World Wide Web
From terminal to modern runtime
The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents.
Everything online about W3 is linked, directly or indirectly, to this document. That includes an executive summary of the project, mailing lists, policy, the November W3 news and the frequently asked questions.
Where the page leads
What's out there?
Pointers to the world's online information, subjects and W3 servers.
[2]Help
Help on the browser you are using.
[3]Software products
A list of W3 project components and their current state: Line Mode, X11 Viola, NeXTStep, servers, tools, mail robot and library.
[4]Technical
Details of protocols, formats, program internals and more.
[5]Bibliography
Paper documentation on W3 and references.
[6]People
A list of some of the people involved in the project.
[7]History
A summary of the history of the project.
[8]How can I help?
If you would like to support the web.
[9]Getting code
Getting the code by anonymous FTP, and more.
What each link contains
Short summaries of the pages behind the index, with links to the sources.
What's out there?
- Starting points to online information, grouped by subject, plus a list of registered W3 servers.
- Later editions point to the Virtual Library, a maintained set of subject catalogues.
- The Technical page also lists data sources on the web itself and related Usenet groups.
Help
- This is the line-mode browser's own documentation: how to use it and how document addresses work.
- A plain-text user guide (line-mode-guide.txt) was kept in the FTP archive for printing.
- Related notes cover installing on VM/CMS, the HTML hypertext format and a list of other compatible browsers.
Source: www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/LineMode/More.html
Software products
- Common library: the shared code under most browsers, covering network access and format handling.
- Clients: line mode (works on any dumb terminal), a curses full-screen browser, Macintosh (pre-alpha), Erwise and Midas for X/Motif, ViolaWWW and tkWWW for X11, a wysiwyg browser-editor for NeXTStep and a perl tty browser.
- Servers: a VM server, a generic Unix/VMS file server, a VMS Help gateway and a mail-based document robot.
Technical
- How to make your own data available on the web.
- The network protocols, HTML (the markup language for documents and search results) and the syntax of document addresses.
- Design issues for hypertext and retrieval systems, working notes, data sources and newsgroups.
- Notation for formal descriptions, implementation guidelines and coding standards for contributors.
Source: www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/Technical.html
Bibliography
- Papers and articles on W3 for background reading or citing. Any page can be cited by its document address.
- An introduction paper, a technical overview for system managers (architecture diagram, usage graph, format examples) and a paper on how W3 relates to WAIS and X.500.
- Preprints were kept in the FTP archive under /pub/www/doc, along with the line-mode guide and a printable W3 Book.
- Non-technical pieces cover electronic publishing and a four-page Economist feature on networks.
People
- Tim Berners-Lee started the WWW project at CERN in 1989. He had written an earlier hypertext program, Enquire, in 1980.
- Robert Cailliau co-authored the reworked 1990 proposal.
- Others listed: Nicola Pellow (line-mode browser), Bernd Pollermann (FIND server interface), Jean-Francois Groff (joined 1991), Carl Barker, and Pei, author of the Viola browser.
History
- Mar 1989: first proposal circulated at CERN.
- Oct 1990: proposal reworked with divisional backing.
- Nov 1990: first prototype on a NeXT; Nicola Pellow starts the line-mode browser.
- Christmas 1990: line-mode and NeXTStep browsers can be demonstrated.
- 1991: line-mode release to a limited audience, then on central CERN machines; files announced on Usenet in August; mailing lists started.
- Line mode 1.2 announced; WWW distributed through CernLib with Viola; library ported to DECnet.
How can I help?
- Put up some data: fresh hypertext, old text files or servers that give views of databases.
- Suggest that others set up a W3 server for systems you know.
- Manage a subject area: keep an overview of online data for a field, organization or country.
- Write software from the open to-do list.
- Send suggestions to www-bug@info.cern.ch.
- Spread the word: install a client and cite things by their W3 address.
Getting code
- Source sat on anonymous FTP at info.cern.ch under /pub/www/src.
- Available: the line-mode browser, a NeXTStep hypertext editor, the ViolaWWW browser for X11 and a skeleton server daemon.
- Printable documentation and articles lived in /pub/www/doc.
- Line mode needs the common W3 library; Viola needs the library and its own sources.