Re: TFM on the Web

Roland John Turner (rjturner@nospam.socs.uts.edu.au)
Fri, 19 Jan 1996 09:22:53 +1100 (EST)

Joshua Graham Pitcher wrote:

> 1. In the early days of SMH computers online, users had to register to
> access the pages (ie login and password). Is this hard to implement??

Not really. It's just time consuming.

> 2. Every progsoc member had access to ftoomsh, so why not make the TFM
> pages accessible from ftoomsh only?

This sounds good, until you think it through. What it means is that the
browser has to be running on Ftoomsh. If you are on campus and using an
X-terminal running NetScape on Ftoomsh, this is not a problem. If you are
off campus however (or on campus and using a PC without an X-server),
you will have to drop to using lynx for either not having X or having
it at the end of a 28.8K link.

People aren't likely to enjoy using lynx. I suspect that most people
would have trouble simply driving it. (I use it extensively for lack of
IP connectivity from my desk, but it's not for everyone...)

> 3. The core of TFM needs to be developed platform-independantly, otherwise
> the two publications will undoubtably become different. Could we
> sacrifice some of the fancy formatting in the printed version and use
> converters as outlined elsewhere? Another option would be to have
> all chapters submitted as text only, then have two formatting teams -
> the Web team and the printed team - to produce the finished
> documents. Most commercial magazines are created this way, and
> provided the two teams are adequately breifed on format and style,
> the results should be quite similar yet perform the best for their
> implementation.

It seems kind of silly to have two seperate TFMs, or two seperate
formatting teams. As you've seen from the comments posted, there are
a plethora of options available for having a single document be rendered
in both printed and HTML form. If we are to take this path, one or more
of these tools should be selected.

- Raz rjturner@nospam.socs.uts.edu.au

"It often upsets a man's God fantasies to have (Misquoted? from )
someone shoot down one of his helicopters." (Ben Elton's "Stark" )