleaf5<SGML> from Interleaf, Inc., Prospect Place, 9 Hillside
Ave., Waltham, MA, USA 02154, voice: 800-955-5323, +1 617 290 0710,
FAX: +1 617 290 4943, interleaf-direct@ileaf.com. There is work
underway to configure this package as a WYSIWYG HTML editor, but
Interleaf 5 does not support hypertext ranges, which limits its
suitability for this purpose.
Non-SGML tools:
- Emacs html-mode.el by Marc Andreesen, available from
the NCSA,
is a text-only editor.
- Emacs html-mode package by William M. Perry is available from
the
Indiana University and includes support for inlined images in
Epoch, and for HTML+ forms.
- Emacs html package by Heiko Muenkel is available from
the
Sunsite at University of North Carolina and
Universitaet Hannover.
"The package has a lot of functions for HTML+ and for special features
of the NCSA http daemons like forms and server side include commands."
- BBEdit Lite for the Macintosh is a freely available, extensible text
editor for which a set of HTML extensions has been made. These
extensions facilitate writing HTML documents by inserting commonly
used HTML tags via a simple menu choice. BBEdit Lite is available
from a Stanford FTP site , and the HTML extensions are
there, too.
HTML-specific tools:
- HTML Hyperedit for MS Windows by Steve Hancock is available from
Curtin University . It's an MS-Windows editor for HTML, still in
alpha-test stages (version 0.4a at this typing).
- TkWWW is a Tcl/Tk Web client and HTML editor by Joseph Wang at MIT.
It's available from CERN.
- jeff.grover@gtri.gatech.edu (Jeffrey L. Grover) has written a set of
WordPerfect for Windows macros, but they are still in alpha-test and
aren't for release yet.
Subject: 2 -- Conversion
SGML tools:
- FastTag from Avalanche Development Company, 947 Walnut Street,
Boulder, CO, USA 80302, voice: +1 303 449 5032, FAX: +1 303 449
3246, sales@avalanche.com. Avalanche sells tools to convert from
various formats, such as FrameMaker MIF, to SGML. They require
configuration for a specific document template and a particular DTD
(i.e., HTML).
Non-SGML tools:
HTML-specific tools:
Subject: 3 -- Sources
Continued thanks go to the authors of the various tools and packages
mentioned in this document. My additional thanks to the people who are
providing WWW information services, including the following people (in
no particular order) who provided much of the information contained here:
- Nathan Torkington <Nathan.Torkington@vuw.ac.nz>
- Chris J. Hector <cjh@cray.com>
- Nikos Drakos <nikos@cbl.leeds.ac.uk>
- Darci L. Chapman <dlc@gasco.com>
- Mike Sendall <sendall@dxpt01.cern.ch>
- Peter Flynn <pflynn@curia.ucc.ie>
- Oscar Nierstrasz <oscar@cui.unige.ch>
- George White <gwhite@trevnx.bio.dfo.ca>
- Joerg Heitkoetter <heitkoet@lusty.informatik.uni-dortmund.de>
Again, comments, suggestions, and complaints about this document should
go to Iain O'Cain <ec@umcc.umich.edu> and not to these contributors.