Re: web roaming robot (was: strategy for HTML spec?)
murphy@dccs.upenn.edu
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 93 08:58:53 -0500
From: murphy@dccs.upenn.edu
Message-id: <9301141358.AA24187@lam.dccs.upenn.edu>
To: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: Re: web roaming robot (was: strategy for HTML spec?)
[Tim & Tom -- sorry for the duplication, I left out a comma
in the cc: list in the previous message]
Timbl:
> Great idea, LOTS of applications. Traversing a tree to a given depth
> makes a book. Tony's WWWVeronica is a great idea -- particularly as
> it can pick up WAIS indexes and Gopher and telent sites all together
> and make a megaIndex of the whole scene!
I agree that the map produced by traversing all of WWW would be
QUITE large and that it would be more efficiently searched as
an Index (WWWVeronica), if the output of the Robot were Text.
A new twist: (I am still trying to catch up on all the features &
functionality of WWW, so if WWW already does this, please tell me)
Is it possible for a user of WWW to see, graphically, a map of the
Web? If the client software had a map to work with, instead of a
book, and the user could point at a spot on the map and select it,
then I think it would be a lot easier to navigate.
There could be a "short-range" scan which would show a close-up view
of the web links all around the current node, upto around 3 or 4
levels.
There could be a "long-range" scan which would show a global
view of the Web, leaving out the details of the local links.
This requires an extension beyond hypertext into hypermedia, of
course.
Anyway, would hyper-graphical representations of the Web be useful?
If it is worthwhile, is it doable?
--lam
Linda A Murphy Internet: murphy@dccs.upenn.edu
Network Engineering Data Communications and Computing Services
University of Pennsylvania (215) 898-9534