A windows GUI for intensional web authoring
Date
2001
Authors
Zhu, Qin
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Abstract
This thesis introduces a Microsoft Windows GUI program IW AG (Intensional Web Authoring GUI program) that provides an easy way for even unskilled computer users to produce multi-versioned Web pages, particularly those using pop/chop text on a Microsoft Windows platform. Pop/chop text is a term to describe those multi-versioned Web pages that can display or hide certain paragraph texts according to the user's intensional URL request. ISE, a Perl-like scripting language, uses conditional constructs to output such requested versions of (either pop or chop) HTML files on the fly. On a UNIX platform, IML (a set of groff macros) can be used to generate an ISE program for the pop/chop text. On a Microsoft Windows platform, IW AG can be used for this purpose instead.
IW AG has two advantages. Firstly, for the average user (Web page author), the Microsoft Windows GUI makes this program much easier to use. Users needn't worry about !HTML, ISE or IML syntax anymore, they can simply type or paste several sections of their text and select pull-down menu items. IW AG will generate an ISE program for the multi-versioned Web pages service. Secondly, for the programmer, although it required a significant initial investment in Microsoft Windows programming, using IW AG avoids defining intricate document macros as in IML. It can also be applied to other (non pop/chop) uses by replacing the ISE resources, which are stored in the program, and slightly modifying the program itself.
We have built a bilingual Web site in !HTML using IW AG to demonstrate the advantage of this language. In order to make it easier to create multi-version Web pages, ISE and IML were also used. In the final analysis, IW AG turns out to be a fairly good solution, although it still needs more improvement.