Subject: Abstract for Mosaic anda Web International Conference '94

From: Bob Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 94 15:06:10 EDT

Here is a first cut at an abstract for a paper/presentation
for the Mosaic and the Web International Conference '94.
The abstract is due July 10th.

Length limit = 250 words, Current count = 243 words.

I would appreciate any comments or suggestions for
improvement.

				Bob

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AstroWeb is a WWW interface to a collection of Internet
accessible resources aimed at the astronomical community.
It consolidates the separate resource listings previously
maintained by the consortium members in the United States,
France, Germany, and Australia.  

A set of tools has been developed to assist in the 
maintainance and distribution of the collection by the 
widely distributed consortium members.  These tools allow 
the members to consolidate their resource discovery
efforts while providing them with complete control over their 
local presentations.

EditMaster allows each member to make changes to the collection.
It uses HTML forms for editing within within the WWW client
session or to transfer a file to and from the members local machine.
It uses CVS to prevent one person from inadvertantly undoing 
another person's changes.  (HTML TEXTAREA's can even be used to
transfer binary executables to a server.)

ValidateMaster checks, three times a day, that each non-Telnet 
resource is still available and creates HTML files listing the 
"dead" or "unreliable" resources.  Currently ~47 of the
1029 URL's are listed as "dead" or "unreliable". 

IndexMaster uses WAIS to provide a searchable index to the collection.
Each resource is categorized by keywords located in HTML comments.
The entire HTML file version of the collection is put into the WAIS
index and it can be searched by category keyword, URL, resource name, 
etc.

ReformatMaster fetches the collection from a central repository and
reformats the contents into the presentation desired at the members
site.