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 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 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 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 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: * fm2html by Jon von Tetzchner Stephenson at Norwegian Telecom Research converts FrameMaker documents to HTML. It's available from the Norwegian Telecom FTP site . See the README file there for functional details. HTML-specific tools: * See the repository of information at Leeds University . 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 * Chris J. Hector * Nikos Drakos * Darci L. Chapman * Mike Sendall * Peter Flynn * Oscar Nierstrasz * George White * Joerg Heitkoetter Again, comments, suggestions, and complaints about this document should go to Iain O'Cain and not to these contributors.