(Moving from Gopher "virtual directories" to html files)
We will be moving our FreeNet menus (the 17 categories and any sub-menus within them) from a type where we can only display lists of files or directories (gopher) to one where we can mix text with "sub-menus" and control the order of lists and the structure of the screens (html- hypertext markup language). We will use this opportunity to change some of the presentation of our menus.
Any files in our section areas that use the extension .html, will not be visible to someone coming in with gopher. This means that we can build, upload and test all of our files, in our area, without any disruption to the normal gopher use of the area. When the section is working satisfactorily, then the parent menu that contains the pointer to your menu will have to be changed to point to your html-menu page. For all of the 17 sections, this will be the Edmonton NetPages menu, maintained by members of the group "main". pnelson and peterd are members of this group.
We will be able to use some of the gopher menu information in building the new menus in html files. A gopher menu does not actually exist as a file, it is built from several sources when a person enters the menu area. First, gopher reads a file in the directory called .LINK, which contains instructions for connecting to other menus, gopher sites, html files or WWW sites. It then looks at the files and sub-directories, and builds the menu list. It builds an html file from these, which only exists in temporary memory. We will use this "virtual html file", along with the template file, to start building the new menu.
You will need to repeat this for each menu and submenu page which is currently used in your section menus.
Or
We would like to keep the same general layout between the sections, particularly the material at the top of the page.
The file should be named index.html when it is uploaded to your section directory. You will also need an about.html file for some general information about the section and a "what's new" file where we will list the IPs that have been added along with the date. The most recent additions should be at the top.
Substitute in the section name (two places), and your login ID.
<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>EFN ***Section_name***</TITLE> <LINK REV="MADE" HREF="mailto:***loginID***@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca"> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR=#FFFFFF LINK=#101884 VLINK=#19B4B3> <IMG SRC="Header1.gif" ALT=""> <H1>Edmonton Net Pages - ***Net_pages_section_name***</H1> <A HREF="about.htm">About This Section</A> | <A HREF="whatsnew.htm">What's New</A> ***DD-Mon*** | <A HREF="news.htm">Discussion and news</A> groups
Some sections have related FreeNet newsgroups that had to be referred to in a file, and not directly from a menu. That can now be done in the navigation bar as an html file if you want to include some explanation, or directly connecting to the newsgroup, as below.
<A HREF=" news:rec.arts.sf.announce ">Discussion Group</A>
After the list of sub-sections, and before the list of IPs under each subsection, insert the following code. Substitute your login ID (two places) as the section maintainer. The websites.html document will contain pointers to sites of interest, but that are not IPs or Edmonton organizations. Use your judgment here as we want to emphasize the Edmonton content, but not discard the global content.
<A HREF="http://www.freenet.edmonton.ab.ca/">Edmonton FreeNet</A> | <A HREF="http://www.freenet.edmonton.ab.ca/main">Edmonton Net Pages</A> | <A HREF="websites.htm">Related Websites</A> <HR> <ADDRESS>Maintained by: <A HREF="mailto:***loginID***@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca"><***loginID***@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca></A></ADDRESS> <HR>
Since you cannot include the < and > characters in your html document (they are interpretted as start and end of html tags), they are inserted by using < for the less than (<) symbol, and > for the greater than (>) symbol.
The "From:" shows the text that appears in the gopher file, and the "To:" shows the text that will appear in the index.html file. In the gopher file, if there were spaces and other characters that aren't normally in a file name or path, they are represented by %nn, where nn is the code number of the character (a space is %20 for example).
You will have different numbers of sub-sections and IPs, just copy and paste the sample lines.
If you had some IPs grouped together in sub-menus, then you will need to list the sub-menu name near the top of the section, and further on in the section, you will list all of the IPs under a heading for the sub-menu. This will be accomplished using a hypertext link. That is a connection between two pieces of text that allows you to jump between them, even though they are at different places in the document. You will need a hypertext link as the jumping point, and an anchor as the landing point.
From:
(DIR) <A HREF="//freenet.edmonton.ab.ca:70/11/i/scitech/%28%2b%29%20Engineering%20and%20Scientific%20Associations" TITLE="(+) Engineering and Scientific Associations">(+) Engineering and Scientific Associations</A>
To the link:
<LI><A HREF="#es_assoc">Engineering and Scientific Associations</A>
And to the anchor:
<A NAME="es_assoc"></A><H2>Engineering and Scientific Associations H2>
When the IP used plain text files and sub-directories. The gopher line will start with (DIR).
From:
(DIR) <A HREF="//freenet.edmonton.ab.ca:70/11/i/nanugs" TITLE="(.. Northern Alberta Novell Users' Group">(.. Northern Alberta Novell Users' Group</A>
To:
<LI><A HREF=" gopher:// freenet.edmonton.ab.ca/11/i/nanugs">Northern Alberta Novell Users' Group</A>
Usually the file extension .html should be in lower case. We will let IPs know that if they name their opening file index.html, then the file name does not have to be included for those accessing their area directly, without going through our menus.
If the file name of the welcome-top-opening file is index.html, you do not need to include the filename.
From:
(HTML) <A HREF="//freenet.edmonton.ab.ca:70/h/i/sranded2/opener.htm" TITLE="Tax Credits for Research and Experimental Development">Tax Credits for Research and Experimental Development</A>
To:
<LI><A HREF="http://freenet.edmonton.ab.ca/sranded2/opener.htm">Tax Credits for Research and Experimental Development</A>
Most sites do not require a file name to be included if it is the sites primary page that you are entering. The right file will be loaded automatically unless you are trying to go to an individuals home page, or directly to a specific page.
From:
(HTML) <A HREF="//spacelink.msfc.nasa.gov:80/hGET%20/html/txt.index.htm" TITLE="(.. NASA">(.. NASA</A>
To:
<LI><A HREF="http://spacelink.msfc.nasa.gov">NASA</A>
Some sites had not allowed us to connect directly to them from a gopher menu, because they were not listening for gopher requests. In that past, we had to refer to an html file, and then from there point to the site using the type of requests they were listening for, http (hypertext transport protocol). We can now go to them directly from the html page that is our menu.
From:
(HTML) <A HREF="//freenet.edmonton.ab.ca:70/hh/i/scitech/Professional%20Engineers%2c%20Geologists%20and%20Geophysicists%20%28APEGGA%29" TITLE="Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists (APEGGA)">Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists (APEGGA)</A>
and a short html file containing the link as an http request.
To:
<LI><A HREF="http://www.compusmart.ab.ca/apegga">Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists (APEGGA)</A>
In the past, you may have placed files directly into your sections directory. These may have been "About" files, special html link files, or any files that you had created yourself, to appear in your area. You should consider converting them to html files, although they can still be read as text files by most browsers. You should rename the file with a .txt extension, and a short name with no spaces. They will show up in your old gopher menu until the NetPages menu points to your new menu file (index.html)
>From the utility menu, select "Direct Access to IP Areas".
Select your section (ae, business...)
Press u to upload the file.
Name the file index.html.
Test all of the links in your menu file. You can do this by pressing g while viewing any Lynx/gopher menu page, such as the NetPages menu, and entering "http://freenet.edmonton.ab.ca/ae (or whatever your section directory is; ae, business, sportfit...)
Develop and upload your whatsnew.html, websites.html and about.html files.
Let peterd or pnelson know that you are ready to have us point to your new menu file.
EFN ***Section_name*** (p1 of 3) EDMONTON NET PAGES - Section_name About This Section | What's New ***DD-Mon*** | Bulletin Board Local Information Providers * All Information Providers, alphabetically by name * ***Category_1_name*** * ***Category_2_name*** * ***Category_3_name*** Edmonton FreeNet | Edmonton Net Pages | Related Websites _________________________________________________________________ Maintained by: <***loginID***@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca> _________________________________________________________________ ***Category_1_name*** * ***IP_1a_name*** * ***IP_1b_name*** * ***IP_1c_name*** * ***IP_1d_name*** _________________________________________________________________ ***Category_2_name***