The Ada WWW Server at epfl.ch

From: Magnus.Kempe@di.epfl.ch (Magnus Kempe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Ada on WWW [Revised 13 May 94]
Date: 13 May 1994 15:08:08 GMT
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

Last-modified: 13 May 1994
Posting-Frequency: monthly

NEW! Accessible by email (see end of message).

The hypertext Draft 9X Reference Manual has been accepted as nominee for the Best of the Web '94 Awards (category: Best Document Design), URL http://wings.buffalo.edu/contest/vote/design-vote.html

"HTML version of the actual manual, the text is organized in a unique multi-level hierarchy. All cross-references are hyperlinked; the index isn't full-text, but an HTML version of the book's index."

*** The Ada WWW Server ***

is a hypertext information server to help disseminate information about the Ada programming language. It is alive and heavily used. The Ada WWW server is managed at the Software Engineering Lab of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland.

In this message you will find an overview of the contents of the Ada WWW server, and some information on WWW and available browsers. The URL of the Ada WWW Server is

http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/ [don't forget the trailing '/']

The Ada WWW Server keeps growing. All comments, ideas, contributions, and requests for additions or corrections, are most welcome.

Email should be directed to me, "Magnus.Kempe@di.epfl.ch" .

What's on the server ?

The Ada WWW Server provides Ada-related information and hypertext access in areas including:

Reference Manuals
- hypertext versions of LRM 83 and of (draft) RM 9X;
- rationales 83 and 9X
State of Ada 9X revision process
Resources
- standards;
- bindings;
- tools and components;
- software repositories;
- books and articles;
- list of validated compilers;
- cheap and free compilers;
- educational discounts;
- and CD-ROMs
Intellectual Ammunition
- some facts about the language;
- Ada 9X;
- Ada in academia and industry;
- special interest groups, Team Ada;
- and debunking some myths
Historical notes on Ada
- the Lady and the programming language
Introductory Material
- design goals and summary of the language;
- textbooks;
- free compilers
CS Technical Reports
FTP Sites--and Mirrors
Ada News
- conferences, workshops;
- calendar;
- press releases;
- technical and other news
Frequently Asked Questions--with Answers (from comp.lang.ada)

For instance, you will find the list of schools using Ada in CS1 or CS2, an article on commercial success stories, information about software components, as well as hypertext versions of the Ada reference manual (both 83 and draft 9X).

What is WWW ?

The World Wide Web (WWW) is what Fortune Magazine ("The Internet And Your Business," March 7, 1994, pp. 86-96) called the "killer application" that will make the Internet indispensable to anyone in the 1990's just as the spreadsheet did for the PC in the 1980's.

WWW is like a distributed hypermedia encyclopedia. It is a database and communications protocol, it is multimedia, distributed, and hypertext. Clicking on links takes the user from document to document, from site to site, world-wide. WWW was originally developed by researchers at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland.

The basic concepts used in WWW are hypertext--text that is not constrained to be linear--and multimedia--information that is not constrained to be text. With hypertext, documents can contain links to other documents, or another reference within the same document. With multimedia, documents can contain objects that are not necessarily text--sounds, movies, and interactive sessions are all possible.

WWW has also attracted attention from Business Week (two articles, March 28, 1994, pp. 170 and 180), Byte ("Data Highway," March 1994), Scientific American ("Wire Pirates," March 1994), German Der Spiegel (March 1994), and British PC Week (March 15, 1994). In March 1994, WWW was featured on CNN's FutureWatch.

WWW Browsers

WWW browsers are available for all major platforms (VMS, Windows, DOS, Unix, VM, NeXTstep, and Macintosh).

For instance, Mosaic is the name of an application which lets users navigate through the Internet and browse through the Web; this software --distributed free to anyone who requests it and available for Unix workstations, Macintosh systems, and MS Windows-- was developed at NCSA, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. The Mosaic binaries are FTP-able from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in /Mosaic/Mosaic-binaries, /Mac/Mosaic, and /PC/Mosaic .

Lynx is a full screen browser for vt100 terminals; precompiled binaries are available from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu in /lynx .

Cello is a client for PCs running Windows, available from fatty.law.cornell.edu in /LII/Cello .

W3 is an Emacs subsystem, available from cs.indiana.edu in /elisp/w3 .

If you work on a Unix machine, a WWW browser might already be installed, so you may try to execute

        xmosaic http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/
or      Mosaic http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/

(don't forget the trailing '/')

If you do not yet have a WWW browser, you can go over the Internet with

        telnet info.cern.ch

which will bring you to the WWW Home Page at CERN. You are now using a simple line-mode browser. To move around the Web, enter the number given after an item. To go to the Ada WWW Server, enter

        go http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/

If you do not have direct Internet access (i.e. ftp, telnet, etc.), you can still retrieve WWW documents by e-mail: send a message to

        test-list@info.cern.ch

with one or more lines of the form

        send [http-address]
e.g.    send http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/

At the bottom of the message you will be sent you will find all links of the document you requested. Note that your mail system must be gatewayed to Internet mail.

For more information, read the WWW FAQ, available in the FTP archive of news.answers, on rtfm.mit.edu, in /pub/usenet/news.answers/www.faq .

Enjoy.

Magnus Kempe -- Magnus.Kempe@di.epfl.ch

Dirk Craeynest (Dirk.Craeynest@cs.kuleuven.ac.be)
Ada-Belgium Newsletter Editor & Team Ada