WWW FAQ v0.1
Nathan Torkington
Nathan.T...@vuw.ac.nz
It isn't posted to news.answers yet, but when it is of acceptable
quality, it will be.
--Nat
Contents
********
o Recent changes to the FAQ
o Information about this document
o What are WWW, hypertext and hypermedia?
o What is a URL?
o How can I access the web?
o How can I provide information to the web?
o How does WWW compare to gopher and WAIS?
o What is on the web?
o I want to know more.
o Credits
Recent changes to the FAQ
*************************
o Credits with links
o Mentioned "The Whole Internet"
o NCSA ftp server currently no go for CERN code
o small errors
o now has links to most things mentioned
o news had wrong URL
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 Ed Krol's "The Whole Internet".
This informational document is posted to news.answers,
comp.infosystems.gopher, comp.infosystems.wais and alt.hypertext
on the 1st and 15th of every month (please allow a day or two for it
to propagate to your site). The latest version is always available on
the web as http://www.vuw.ac.nz:80/overseas/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 (the URL for this is
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
file://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/www-faq). For
information on FTP, send e-mail to mail-...@rtfm.mit.edu with
"send usenet/news.answers/finding-sources" in the body, instead of
asking me.
Nathan Torkington maintains this document. Feedback about it is to
be sent via e-mail to Nathan.T...@vuw.ac.nz
In all cases, regard this document as out of date.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.
What are WWW, hypertext and
***************************
hypermedia?
***********
WWW stands for the "World Wide Web". The WWW project,
started and driven by CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle
Physics), seeks to build a distributed hypermedia system.
Built on the Internet, the approach is simple: 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 -- you clicking on a
part of the text, 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.
What is a URL?
**************
URL stands for "Universal Resource Locator". It is a draft standard
for specifying an object on the Internet, such as a file or newsgroup.
URLs look like this:
o file://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors/msdos/graphics/gifkit.zip
o file://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors
o http://info.cern.ch:80/default.html
o news:alt.hypertext
o 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).
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.
Browsers accessable 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.
ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
A full screen browser "Lynx" which requires a vt100
terminal. Log in as www.
eies2.njit.edu
(or telnet 128.235.1.43) 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 128.214.6.100) Not available when tested in
O29-Oct-92. (FINLAND)
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 ...
Terminal based browsers
Line Mode Browser
This program gives W3 readership to anyone with a
dumb terminal. A general purpose information
retrieval tool.
"Lynx" full screen browser
This is a hyhpertext browser for vt100s using full
screen, arrow keys, highlighting, etc.
NJIT's Browser
Assumes a character-grid terminal with cursor
addressing, and provides a full-screen interface to the
web.
Tom Fine's perlWWW
A tty-bbased browser written in perl.
Graphic User Interfaces
XMosaic
Browser using X11/Motif. Beta, but works well. This
is the most polished browser.
Macintosh Browser
Browser for the Macintosh. (Alpha.)
"Cello" PC/Windows client
Browser for windows. (Not yet released)
"Erwise"
Browser for X/Motif. (Unsupported).
"ViolaWWW" Browser for X11
Browser for X11. (Beta, unsupported)
tkWWW Browser
Browser for X11. (Beta).
MidasWWW Browser
WWW browser for X/Motif. (Beta, works well.)
Browser-Editor on the NeXT
A browser/editor for NeXTStep. Allows wysiwyg
hypertext editing. Requires NeXTStep 3.0
Unreleased
Browser on CERNVM
A full-screen browser for VM. Nonexistant. Use the
line mode www.
Dave Ragget's Browser
Unreleased. For X11, (later PC?)
How can I provide information to
********************************
the web
*******
Information providers run programs that the browsers can obtain
hypertext from. These programs can either be fully-fledged servers
(best if you are creating your information database from scratch), or
can be "gateway" programs that convert an existing information
format to hypertext.
CERN's server is available for anonymous FTP from:
o info.cern.ch
o ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu (not for a month or two).
and many other places. Use archie to search for "www" or "WWW"
to find copies close to you.
See http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Overview.html for
more information on writing gateways and for servers in general.
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.
The principal difference between the three systems, it turns out, is
deployment. WWW does not have as large a user base as gopher,
mainly because of the small number of WWW browsers that are
out. This is changing as WWW reaches critical mass (usage of the
server at CERN doubles every 4 months -- twice the rate of
Internet expansion).
What is on the web?
*******************
Currently accessable through the web:
o anything served through gopher
o anything served through WAIS
o anything on an FTP site
o anything on Usenet
o anything accessable through telnet
o anything in hytelnet
o anything in hyper-g
o anything in techinfo
o anything in texinfo
o anything in the form of man pages
o sundry hypertext documents
One of the few limitations of the current networked information
systems is that there is no simple way to find out what has changed,
what is new, or even what is out there. As a result, a definitive list
of the web's contents is impossible at this moment.
I want to know more
*******************
To find out more, use the web.
Credits
*******
o Nathan Torkington
o ma...@ncsa.uiuc.edu
o Tony Johnson