Introduction

WASD Hypertext Menu Primer

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1 - Introduction

Having similar requirements, WASD has adopted technologies developed on the global Internet for the provision, access and navigation of distributed information. This project is known as the World Wide Web (WWW or W3) and the technologies are generally described as implementing a distributed Hypertext environment.

The probable reason for your reading this is you being tasked with the management of some aspect of WASD online information. You can accomplish your objectives using the raw capabilities of the Hypertext environment, or using the facilities described in this document. It just depends on what is required and how much time can be given to this activity.

This document endeavours to provide you with a basic understanding of how to organise (or at least represent) Hyper-Information and how to present this so that users can readily access it in a meaningful fashion. It concentrates on a simple menuing system, implemented using a plain-text file, and maintainable using the text editor of your choice (see 3 - Menus). The document avoids most of the intricacies of the Hypertext environment (discussions of HTML, HTTP and other protocols, etc.) but must provide basic information URL file specification.

- NOTE -

This document is not a tutorial on writing HTML documents. If you want to write in HTML see the references in 6 - References.

File Content

Generally the most universal, and therefore accessable, file content type is plain-text. Within the Hypertext environment the other universal type is HTML. All browsers support these. Providing any other file type assumes that the client's browser supports it or can activate a suitable external viewer.

It is therefore proposed that for the intermediate future, unless there are over-riding reasons otherwise, all documents be provided as plain-text or HTML. All common document processors (word processors, text editors) should be capable of producing a plain-text output, and an increasing number of formats can be converted to HTML (WASD will endeavour to make as many of these tools available as practical). If the document source is in another format it can be provided in parallel, and viewed by those capable or saved locally, as appropriate.


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