11. Thursday, August 1 1996

Languages 479-1, 579-1 Summer 1996 Syllabus
Thursday, August 1 1996
Internet Relay Chat

Internet Publishing

Internet publishing includes various protocols for information delivery over TCP/IP networks, such as HTTP, gopher, FTP, telnet accessible databases, WAIS, etc.

Web clients have become the common interface to all these services.

Web publishing is the most advanced and popular way of Internet Publishing.

Web publishing is a distributed authoring system, a new medium and uses a new language beyond the limits of any previous authoring system. This is mainly the result of Internet delivery. There are some aspects of Web publishing that this document will attempt to describe.

Authoring, is the main component and so far it has been heavily affected by the technical skills required such as:
- HTML, Hyper Text Markup Language, it is an open standard, a very simple metalanguage, that can be functionally learned in a two hours hands-on session, it is the main frame for Web Information. Due to the very nature of the Internet, the process of mimesis and recreation appears to be very effective. There are some particular applications for this language:
  - Tables
  - Forms
  - Colors
  - Imagemaps
- Multimedia
  - Graphics
    - Still Images
    - Moving Images
    - Icons
    - Backgrounds
    - Characters
  - Sounds
    - Music
    - Voice
    - Noise
- CGI, open standard, stands for Common Graphic Interface and is a true programming language
- JAVA, proprietary programming language produced by SUN, it expands enormously the capabilities of HTML and it is complementary to it. The main barrier to its popularity is that it requires a high degree of programming skills. It will become very popular when it will be interfaced inside an Internet authoring system.
- VRML, Virtual Reality Markup Language, it is an open standard, it will be the standard for Internet delivered virtual reality, main problems: size of objects and processing speed of client machines.
Communication/Information Management
- Information Retrieval, the search and transfer to a local machine or the relevant information.
- Information Filtering, is the selection of the information relevant to the chosen topic. Artificial Intelligence and Expert systems are working in this direction. Email filters. Information managers.
- Publishing, as it is in its traditional meaning, is the organization, display and distribution of the information.
- Interpersonal Communication, the Web through forms and direct posting allows for two way, or true interactive, communication between the parties.

There are additional considerations to be made about Internet publishing:

System Administration

Security,

EDI, Electronic Data Interchange, open standard, allows for universal machine readable document formatting which is the first requisite for electronic authorization.

Intranets, are the solution to lack of speed and security issues in Internet publishing. They will foster sharing of resources among educational corporations and among business corporations.

Problems and trends of solution

Speed of delivery affected by many factors such as:
- speed of client-side connection, especially in the case of commuted line.
- speed of server side connection, to the nearest router
- Speed of the main Internet carrier, aka backbone, which is a variable series of intermediate connections.
  If any of these intermediate passages is slower, then the whole connection may be slowed down (bottleneck).
- Client processing speed, very often the information delivered (such as animated graphics, sounds, java, VRML, etc.) is process-intensive.

Potential, no paper, ubiquitous, universal, open standard, flexible, inexpensive, individual.

Homework

By the next class meeting you are expected to turn in a comment on the issue of Internet publishing as defined above.

back to the syllabus
Maurizio: June 24, 1996