UNIX SIG Notes
By Christopher J. Fearnley

Linux Stuff

For some strange reason I like to play with the floppy drives.  So I got
the recently released fdutils-4.1.src.tar.gz package from sunsite.  So
far it seems more reliable than the 4.0 package I had been using.
Although I still don't understand the labyrinth of floppy drive-land, I
have read the documentation enough that I can share some tips.  First, I
have never had any problems with my floppies not being recognized
(unless the floppy is bad, of course).  But if you do have this problem,
you could try to set "floppycontrol --autodetect" to a user-defined
comma delimited list .  Most people will benefit from setting
"floppycontrol --select_delay 0".  This will speed up concurrent
accesses to your drives.  Some floppy controllers need the default
value, 2, however.

I installed and tested the GNU Interactive Tools package,
git-4.3.4.tar.gz.  This is a very slick filesystem browser and utility
package.  It has the nicest hex-viewer for Linux that I have seen.
One problem is it doesn't have complete on-line help.  In fact, I had
to read the configuration file to find all of its features.  In the
end I decided it wouldn't be worth the time to learn all the
keystrokes needed (especially without an on-line reminder system).
But if you want a powerful filesystem browser, spend the time to
configure this one -- it is very nice.

"The most important design issue ... is the fact that Linux is
supposed to be fun..." --- Linus Torvalds, the original author of
Linux

The World Wide Web (WWW).

First some background.  Unix is based on the philosophy of
synergetically interaccommodative tools.  Thus, in Unix the effort is
toward developing simple, fundamental tools, not mega apps which try
(and often fail) to do everything all at once.  Each Unix tool trys to
do one thing and to do it very well.  One can view the Internet as a
toolbox of Unix applications.  Some of these tools include ftp for
remote downloading of files; telnet and rlogin for remote logging in;
mail, elm and pine for reading mail, etc.  In accord with the Unix
design philosophy, it is possible to easily build metatools or tools of
tools.  This is what the World Wide Web does: it takes all the great
networking and database tools that Unix offers and makes them easily
accessible from one program, your web browser.

The World Wide Web (WWW or W3) integrates the services offered by the
Internet.  This is accomplished by the use of URLs (Uniform Resource
Locators), HTML (HyperText Markup Language), and HTTP (HyperText
Transmission Protocol).  HTML can be written by any simple text editor
by inserting "markup" codes like this "<i>Cosmography</i>" into your
document (this example makes the word "Cosmography" appear in an italic
font).  HTML is based on SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language)
which is an international standard in the publishing industry.  URLs
provide references to various objects and services of the Internet.
They are therefore very important for both contributors and lurkers on
the Web.  By including URLs in your HTML documents writers can insert
references to other documents/services of the Internet (for example, <a
href="http://www.sgi.com/free/bucky.html"> which when selected will
bring the WWW browser to this HTML document).  Although URLs can be
fairly complicated, all of them identify the Internet service in the
"word" before the colon.  Many URLs have two slashes "//" followed by
the WWW server and the name of the document to access.  Finally, HTTP is
the protocol which allows web browsers and servers to transfer requests.
It's the "innards" which tie together all of the other Unix-derived
Internet services which make the Web so wonderful.

Well, that all seems so technical, but I wanted to build up to the coup
d'etat where the fundamentals of Unix's networking advantages are
demonstrated:  any user interface can be built upon this foundation!
So all users no matter what their native platform (Mac, Windows 3.1,
OS/2, Amiga, etc.,) can access the web by implementing a browser that
"speaks" http.  And you can use editors that "spit out" HTML.  So the
only thing web surfers may need to know is how to ask your browser to
go to a particular URL!

The only fun way I could think of to continue this article is with some
URLs!  To learn more about the Web in general try
http://www.earn.net/gnrt/www.html.  There is also the WWW primer:
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Nathan.Torkington/ideas/www-primer.html.  Want
to find another web browser?  Try
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Clients.html. What's new on the Web?
Glad you asked, check out
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-new.html.  Next
explore the WWW virtual library at
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/bySubject/Overview.html.  If
you're so excited by the Web that you want to learn HTML and write your
on web pages, check out this URL:
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html.  Finally,
I got all these URLs from the WWW faq which is at
http://sunsite.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.html.  I think that's enough
to get you started!

And in conclusion, a final incentive for you to switch to and learn
more about Unix (from the World Wide Web FAQ):

   "I have a Windows PC or Macintosh.  Why can't I access WAIS URLs?  

   "This answer provided by Michael Grady (m-grady@uiuc.edu):

   "The version of Mosaic for X has "wais client" code built-in to it.
   This was relatively easy for the developers to do, because there was
   already a set of library routines for talking to WAIS available for
   Unix as "public domain" (freeWAIS). I don't think there is such a
   library of routines for PC/Windows or Mac, which would make it much
   more difficult for the Mosaic versions for Windows and the Mac to add
   "wais client" capability. Therefore, at least for now, neither the
   Windows or Mac versions of Mosaic support direct query of a WAIS
   server (i.e. can act as wais clients themselves)."