Personal Glossaries on the WWW

Appendix A: Technical Notes

Meta-section: Note

This appendix consists entirely of meta-discourse about the presentation of the article, not the topic of the article.

Contents of Appendix

  1. Markup used
  2. Link types
  3. Meta-sections
  4. Metadata
    1. Dublin Core Scheme
    2. link relationship values
    3. XFN relationships

  1. Markup used

    This hypertext is written in Strict XHTML 1.0 with Cascading Style Sheets version 2, without any dynamic content (i.e., client- or server-side scripting) so it should be rendered reasonably well by any conforming browser. Style sheets have not been used with the RDF metadata because so few web browsers currently support it. XHTML tables have been used only for presenting tabular data never solely for presentation.

    If you find the way your browser renders entities makes the text difficult to read then we suggest that you see the tables of entity translations.

    Where entities have been used for content (e.g., — for a punctuation dash, or § for a section symbol) they have been used by name so that browsers that cannot display the symbol should preserve the meaning of the markup by presenting the name to readers.

    However where non-breaking spaces have been required they have been encoded as numeric entities ( ) so as not to unnecessarily distract readers with browsers that follow the recommendation in various HTML standards that unrecognized named entities be displayed literally, (e.g.,  ) but that unrecognized numeric entities may be ignored.

    Details about the tools and techniques employed are in Appendix B.

    Browser testing

    Although these precautions have been taken, the document has only been viewed live with Netscape 7.1 and Internet Explorer 5.2 for the Macintosh on a regular monitor (not a handheld device). Additional testing of the CSS effects on sixteen browser/operating system configuration has been done using the BrowserPhoto service from NetMechanics.com. Those tests showed serious problems with Internet Explorer version 4.5 on an iMac and Netscape 6.1 on a Windows-based computer. However earlier and later versions of those same browsers did not reveal serious problems (although the display was lacking aesthetically).

  2. Link types

    Redundant information has been encoded into link types [Trigg & Weisner, 1986; Campbell & Maglio, 1999] to help readers to determine if they should follow the links during a first reading, on a subsequent reading, or never. The link formatting has been chosen so the types can be distinguished from each other and ordinary text, and yet not be intrusive or distracting [Bernstein, n.d.; Campbell & Maglio, 1999].

    To avoid distracting readers [Bernstein, n.d.], links to citations are shown exactly as ordinary text in the screen presentation, until the mouse cursor is in the enclosing section. For example, the citation in this paragraph should only be highlighted, in the screen presentation, when the mouse hovers over the text in this paragraph.

    Cascading Style Sheet rules

    Note that, in the images used to demonstrate the link types, the background colour is different than in the actual article. This difference is to avoid confusion between the actual article and the illustrations.

    CSS rules have been used to show different link types in visual browsers. The three types are:

    1. Links to individual works referenced in the the article
      should have dotted underlines in the usual colours
      Two example images
      1. Citation in line
        in-line citation
      2. Citation in a marginal note (note background colour and font)
        citation inside a marginal note
    2. Links to resources outside of this article (e.g., at the ACM's Digital Library)
      should be underlined as usual
      One example image
      link to Bush's memex article at Atlantic magazine online
      1. Non-citation links to parts of this article
        are underlined as usual but the text should be in boldface
        Three example images
        1. Navigational link in the body of the article
          in-line link in bold font against usual background
        2. Navigational link at the start and end of a text chunk (note the background colour)
          in-line link with different background colour than main text
        3. Cross-reference link in a marginal note
          link to other part of article inside a marginal note

    The exact presentation will depend on the reader's browser software and its configuration.

  3. Meta-sections

    Some parts of the website that comprises this article are about a meta-discourse level.

    1. In browsers that are configured to render visual CSS the meta-sections should appear somewhat as shown in the following image (of the presentation by Netscape 7.1 on a Macintosh). The images also act as links to larger screenshots.

      Note that the first image has the same background as the rest of the article, and is shown with a wider border than the other images to distinguish it from the rest of the article.

      Rendering with CSS
      meta-section with CSS active

      Note that the width of the ordinary part of the text is shown by the horizontal line above the meta-sections. The meta-sections are shown with a different background colour (pale green, instead of pale blue), with a different text colour (dark green instead of black), with a border, and that headings area against a background that matches the border (a bluish slate grey).

    2. Rendering without CSS

      The second image shows the same part of the document as it would be displayed by the same browser if CSS was not used to render the article. Links to the meta-section webpage are visible.

      two meta-sections without CSS

  4. Metadata

    1. Dublin Core Scheme

      A single RDF file comprising metadata for the entire article is linked from each webpage through the profile attribute of the head element. The metadata is encoded using the Dublin Core scheme (DC) [DCMI, 2004]. The main components of the article also use DC relations IsMemberOf and IsChildOf (in meta tags in the head) to connect them to the overview and table of contents respectively.

      Style sheets have not been used with the RDF metadata because so few web browsers currently support the application of CSS rules to RDF files.

      The syntactic accuracy of the file was verified with the W3C's RDF Validation Service (<URL:http://www.w3.org/RDF/Validator/>).

      Specified orders for reading sections

      The file includes recommended reading orders in machine-readable form. The rdf:Seq, rdf:Bag, and rdf:Alt containers are used to conventionally indicate (i.e. informally specify) sequential, unordered, and disjunctive (non-exclusive or) orderings for the webpages to which they refer [Brickley & Guha, 2004, §5.1 (Container Classes and Properties)]. Sequencing by juxtaposition implies no specific order for reading, but does indicate that both of the juxtaposed elements should be read, i.e., juxtaposition implies conjunction with no constraint on ordering.

      These specified reading orders are slightly more relaxed than those shown in the table of contents. In particular, the sidebar is specified to be read at anytime after either the webpage with the abstract or the table of contents.

    2. link relationship values

      Basic structural information (Start, Prev, Next, Parent, Contents, Section, Subsection, Alternate, and Stylesheet) was encoded in the head elements of the webpage markup. The relationships were encoded as recommended in HTML 4.01 Specification [Raggett et al., 1999 (§6.12 Link types)].

      Presentation in browsers

      Some browsers display such metadata as user-selectable links [Gutfeldt, 2004]. Early in the development of the World Wide Web project, Dan Connoly used this type of metadata to generate the order of pages for print copies of websites. The following three images show how these metadata are displayed in the lynx browser (version 2.8.5rel.1 (04 Feb 2004) for solaris2.7) as an example. In all of the following images, the first link is highlighted.

      §1 Overview / Title page
      Four links shown, first link is highlighted: 1.References, 2.Technical Notes, 3.Contents, 4.Next
      The display above corresponds to the following metadata in the markup: 
        <link rel="Appendix" href="8-references.html" 
        title="References" />                  <!-- §8 References -->
  <link rel="Appendix" href="A-technical.html" 
        title="Technical Notes" />             <!-- App. Technical Notes -->
  <link rev="Start"    href="0-map.html" />    <!-- Note: REVerse relationship -->
  <link rel="Contents" href="0-map.html" />    <!-- §0 Article Structure -->
  <link rel="Next"     href="0-map.html" />

      Note that the third link uses a rev attribute, and the others use rel attributes.

      Table of Contents
      Three links shown, first link is highlighted: 1.Start, 2.motivation (informal), 3.introduction (formal)
      The display above corresponds to the following metadata in the markup: 
        <link rel="Start"    href="1-overview.html" /> <!-- Title page/Abstract -->
  <link rev="Contents" href="1-overview.html" /> 
  <link rel="Next"     href="2-I-motive.html"
                       title="motivation (informal)" />
  <link rel="Next"     href="2-T-intro.html"
                       title="introduction (traditional)" />

      Note that the second link uses a rev attribute, and the others use rel attributes.

      §2 Scenarios
      Six links shown, first link is highlighted: 1.Start, 2.Contents, 3.Prev, 4.Alternate, 5.Next, 6.Child
      The display above corresponds to the following metadata in the markup: 
        <link rel="Start"      href="1-overview.html" />
  <link rel="Contents"   href="0-map.html" />
  <link rel="Prev"       href="1-overview.html" />
  <link rel="Alternate"  href="2-T-intro.html" />
  <link rel="Next"       href="3-I-background.html" />
  <link rel="Child"      href="2-I-MontRef.html" />
  <link rev="Parent"     href="2-I-MontRef.html" />

      Note that the sixth and last link uses a rev attribute, and the others use rel attributes.

    3. XFN relationships

      The acknowledgments section of the overview webpage includes relationship attribute values from the XHTML Friends Network initiative (XFN). The profile attribute of the webpage's head provides a machine-readable link to the XFN schema. To avoid unnecessary distraction, the link decorations (typically underlining) of the XFN links has been altered with CSS so that they only appear when the mouse pointer is hovering over the paragraph they are in (for users of visual browsers). The text still functions as links, for all browser types, even without the decoration.

 

References

References for works cited in this text chunk appear below. References for all works cited are available in a separate chunk.

[DCMI, 2004]
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI). [website]. Copyright 1995 – 2004 DCMI. Last updated: 30 August 2004. Retrieved: 06 September 2004. DCMI and the DCMI Web site are hosted by OCLC Research.
<URL:http://dublincore.org>.
[Bernstein, n.d.]
Mark Bernstein. showing links. HypertextNOW. (No publication date given but copyright 2003. Certainly was online circa 1998.)
<URL:http://www.eastgate.com/HypertextNow/archives/ShowingLinks.html>.
[Brickley & Guha, 2004]
Dan Brickley and R. V. Guha (editors). RDF Vocabulary Description Language 1.0: RDF Schema. W3C Recommendation. 10 February 2004.
<URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-schema-20040210/>.
Section 5.1 Container Classes and Properties
<URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-schema-20040210/#ch_containervocab>
[Campbell & Maglio, 1999]
Christopher S. Campbell, and Paul P. Maglio. Facilitating navigation in information spaces: Road-signs on the World Wide Web. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 50(4):309 – 327, 1999.
<DOI:10.1006/ijhc.1998.0246>.
[Gutfeldt, 2004]
Matthias Gutfeldt. The LINK Element: Addendum. 23 February 2004 revision. Downloaded on 20 August 2004.
<URL:http://matthias.gutfeldt.ch/translation/LINK/ENaddendum.html>.
[Noor, 2003]
Mona M. Noor. Online Glossary Tools for Technical Reading. Technical report CS-2003-09, Dalhousie University Faculty of Computer Science, December 2003.
<URL:http://www.cs.dal.ca/research/techreports/2003/CS-2003-09.shtml>.
[Ragett et al., 1999]
Dave Raggett, Arnaud Le Hors, and Ian Jacobs (editors). HTML 4.01 Specification: W3C Recommendation 24 December 1999.
<URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224>.
§6.12 (Link types)
<URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/types.html#h-6.12>.
[Trigg & Weisner, 1986]
Randall H. Trigg and Mark Weisner. TEXTNET: A Network-Based Approach to Text Handling. In ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, 4(1):1 –23, January, 1986.
<DOI:10.1145/5401.5402>.

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