$Id: Glossary.html,v 1.3 1999/05/27 00:38:41 timbl Exp $

Glossary

Occurrences of terms used in Weaving The Web, with links to other information about the terms. Instead of making a long and possibly dated list of URIs in the book itself, readers can use this page and follow links from it.

access control
The ability to selectively control who can get at or manipulate information in, for example, a Web server.
accessibility
The art of ensuring that to as large an extent as possible, facilities (such as for example Web access) are available to people whether or not they have impairments of one sort or another. in chapter 8. See also : WAI
ACSS
Audio Cascading Style Sheets. A language for telling a computer how to read a web page aloud.
Amaya
Open source demonstration browser-editor initiated from W3C and friends.
Apache
Open source web server, Chapter 4, in chapter 8.
browser
A Web client which allows a human to read information on the Web.
CERN
The European Laboratory for Particle Physics. Located on the French/Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland (The acronym is historical) Chapter 2
Click-steam
Information collected about where a web user has been on the web, in Ch 6.
client
Any program which uses the service of another program. On the Web, a Web client is a program like a browser or editor or search robot, which reads or writes information on the Web.
collaboration
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets. A language for writing style sheets. See also: style sheets
Cyc
A knowledge representation project.
Dictionopolis and disgitopolis
The two fictional cities of words and numbers in Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth.
Digital Signature
The process of creating a very large number which can be shown to have been done only by somebody in possession of a secret key, and only by processing a document with a particular contents. This can be used for the same purposes as a person's handwritten signature on a physical document. Something you can do with PKC.

DOM
Document Object Model. Within a computer, information is often organized as a set of "objects". When transmitted. it is sent as a "document". The DOM is a W3C specification which gives a common way for programs to access a document as a set of objects.
Domain Name
A name (such as "w3.org") of a service or web site or computer, etc, in a hierarchical system of delegated authority.
DTD
In the SGML world, a DTD is a meta document containing information about how a given set of SGML tags can be used. In the XML world this role will be taken over by schema (q.v.). Sometimes but arguably "document type definition". Chapter 8.
Dublin Core
A set of basic metadata properties for classifying web resources. In chapter 8.
EBT
Electronic Book Technology. A company stared by Andries Van Dam and others to develop hypertext systems.
EDI
Electronic Data Interchange in chapter 7.
Enquire
Enquire Within Upon Everything, a book and a program. .
filtering
The setting up of criteria to select from a broad stream of data a subset. Filtering information is essential for everyone in daily life. Filtering by parents of small children may be wise. Filtering by others - ISPs or Governments is bad and called censorship.. In chapter 6.
GIF
Graphics Interchange Format. A format for pictures transmitted pixel-by-pixel over the Net. Created by Compuserve, the GIF specification was put into the public domain, but Unisys found they had a patent on the compression technology used. This stimulated the development of PNG.
GILC
Global Internet Liberty Campaign. A group who have been laudably vocal in support of individual rights on the Net (although occasionally tending to throw out the baby with the bathwater in my opinion).
graphics
new graphics formats in chapter 8. See also GIF. PNG, SVG.
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language. A computer language for representing the contents of a page of hypertext. The language most web pages are currently written in..
HTTP
Hypertext Transport Protocol. Rules of communiction which can be used between a Web client and a Web server. A W3C activity
hypertext
Non-sequential writing. definition
information space
The abstract contact of everything accessible using networks. The Web. in chapter 7,
INRIA
Insitut National pour la Recherche en Infomatique et Automatique. French national research laboratory for informatics and control. Co-host of w3C, in Chapter 4.
Internet
A global network of networks though which computers communicate by sending information in packets. Each network consists of computers connected by cables or wireless links.
Intranet
A part of the Internet or part of the Web used internally within a company or organization.
IP
Internet Protocol, invented by Vint Cerf and Bob Khan, (also sometimes elsewhere Intellectual Property - see IPR). The protocol which governs how computers send packets across the Internet.
IPR
Intellectual Property Rights. In chapter 6
ISO
International Standards Organization. The ISO operates as an international group of national standards bodies.
ISP
Internet Service Provider. The party providing one with connectivity to the Internet. Some have a cable of some sort or wireless link to their ISP. For others, their computer may dial an ISP by phone, and sent and receive Internet packets over the phone line. The ISP then forwards them over the Internet.
Java
A programming language developed (originally as "Oak") by James Gosling of Sun microsystems. Designed for portability and usability embedded in small devices, Java took off as a language for small applications ("applets") which ran within a Web browser. Chapter 10
Jigsaw
Open source Web server of great modularity, written in Java. From W3C and friends. in Chapters 4, chapter 7 in LEAD discussion.
JPEG
Joint Photographic Experts Group. These people defined a format for sending photographs over the Net which uses fewer bytes then the pixel-by-pixel approaches of GIF and PNG. The format (JFIF) is casually referred to as JPEG.
Keio University,
near Tokyo Japan, Co-host of W3C, in chapter 4.
LCS
Laboratory for Computer Science, at MIT. Cohost of W3C with INRIA in France and Keio University in Japan.
LEAD
Live Early Adoption and Demonstration - a W3C policy to eat our own cooking to find out how it can be better. W3C policy in Chapter 7; in chapter 8
libwww
The library (collection) of WWW-related program modules available for free use by anyone since the start of the Web.
line-mode
In olden and far-off times, my best beloved, people did not see computer programs though windows. They typed "commands" on a "terminal" and the computer replied with text, which were displayed on the screen (or printed on a roll of paper) interleaved with the commands, much as though the person was in a chat session with the computer program. If you have seen a "DOS window" then you will have some idea of how in those days people did all their communicating with computers, before they learned how to drag and to drop. Line mode is still a very respectful way to communicate with a computer.
line-mode browser
A Web client which communicated with the user in line mode, and could run all kinds of computers which did not have windows or mice.
link
A reference from one document to another which can be followed efficiently using a computer. The unit of connection in hypertext.
link, internal
A link which is between two places in the same document, or two documents in a limited set.
link, external
A link which can be from one document to any other document in the information space.
MARC record
A standard for machine-readable library catalog cards. In chapter 7.
meta-
beyond. Used as prefix to indicate something applied to itself: meta-meeting is a meeting about meetings etc.
metadata
Data about data on the Web. Including but limited to authorship, classification, endorsement, policy, distribution terms, and so on. A significant use for the Semantic Web.
micropayments
Technology allowing one to pay for web site access in very small amounts as one browsers. In chapters 3, 6, 8.
Minimalist design,
Principle of. The idea that engineering or other designs should define only what they have to, leaving other aspects of the system and other systems as unconstrained as possible
MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. See LCS. Visit in 1992. Host of W3C in 1994.
Mobile devices
access from - in chapter 8
Mosaic
A Web browser developed by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina and colleagues at NCSA.
NCSA
National Center for Supercomputing Applications. At of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champain, the center whose software development group created Mosaic.
Nelson, Ted
Coiner of the word "Hypertext", guru and visionary.
Net
Short for "Internet"
net
The thing a fisherman catches fish in.
NeXT
Name of a company started by Steve Jobs, and the computer it manufactured, which integrated many novelties such as Mach kernel, unix, NeXTStep, Objective-C, application builders, optical disks and digital signal processors. The development platform I used for the first Web client and server.
NNTP
Network News Transfer Protocol. A protocol which defines how news articles are passed around between computers. Each computer passes an article to any of its neighbors which has not got it yet.
Node,
Nodes are the things joined by links. In the Web, a node is a web page, any resource with a URI. In Enquire. In Tangle.
Open Source
Freely distributed software whose source code is freely distributed and modifiable by anyone. W3C sample code is open source software.
packet
A unit into which information is divided for transmission across the Internet.
P3P
Platform for Privacy Preferences Project. .
Partial Understanding
The ability to understand part of the import of a document which uses multiple vocabularies, some but not all of which is not understood.
Patents,
See dangers of silly patents
PGP
Pretty Good Privacy. An email security system which uses PKC and has the philosophy that individuals can choose who they trust for what purpose - the "web of trust".
PICS
Platform for Internet Content Selection. Technology to allow parents to select content for their children on the basis of an open set of criteria, as opposed to government censorship. See filtering
PKC
Public Key Crypotgraphy. A very neat bit of mathematics on which is based a security system in which noone needs to excchange secret keys, but has one "private" key only they know and one "puiblic" key which everyone knows.
PKI
Public Key Infrastructure. A hierarchy of "certification authorities" being set up to allow individuals and organizations to identify each other for the purpose (principally) of doing business electronically.
PNG
Portable Network Graphics. A format for encoding a picture pixel-by-pixel and sending it over the Net. As a replacement for GIF. A W3C Recommendation,
Principle of minimal constraint
The idea that when making a design, one should constrain only in those ways which are necessary for the design to work, thus minimizing detrimental impact on other possible designs.
Privacy,
Limitation of the distribution or use of personal information. in chapter 6.
Protocol
A language and a set of rules which allow computers to interact in a well defined way. Examples are FTP, HTTP and NNTP.
RDF
Resource Description Framework, a framework for constructing logical languages which can work together in the semantic Web. In chapter 8.
RPC
Remote Procedure Call. When one part of a program uses another it is called a "procedure call". Remote Procedure Call is a set of tools to allow you to write a program whose different parts are on different computers, without having to worry about how the communications happens.
RSA
Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman, whose research produced a well-known form of public key cryptography (PKC). RSA algorithms have been patented, and so its inventors have licensed its deployment
schema
A document which describes an XML or RDF vocabulary. (pl: schemata). Chapter 8.
Scheiffler, Bob
developer of the X Window system, and Director of X Consortium, a forerunner of W3C at MIT LCS.
Semantic Web,
The web of data with meaning in the sense that a computer program can learn enough about what it means to process it.
Sendall, Mike
in chapter 2
Separation of form and content
in decision to used SGML chapter 3, need for WAI in chapter7.
Server
A program which provides a service (typically information) to another program, the client. A Web server hold web pages, and allows client programs to read and write them.
SGML
Standard Generalized Markup Language. An international standard in Markup languages, a basis for HTML, and a precursor to XML. See: decison to use; moving to XML.
SMIL
Synchronised MultiMedia Integation Language, a language for creating a multimedia presentation be specifying the spatial and temporal relationships between its components. ch.8
Style sheet
A document which describes to a computer program (such as a browser) how to translate the document markup into a particular presentation (fonts, colors, spacing, etc) on the screen or print. Activity - in chapter 8. See also: CSS, ACSS
SVG
Scalable Vector Graphics. A language for describing drawings in terms of the shapes which compose them, so that these can be rendered as well as possible
Tangle
A program I wrote for playing with the concept of information as being only the links. chapter 2
TCP
Transmission Control Protocol. A computer protocol which allows one computer to send the other a continous stream of information, by breaking it into packets and reassembling it at the other end, re-sending any packets which seem to get lost in the Internet. TCP uses IP to send the packets and the two together are refered to as TCP/IP.
Television
and the web: in chapter 8,
Unisys
Claiming rights to GIF technology, chapter 7.
UU
Unitarian Universalism and WWW in chapter 4
URI
Universal Resource Identifier. The string (often starting "http:") which is used to identify anything on the Web.
URL
Uniform Resource Locator. A term used sometimes for certain URIs indicating that they might change.
Virtual hypertext
chapter 7,
VRML
Virtual Reality Markup Language. An idea for 3D compositional graphics on the web, proposed by Dave Raggett at a BOF at WWW1, and implemented by Mark Pesce as a variant of Silicon Graphic's "Inventor" format, and later managed by the VRML consortium, now "Web 3D" consortium.
W3C
World Wide Web Consortium. Establishment of, in chapter 4. How it works.
WAI
Web Accessibility initiative
WAIS
Wide Area Information Servers. A distributed information system created by Brewster Kahle while at Thinking Machines. WAIS was like a Web of search engines, but without hypertext.
Web
Short for "World Wide Web"
web
The thing a spider catches flies in; A set of nodes connected by arcs.
WorldWideWeb
(without spaces) The name of the first Web client, a browser/editor which ran on a a NeXT machine.
WWW
World Wide Web (three words). The set of all information accessible using computers and networking, each thing identified by a URI. Naming of, chapter 2.
X
The X Window System, invented by Bob Scheifler, is a standard interface between a program and a screen which was ubiquitous on unix systems. Unlike Microsoft's "Windows(tm)", X from the beginning allowed programs running on one machine to display on another, across the Internet. The X Consortium was run by Bob from MIT/LCS for many years, then spun off, and eventually closed.
Xanadu
Ted Nelson's planned global hypertext project. (Originally from the Coleridge's Kubla Khan : In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree where...)
XML
Extensible Markup Language. A simplified successor to SGML. W3C's generic language for creating new markup languages. Markup languages (such as HTML) create documents with a nested tree-like structure. In Chapter 8;
XSL
Extensible style sheet language. A style sheet language, like CSS, but written in XML, and also allowing document transformation.