Re: The Great Document Menu Debate

dcmartin@library.ucsf.edu (David C. Martin)
Message-id: <199308101643.AA21373@library.ucsf.edu>
From: dcmartin@library.ucsf.edu (David C. Martin)
Organization: UCSF Center for Knowledge Management
Email: dcmartin@ckm.ucsf.edu or uunet!dcmartin
Phone: 415/476-6111
Fax: 415/476-4653
To: "Peter Lister, Cranfield Computer Centre" <P.LISTER@mail.cranfield.ac.uk>
Cc: www-talk@library.ucsf.edu
In-reply-to: Your message of Tue, 10 Aug 1993 17:24:20 -0000
	<9308101624.AA21523@xdm039> 
Subject: Re: The Great Document Menu Debate 
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 09:39:59 PDT
Sender: dcmartin@library.ucsf.edu
Status: RO
No, not true.

I already have those links "hacked" into my documents, but they are not
part of my document and I don't want them to be printed, or saved, or
anything, other than be indicators that a client application could use
to provide navigational references.

Also, it is not a meta-document, it is a document.  You can abstract the
notion of a document to be anything from an individual segment of HTML
to the entire Library of Congress and the system needs to support that
abstraction.

I am not going to hassle Marc or anyone at NCSA for this functionality;
I only offer our application of the technology as an example of the
types of hoops which people are going to put HTML/HTTP clients thru.

dcm
--------
"Peter Lister, Cranfield Computer Centre" writes:

> Well, everyone wants something different.
> 
> What we want to be able to do is have information in the HTML header
> that indicates the structural aspects of an HTML document relative to
> some larger whole, e.g. pages w/in an article, w/in an issue, w/in a
> volume w/in a journal.

What you describe is different, right enough - it's not at all the
series of URLs which can be warped to directly from the Document/Manual
menu that I (and I think most others) have been discussing.

What you describe appears to me to be a meta-document - i.e. it
describes the main document, and this kind of thing can be created
easily in HTML. If I want it to look really spiffy, I can have inlined
icons of arrows, volumes, etc. I need only process the document once,
all users get the same view of the doc (given the limitations of their
viewer), and you don't have to hassle Marc A and the team to produce
run-time hackable menus (or do it yourself). Whether you prepend the
meta-doc to the real doc or not matter of taste.

PeterLister                                    p.lister@cranfield.ac.uk
Computer Centre,
Cranfield Institute of Technology,        Voice: +44 234 754200 ext 2828
Cranfield, Bedfordshire MK43 0AL UK         Fax: +44 234 750875