World Wide Web FAQ

Contents

   1: Recent changes to the FAQ 
   2: Information about this document 
   3: Elementary Questions 
      3.1: What are WWW, hypertext and hypermedia? 
      3.2: What is a URL? 
      3.3: How can I access the web? 
         3.3.1: Browsers Accessible by Telnet 
         3.3.2: Obtaining browsers 
            3.3.2.1: Microsoft Windows browsers 
            3.3.2.2: MSDOS browsers 
            3.3.2.3: Macintosh browsers 
            3.3.2.4: Amiga browsers 
            3.3.2.5: NeXTStep browsers 
            3.3.2.6: X/DecWindows (graphical UNIX, VMS) browsers 
            3.3.2.7: Text-based Unix and VMS browsers 
            3.3.2.8: Batch-mode "browsers" 
      3.4: How can I provide information to the web? 
         3.4.1: Obtaining Servers 
            3.4.1.1: Unix Servers 
            3.4.1.2: Macintosh Servers 
            3.4.1.3: Windows and Windows NT Servers 
            3.4.1.4: MSDOS Servers 
            3.4.1.5: VMS Servers 
         3.4.2: Producing HTML documents 
            3.4.2.1: Writing HTML directly 
            3.4.2.2: HTML editors 
            3.4.2.3: Converting other formats to HTML 
         3.4.3: How do I publicize my work? 
      3.5: How does WWW compare to gopher and WAIS? 
      3.6: What is on the web? 
         3.6.1: How do I find out what's new on the web? 
         3.6.2: Where is the subject catalog of the web? 
         3.6.3: How can I search through ALL web sites? 
      3.7: I want to know more. 
         3.7.1: What newsgroups discuss the web? 
   4: Advanced Questions 
      4.1: How do I set up a clickable image map? 
      4.2: How do I make a "link" that doesn't load a new page? 
      4.3: Where can I learn how to create fill-out forms? 
      4.4: How can I save an inline image to disk? 
      4.5: How can I get sound from the PC speaker with WinMosaic? 
      4.6: How do I comment an HTML document? 
      4.7: How can I create decent-looking tables and stop using
      <PRE>...</PRE>? 
      4.8: What is HTML+ and where can I learn more about it? 
      4.9: How can I make transparent GIFs? 
      4.10: I have a Windows PC (or a Macintosh). Why can't I open
      WAIS URLs? 
      4.11: I'm running XMosaic. Why can't I get external viewers
      working? 
      4.12: How come mailto: URLs don't work? 
      4.13: How can I restrict and control access to my server? 
      4.14: Hey, I know, I'll write a WWW-exploring robot! Why not? 
      4.15: How do I send newsgroup posts in HTML to my web client? 
   5: Credits 

1: Recent changes to the FAQ

   6/23: MacWeb browser added 
   6/23: HTML Editor for Macintosh added 
   6/23: Security section added 
   6/23: Telnettable Lynx sites updated 
   6/23: Robots section added 
   6/23: Newspaper, catalog and automatic-index sections added 
   6/23: Script for sending HTML posts to Lynx added 
   6/23: SoftQuad mirror sites added 
   6/23: KA9Q DOS Web server added 

(Up to Table of Contents) 

2: Information about this document

This is an introduction to the World Wide Web project, describing the
concepts, software and access methods. It is aimed at people who know
a little about navigating the Internet, but want to know more about
WWW specifically. If you don't think you are up to this level, try an
introductory Internet book such as Ed Krol's "The Whole Internet" or
"Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet". The latter is available
electronically by anonymous FTP from ftp.eff.org in the directory
pub/Net_info/Big_Dummy. 

This informational document is posted to news.answers, 
comp.infosystems.www.users, comp.infosystems.www.providers, 
comp.infosystems.www.misc, comp.infosystems.gopher, 
comp.infosystems.wais and alt.hypertext every four days (please allow
a day or two for it to propagate to your site). The latest version is
always available on the web as 
http://siva.cshl.org/~boutell/www_faq.html. (see the section titled
"What is a URL?" to understand what this means.)

The most recently posted version of this document is kept on the 
news.answers archive on rtfm.mit.edu in 
/pub/usenet/news.answers/www/faq. For information on FTP, send e-mail
to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with: 

send usenet/news.answers/finding-sources

in the body (not subject line) of your message, instead of asking me.

Thomas Boutell maintains this document. Feedback about it is to be
sent via e-mail to boutell@netcom.com.

In all cases, regard this document as out of date. Definitive
information should be on the web, and static versions such as this
should be considered unreliable at best. Please excuse any formatting
inconsistencies in the posted version of this document, as it is
automatically generated from the on-line version.

 

3: Elementary questions

3.1: What are WWW, hypertext and hypermedia?

WWW stands for "World Wide Web". The WWW project, started by CERN (the
European Laboratory for Particle Physics), seeks to build a
distributed hypermedia system.

The advantage of hypertext is that in a hypertext document, if you
want more information about a particular subject mentioned, you can
usually "just click on it" to read further detail. In fact, documents
can be and often are linked to other documents by completely different
authors -- much like footnoting, but you can get the referenced
document instantly! 

To access the web, you run a browser program. The browser reads
documents, and can fetch documents from other sources. Information
providers set up hypermedia servers which browsers can get documents
from.

The browsers can, in addition, access files by FTP, NNTP (the Internet
news protocol), gopher and an ever-increasing range of other methods.
On top of these, if the server has search capabilities, the browsers
will permit searches of documents and databases.

The documents that the browsers display are hypertext documents.
Hypertext is text with pointers to other text. The browsers let you
deal with the pointers in a transparent way -- select the pointer, and
you are presented with the text that is pointed to. 

Hypermedia is a superset of hypertext -- it is any medium with
pointers to other media. This means that browsers might not display a
text file, but might display images or sound or animations. 

 

3.2: What is a URL?

URL stands for "Uniform Resource Locator". It is a draft standard for 
specifying an object on the Internet, such as a file or newsgroup. 

URLs look like this: (file: and ftp: URLs are synonymous.) 

   file://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors/msdos/graphics/gifkit.zip 
   ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors 
   http://info.cern.ch:80/default.html 
   news:alt.hypertext 
   telnet://dra.com 

The first part of the URL, before the colon, specifies the access
method. The part of the URL after the colon is interpreted specific to
the access method. In general, two slashes after the colon indicate a
machine name (machine:port is also valid). 

When you are told to "check out this URL", what to do next depends on
your browser; please check the help for your particular browser. For
the line-mode browser at CERN, which you will quite possibly use first
via telnet, the command to try a URL is "GO URL" (substitute the
actual URL of course). In Lynx you just select the "GO" link on the
first page you see; in graphical browsers, there's usually an "Open
URL" option in the menus.  

3.3: How can I access the web?

You have two options -- either use a browser that can be telnetted to,
or use a browser on your machine. 

 

3.3.1: Browsers accessible by telnet

An up-to-date list of these is available on the Web as 
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/FAQ/Bootstrap.html and should be
regarded as an authoritative list. 

info.cern.ch
   No password is required. This is in Switzerland, so continental US
   users might be better off using a closer browser. 
www.cc.ukans.edu
   A full screen browser "Lynx" which requires a vt100 terminal. Log
   in as www. Does not allow users to "go" to arbitrary URLs, so GET
   YOUR OWN COPY of Lynx and install it on your system if your
   administrator has not done so already. The best plain-text browser,
   so move mountains if necessary to get your own copy of Lynx! 
www.njit.edu
   (or telnet 128.235.163.2) Log in as www. A full-screen browser in
   New Jersey Institute of Technology. USA. 
vms.huji.ac.il
   (IP address 128.139.4.3). A dual-language Hebrew/English database,
   with links to the rest of the world. The line mode browser, plus
   extra features. Log in as www. Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
   Israel. 
sun.uakom.cs
   Slovakia. Has a slow link, only use from nearby. 
info.funet.fi
   (or telnet 128.214.6.102). Log in as www. Offers several browsers,
   including Lynx (goto option is disabled there also). 
fserv.kfki.hu
   Hungary. Has slow link, use from nearby. Login is as www. 

 

3.3.2: Obtaining browsers

The preferred method of access of the Web is to run a browser
yourself. Browsers are available for many platforms, both in source
and executable forms. Here is a list generated from the authoritative
list, http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Clients.html.

 

3.3.2.1: Microsoft Windows browsers

NOTE: These browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP
networking on your PC. SLIP or PPP can be accomplished over phone
lines, but only with the active cooperation of your network provider
or educational institution. If you only have normal dialup shell
access, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the Unix (or
VMS, or...) system you call, or telnet to a browser if you cannot do
so. 
Cello 
   Browser from Cornell LII. Available by anonymous FTP from 
   ftp.law.cornell.edu in the directory /pub/LII/cello. 
Mosaic for Windows 
   From NCSA. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the
   directory PC/Mosaic. 

 

3.3.2.2: MSDOS browsers

NOTE: These browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP
networking on your PC. SLIP or PPP can be accomplished over phone
lines, but only with the active cooperation of your network provider
or educational institution. If you only have normal dialup shell
access, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the Unix (or
VMS, or...) system you call, or telnet to a browser if you cannot do
so. 

DosLynx 
   DosLynx is an excellent text-based browser for use on DOS systems.
   You must have a level 1 packet driver, or an emulation thereof, or
   you will only be able to browse local files; essentially, if your
   PC has an Ethernet connection, or you have SLIP, you should be able
   to use it. DosLynx can view GIF images, but not when they are
   inline images (as of this writing). See the README.HTM file at the
   DosLynx site for details. You can obtain DosLynx by anonymous FTP
   from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu in the directory pub/WWW/DosLynx; the URL is
   ftp://ftp2.cc.ukans.edu/pub/WWW/DosLynx/. 

 

3.3.2.3: Macintosh browsers

NOTE: These browsers require that you have SLIP, PPP or other TCP/IP
networking on your PC. SLIP or PPP can be accomplished over phone
lines, but only with the active cooperation of your network provider
or educational institution. If you only have normal dialup shell
access, your best option at this time is to run Lynx on the Unix (or
VMS, or...) system you call, or telnet to a browser if you cannot do
so. 

Mosaic for Macintosh 
   From NCSA. Full featured. Available by anonymous FTP from 
   ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mac/Mosaic. 
Samba 
   From CERN. Basic. Available by anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch in
   the directory /ftp/pub/www/bin as the file mac. 

MacWeb 
   From EINet. Has features that Mosaic lacks; lacks some features
   that Mosaic has. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.einet.net in
   the directory einet/mac/macweb.  

   3.3.2.4: Amiga browsers

   AMosaic 
      Browser for AmigaOS, based on NCSA's Mosaic. Supports older
      Amigas as well as the newer machines in the latest versions, I
      am told; available for anonymous ftp from max.physics.sunysb.edu
      in the directory /pub/amosaic, or from aminet sites in
      /pub/aminet/comm/net. see the site for details. See the URL 
      http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/AMosaic/home.html. 

    

   3.3.2.5: NeXTStep browsers

   Note: NeXT systems can also run X-based browsers using one of the
   widely used X server products for the NeXT. The browsers listed
   here, by contrast, are native NeXTStep applications. 

   OmniWeb 
      A World Wide Web browser for NeXTStep. The URL for more
      information is http://www.omnigroup.com/; you can ftp the
      package from ftp.omnigroup.com in the /pub/software/ directory. 
   WorldWideWeb, CERN's NeXT Browser-Editor 
      A browser/editor for NeXTStep. Currently out of date; editor not
      operational. Allows wysiwyg hypertext editing. Requires NeXTStep
      3.0. Available for anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch in the
      directory /pub/www/src. 

    

   3.3.2.6: X/DecWindows (graphical UNIX, VMS) browsers

   NCSA Mosaic for X 
      Unix browser using X11/Motif. Multimedia magic. Full http 1.0
      support including PUT-method forms, image maps, etc. Recommended
      if you can run it. Available by anonymous FTP from 
      ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the directory Mosaic. 
   NCSA Mosaic for VMS 
      Browser using X11/DecWindows/Motif. For the VMS operating
      system. Multimedia magic. Full http 1.0 support including
      PUT-method forms, image maps, etc. Recommended if you can run
      it. Available by anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in the
      directory Mosaic. 
   tkWWW Browser/Editor for X11 
      Unix Browser/Editor for X11. (Beta test version.) Available for
      anonymous ftp from harbor.ecn.purdue.edu in the directory
      tkwww[extension] (followed by an extension possibly dependent on
      the current version). Please ftp to the site and look for the
      latest version (or use the link above). As of this writing tkWWW
      is at verison 0.11. Supports WSYIWYG HTML editing. 
   MidasWWW Browser 
      A Unix/X browser from Tony Johnson. (Beta, works well.) 
   Viola for X (Beta) 
      Viola has two versions for Unix/X: one using Motif, one using
      Xlib (no Motif). Handles HTML+ forms and tables. Has extensions
      for multiple columning, collapsible/expandable list, client-side
      document include. Available by anonymous FTP from ora.com in
      /pub/www/viola. More information available at the URL 
      http://xcf.berkeley.edu/ht/projects/viola/README. 
   Chimera 
      Unix/X Browser using Athena (doesn't require Motif). Supports
      forms, inline images, etc.; closest to Mosaic in feel of the
      non-Motif X11 browsers. Available for anonymous FTP from 
      ftp.cs.unlv.edu in the directory /pub/chimera. 

    

   3.3.2.7: Text-mode Unix and VMS browsers

   These are text-based browsers for Unix (and in some cases also VMS)
   systems. In many cases your system administrator will have already
   installed one or more of these packages; check before compiling
   your own copy. 

   Line Mode Browser 
      This program gives W3 readership to anyone with a dumb terminal.
      A general purpose information retrieval tool. Available by
      anonymous ftp from info.cern.ch in the directory /pub/www/src. 
   The "Lynx" full screen browser 
      This is a hypertext browser for vt100s using full screen, arrow
      keys, highlighting, etc. Available by anonymous FTP from 
      ftp2.cc.ukans.edu. 
   Tom Fine's perlWWW 
      A tty-based browser written in perl. Available by anonymous FTP
      from archive.cis.ohio-state.edu in the directory pub/w3browser
      as the file w3browser-0.1.shar. 
   For VMS 
      Dudu Rashty's full screen client based on VMS's SMG screen
      management routines. Available by anonymous FTP from 
      vms.huji.ac.il in the directory www/www_client. 
   Emacs w3-mode 
      W3 browse mode for emacs. Uses multiple fonts when used with
      Lemacs or Epoch. See the documentation. Available by anonymous
      FTP from moose.cs.indiana.edu in the directory pub/elisp/w3 as
      the files w3.tar.Z and extras.tar.Z. 

    

   3.3.2.8: Batch-Mode "Browsers"

   Batch mode browser 
      A batch-mode "browser", url_get, which is available through the
      URL http://wwwhost.cc.utexas.edu/test/zippy/url_get.html. It can
      be retrieved via anonymous FTP to ftp.cc.utexas.edu, as the file
      /pub/zippy/url_get.tar.Z. This package is intended for use in
      cron jobs and other settings in which fetching a page in a
      command-line fashion is useful. 

    

   3.4: 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.

    

   3.4.1: Obtaining Servers

   Servers are available for Unix, Macintosh, MS Windows, 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. 

    

   3.4.1.1: 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/pub/web/. 
   CERN httpd 
      CERN's server is available for anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch
      (URL is ftp://info.cern.ch/) 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. 

    

   3.4.1.2: Macintosh Servers

   There is a server for the Macintosh, MacHTTP, available at the URL
   http://www.uth.tmc.edu/mac_info/machttp_info.html. 

    

   3.4.1.3: 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. 

    

   3.4.1.4: 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

    

   3.4.1.5: 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.html.
   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.

    

   3.4.2: 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. 

    

   3.4.2.1: Writing HTML documents yourself

   You can write an HTML document with any text editor. Try the
   "source" button of of your browser 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. 

   There is also a good set of HTML documentation available at the URL
   http://www.ucc.ie/info/net/htmldoc.html. 

   There is also an HTML primer by Nathan Torkington at the URL
   http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Nathan.Torkington/ideas/www-html.html. 

    

   3.4.2.2: 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/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. 

   A WYSIWYG editor for the Web, *SoftQuad HoTMetaL*, is available for
   downloading at NCSA and other Mosaic server 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.) 

   Known mirrors: 
      ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mosaic/contrib/SoftQuad/sqhotmetal-1.0.tar.gz
      ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/SGML/HoTMetaL 
      ftp://sgml1.ex.ac.uk/SoftQuad 
      ftp://doc.ic.ac.uk/pub/packages/WWW/ncsa/contrib/SoftQuad 
      ftp://askhp.ask.uni-karlsruhe.de/pub/infosystems/mosaic/contrib/SoftQuad
      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). 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. 

   An editor for all X users: A HREF="#browserstkwww">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. 

   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 evidently a near-WYSIWYG package
   called HTML Editor (URL is
   http://dragon.acadiau.ca:1667/~giles/HTML_Editor). 

   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;
   it is available by FTP at the URL
   ftp://ctipsych.york.ac.uk/CTI_FTP/pub/BBEdit/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. 

   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"). 

   Another option, if you have an SGML editor, is to use it with the 
   HTML DTD . 

    

   3.4.2.3: 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. The URL is
   http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Tools/Filters.html. 

   (Note that this URL contains uppercase and lowercase letters;
   certain BROKEN browsers (apparently including Lynx for VMS) will
   require that you open it directly, entering the URL in quotation
   marks.) 

   There is also a Word for Windows template for writing HTML
   documents, available at the URL 
   http://www.gatech.edu/word_html/release.htm. 

    

   3.4.3: 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.
    

   3.5: How does WWW compare to gopher and WAIS?

   While all three of these information presentation systems are
   client-server based, they differ in terms of their model of data.
   In gopher, data is either a menu, a document, an index or a telnet
   connection. In WAIS, everything is an index and everything that is
   returned from the index is a document. In WWW, everything is a
   (possibly) hypertext document which may be searchable.

   In practice, this means that WWW can represent the gopher (a menu
   is a list of links, a gopher document is a hypertext document
   without links, searches are the same, telnet sessions are the same)
   and WAIS (a WAIS index is a searchable page, returning a document
   with no links) data models as well as providing extra
   functionality.

   Gopher and World Wide Web usage are now running neck and neck,
   according to the statistics-keepers of the Internet backbone. (Of
   course, World Wide Web browsers can also access Gopher servers,
   which inflates the numbers for the latter.) This is changing as WWW
   reaches critical mass (usage of the server at CERN doubles every 4
   months -- twice the rate of Internet expansion).

    

   3.6: What is on the web?

   Currently accessible through the web: 
      anything served through gopher 
      anything served through WAIS 
      anything on an FTP site 
      anything on Usenet 
      anything accessible through telnet 
      anything in hytelnet 
      anything in hyper-g 
      anything in techinfo 
      anything in texinfo 
      anything in the form of man pages 
      sundry hypertext documents 

   3.6.1: How do I find out what's new on the web?

   The unofficial newspaper of the World Wide Web is What's New With
   NCSA Mosaic (URL is
   http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-new.html),
   which carries announcements of new servers on the web and also of
   new web-related tools. This should be in your hot list if you're
   not using Mosaic (which can access it directly through the help
   menu). 

    

   3.6.2: Where is the subject catalog of the web?

   There are several. There is no mechanism inherent in the web which
   forces the creation of a single catalog (although there is work
   underway on automatic mechanisms to catalog web sites). The
   best-known catalog, and the first, is The WWW Virtual Library (URL
   is
   http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/bySubject/Overview.html),
   maintained by CERN. The Virtual Library is a good place to find
   resources on a particular subject, and has separate maintainers for
   many subject areas. 

   3.6.3: How can I search through ALL web sites?

   Several people have written robots which create indexes of web
   sites -- including sites which have not arranged to be mentioned in
   the newspapers and catalogs above. (Before writing your own robot,
   please read the section on robots.) 

   Here are a few such automatic indexes you can search: 
      WebCrawler (URL is
      http://www.biotech.washington.edu/WebQuery.html) builds an
      impressively complete index; on the other hand, since it indexes
      the content of documents, it may find many links that aren't
      exactly what you had in mind. 
      World Wide Web Worm (URL is
      http://www.cs.colorado.edu/home/mcbryan/WWWW.html) builds its
      index based on page titles and URL contents only. This is
      somewhat less inclusive, but pages it finds are more likely to
      be an exact match with your needs. 
   You can read about other robots in the robots section. 

    

   3.7: 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! 

   Later you may return to this FAQ for answers to some of the
   advanced questions covered in the second section. The advanced
   section contains the most-asked technical questions in the group. 

   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. 

    

   3.7.1: What newsgroups discuss the Web?

   You can also find discussion of World Wide Web topics in three
   newsgroups: 

   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. 
   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 will be removed within three months of this writing
      (June 7th, 1994). 

    

   4: Advanced Questions

   4.1: 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. 

    

   4.2: 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. 

    

   4.3: 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. 

    

   4.4: How can I save an inline image to disk?

   Here are two ways: 

   1. Turn on "load to local disk" in your browser, if it has such an
   option; then reload images. You'll be prompted for filenames
   instead of seeing them on the screen. Be sure to shut it off when
   you're done with it. 

   2. Choose "view source" and browse through the HTML source; find
   the URL for the inline image of interest to you; copy and paste it
   into the "Open URL" window. This should load it into your image
   viewer instead, where you can save it and otherwise muck about with
   it. 

    

   4.5: How can I get sound from the PC speaker with WinMosaic?

   This piece of wisdom donated by Hunter Monroe: 

   This section explains how to install sound on a PC which already
   has a working version of Mosaic for Microsoft Windows. Be warned in
   advance that the results may be poor. 

   To get Mosaic to produce sound out of the PC speaker, first, you
   need a driver for the speaker. You can get the Microsoft speaker
   driver from the URL
   ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/SPEAK.EXE or by doing an
   Archie search to find it somewhere else. SPEAK.EXE is a
   self-extracting file. Copy the speak.exe file to a new directory,
   and then type "SPEAK" at the DOS prompt. Do not put the file
   SPEAKER.DRV in a separate directory from OEMSETUP.INF. 

   Now, you need to install the driver. In Windows, from the Program
   Manager choose successively Main/Control Panel/Drivers/Add/Unlisted
   or updated drivers/(enter path of SPEAK.EXE)/PC Speaker. At this
   point some strange sounds come out as the driver is initialized.
   Change the settings to improve the sound quality on the various
   sounds: tada, chimes, etc. Click OK when you are finished and
   choose the Restart windows option. 

   Having installed the speaker driver, you will now get sounds
   whenever you start Windows, make a mistake, or exit Windows. If you
   do not want this, from the Main/Control Panel/Sounds menu, make
   sure there is no X next to "Enable System Sounds." 

   Now, you need a sound viewer program that Mosaic can call to
   display sounds. NCSA unfortunately recommend WHAM, which does not
   work well with a PC speaker. Get the program WPLANY instead. You
   can find a copy nearby with an Archie search on the string "wplny";
   the current version is WPLNY09B.ZIP. For details on archie and
   other basic issues related to FTP, please read the Usenet newsgroup
   news.announce.newusers. 

   Move the zip file to a new directory, and use an unzip program like
   pkunzip to unzip it, producing the files WPLANY.EXE and WPLANY.DOC.
   Then edit the MOSAIC.INI file to remove the "REM" before the line
   "TYPE9=audio/basic". Then, you need lines in the section below that
   read something like: audio/basic="c:\wplany\wplany.exe %ls"
   audio/wav="c:\wplany\wplany.exe %ls" where you have filled in the
   correct path for wplany.exe. The MOSAIC.INI file delivered with
   Mosaic may have NOTEPAD.EXE on the audio/basic line, but this will
   not work. Now, restart Mosaic, and you should now be able to
   produce sounds. To check this, with Mosaic choose File/Local
   File/\WINDOWS\*.WAV and then try to play TADA.WAV. Then, you might
   try the Mosaic Demo document for some .AU sounds, but you are lucky
   if your speaker produces something you can understand. 

    

   4.6: How do I comment an HTML document?

   Use the <!-- tag at the beginning of EACH line commented out; close
   this for EACH line with the --> tag. Note that comments do not
   nest, and the sequence "--" may not appear inside a comment except
   as part of the closing --> tag. 

   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. 

    

   4.7: How can I create decent-looking tables and stop using <PRE>...
   </PRE>?

   Tables are a standard feature in HTML+, a forthcoming superset 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+ 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+ and outputs html using the
   <PRE>...</PRE> construct to represent tables, allowing you to write
   HTML+ now, knowing that it will look better when clients are ready
   for it. 

    

   4.8: What is HTML+ and where can I learn more about it?

   HTML+ is a superset of HTML designed to address some of the
   limitations of HTML. HTML+ 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+ features
   (such as forms in Mosaic) at this time. 

   To learn more about HTML+, you can examine the ascii text of a
   draft specification for it at the URL 
   ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-raggett-www-html-00.txt
   or a Postscript version of the same at the URL 
   ftp://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts/draft-raggett-www-html-00.ps.

    

   4.9: 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.harris-atd.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. 

    

   4.10: I have a Windows PC or Macintosh. Why can't I access WAIS
   URLs?

   This answer provided by Michael Grady (m-grady@uiuc.edu): 

   The version of Mosaic for X has "wais client" code built-in to it.
   This was relatively easy for the developers to do, because there
   was already a set of library routines for talking to WAIS available
   for Unix as "public domain" (freeWAIS). I don't think there is such
   a library of routines for PC/Windows or Mac, which would make it
   much more difficult for the Mosaic versions for Windows and the Mac
   to add "wais client" capability. Therefore, at least for now,
   neither the Windows or Mac versions of Mosaic support direct query
   of a WAIS server (i.e. can act as wais clients themselves). 

    

   4.11: I'm running XMosaic. Why can't I get external viewers
   working...

   ... No matter what no matter what I do to my .mailcap and
   .mime.types files? 

   Answer provided by Ronald E. Daniel (rdaniel@acl.lanl.gov): 

   Mosaic only looks at the .mime.types file if it has no idea what
   the document's type is. This is actually a very rare situation.
   Essentially all servers now use the HTTP/1.0 protocol, which means
   that they tell Mosaic (or other browsers) what the document's MIME
   Content-type is. The servers use a file very much like Mosaic's
   .mime.types file to infer the Content-type from the filename's
   extension. 

   It is pretty simple to find out if this really is the problem. Use
   telnet to talk to the server and find out if it is assigning a MIME
   type to the document in question. Here's an example, looking at the
   home page for my server. (idaknow: is my shell prompt) 

     idaknow: telnet www.acl.lanl.gov 80  // Connect to the httpd server
     Trying 128.165.148.3 ...
     Connected to www.acl.lanl.gov.
     Escape character is '^]'.
     HEAD /Home.html HTTP/1.0             // replace Home.html with your document
                                          // you supply the blank line
     HTTP/1.0 200 OK                      // the rest of this comes from the server  Date: Wednesday, 25-May-94 19:18:11 GMT
     Server: NCSA/1.1
     MIME-version: 1.0
     Content-type: text/html              // Here's the MIME Content-type
     Last-modified: Monday, 16-May-94 16:21:58 GMT
     Content-length: 1727

     Connection closed by foreign host.
     idaknow: 

   In the example above, /Home.html will get
   http://www.acl.lanl.gov/Home.html. 

   Normally servers will be configured to supply a Content-type of
   text/plain if they don't know what else to do. If this is the
   problem you are having, take a look at the TypesConfig
   documentation for NCSA's httpd. You can have the server look at the
   filename extension, supply the correct Content-type, then use your
   local .mailcap file to tell Mosaic what viewer to use to look at
   the document. 

    

   4.12: How come mailto: URLs don't work?

   The mailto: URL is an innovation found in Lynx and a few other
   browsers. It is not yet found in Mosaic, the most popular browser.
   Hopefully it will be present in future versions. In the meantime,
   you can set up forms which send mail to you; there is documentation
   on this at the URL http://siva.cshl.org/email/index.html. 

    

   4.13: 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. 

    

   4.14: Hey, I know, I'll write a WWW-exploring robot! Why not?

   Programs that automatically traverse the web can be quite useful,
   but have the potential to make a serious mess of things. Robots
   have been written which do a "breadth-first" search of the web,
   exploring many sites in a gradual fashion instead of aggressively
   "rooting out" the pages of one site at a time. Some of these robots
   now produce excellent indexes of information available on the web. 

   But others have written simple depth-first searches which, at the
   worst, can bring servers to their knees in minutes by recursively
   downloading information from CGI script-based pages that contain an
   infinite number of possible links. (Often robots can't realize
   this!) Imagine what happens when a robot decides to "index" the
   CONTENTS of several hundred mpeg movies. Shudder. 

   The moral: a robot that does what you want may already exist; if it
   doesn't, please study 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.

    

   4.15: How do I send newsgroup posts in HTML to my web client?

   How to do this depends greatly on your system; if you have a Mac or
   Windows system, the answer is completely different. But, as food
   for thought, here is a simple shell script I use on my Unix account
   to send posts from rn and related newsreaders to Lynx. Put this
   text in the file "readwebpost" and use the "chmod" command to make
   it executable, then put it somewhere in your path (such as your
   personal bin directory): 

   #!/bin/sh
   echo \ > .article.html
   cat >> .article.html
   echo \ >> .article.html
   lynx .article.html < /dev/tty
   rm .article.html

   Then add the following line to your .rnmac file (create it if you
   don't already have one): 

   W     |readwebpost %C
   Now, when you press "W" while reading a post in rn, a message will be sent to 
   Lynx, and the links enclosed in it will be live. This can be greatly 
   improved upon, changed to invoke Mosaic, changed to tell an already-running 
   copy of Mosaic what page to load, and so on. I enclose it simply
   as an example.

   
   5: Credits

      Thomas Boutell
       boutell@netcom.com
      Nathan Torkington Nathan.Torkington@vuw.ac.nz
      Marc Andreessen marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu
      Tony Johnson


--

The most recent version of this document can be found at
http://siva.cshl.org/~boutell/www_faq.html

Unfortunately, you cannot see it through the email browser,
because it doesn't yet support redirections, and won't pass URLs
containing a tilde (~) for security reasons.

AS (listmaster@info.cern.ch)