--- eegtti/$Id: README,v 2.3 1994/08/14 13:24:40 joke Rel $ SPREAD THE WORD: "EFF's (Extended) Guide to the Internet is now available, in a variety of easily convertible formats *and* at your local laser printer." -=- * -=- * WHAT IS EFF's (EXTENDED) GUIDE TO THE INTERNET? The extended version of The Guide is a Texinfo [t:ekinfo] (NOT TeXinfo!!) dition of a book once entitled "Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet", that was recently (July 1994) renamed to "EFF's Guide to the Internet." The latter is written by Adam Gaffin for a joint project of Apple Computer, Inc. and The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The extended version is a gift from the author of this FAQ to the EFF, and contains (a) the Guide, and (b) many more things either from the Net, or from the many kind souls who sent in their pieces. -=- * -=- * WHERE DO I GET THE HYPERCARD STACK? In the beginning (August 1993), Steve Cisler courtesy of the Apple Library, used a Macintosh computer and converted Adams original writing into a so-called HyperCard stack; this stack, readable by the HyperCard software that comes bundled with every Mac, is still available via anonymous FTP from EFF's server "ftp.eff.org" as file "/pub/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide/bdgtti.hqx" However, this version is completely out of date; if you're a passionate Apple/HyperCard hacker and want to volunteer in creating an up-to-date version, please send e-mail to ask@eff.org. -=- * -=- * ARE THERE MORE VERSIONS? Under "ftp.eff.org/pub/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide/Other_versions/ there reside several other formats created by volunteers, e.g. AmigaGuide (Extended), MS-Windows Help (Orig), WordPerfect (Orig), SeeText (Macintosh) and GeoWorks Write (PC) formats. The latter by Adam himself (cf. VERSIONS below). Some contain the "Extended" text; some the original/core manual text only. -=- * -=- * AND THE ORIGINAL ASCII? WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE? Also available in the same directory is Adam's original ASCII version "netguide.eff" (currently at version 2.2) that served as the starting point for this Texinfo based release. Besides several "bug fixes," witty quotes, corrections, including some complete rewrites (cf Chapter 8) and the new layout, some more value has been added; notably, two personal articles from EFFector Online, the EFF's bi-weekly news magazine (available in comp.org.eff.news on USENET), now serving as superb afterwords, and some other contribution of Netizens I found quite worthwhile reading over the past years: -=- * -=- * NOW, WHAT'S IN THERE? * "A Slice of Life in my Virtual Community" by Howard Rheingold describes the social life on the Internet from the WELL's point of view. * "A Statement of Principle" by SF author Bruce Sterling discusses some moral and legal issues you will definitely get to know when becoming a "cybernaut" on Internet. * "Preserving and Promoting the ``Internet Culture''" by Peter Deutsch explains some of the cultural background Netizens used to live in. * "Subject: TIME Article on Internet" by Philip Elmer-Dewitt shows , that even the non-virtual world (aka "reality") finally got interested in cyberspace, and the cybernauts on Internet. * "Subject: A Perspective on NREN" by Grag Chartrand *parodies* the NSF's proposed US National Education and Research Network. Moreover a bibliography has been stuffed into this edition: * A comprehensive list of Paperware related to the Internet (This is an updated version of the bibliography section that comes with the first edition of "Zen and the Art of the Internet" by Brendan Kehoe, plus part of the reference section of Henry Edward Hardy's Master's Thesis "The History of the Net" written at the School of Communications, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI 49401. Version 7.2 was posted to comp.org.eff.talk on August 28, 1993). Kevin Savetz' "Unofficial internet Book List" will also find its way into this list, soon. -=- * -=- This guide is same 260 European A4 size pages in length, (i.e. same 300 US-letter size pages) and divided into the following sections: * A 5 part Introduction - G'day by the Texinfo editor - Welcome by Mitchell Kapor, EFF - Foreword by Mitchell Kapor, EFF - Addendum to Foreword by Mitchell Kapor and Jerry Berman, EFF - Preface by Adam Gaffin, Middlesex News, Boston, MA, USA. * A 13 part Walk-trough-the-Internet Chapter 1 -- Setting up, Getting connected, Jacking in... Chapter 2 -- Electronic Mail Chapter 3 -- Usenet: the Global Watering Hole Chapter 4 -- Usenet: from Flame Wars to Killfiles Chapter 5 -- Mailing Lists and Bitnet Chapter 6 -- Telnet (Mining the Net, part I) Chapter 7 -- FTP (Mining the Net, part II) Chapter 8 -- Gophers, WAISs, and the World-Wide Web Chapter 9 -- Advanced E-mail Chapter 10 -- News of the World Chapter 11 -- IRC, MUDs, and other things... Chapter 12 -- Education on the Net Chapter 13 -- Business on the Net * A 6 part Afterword - "Conclusion: the End?" by Adam Gaffin - "A Slice of Life in my Virtual Community" by Howard Rheingold - "A Statement of Principle" by Bruce Sterling - "Preserving and Promoting the ``Internet Culture''" by Peter Deutsch - "Subject: TIME Article on Internet" by Philip Elmer-Dewitt - "Subject: A Perspective on NREN" by Greg Chartrand * A Bibliography - Paperware on the Internet: A comprehensive list of over 200 (sic!) literary references of books, papers, magazines, newspaper bits, and electronically published texts, all of them related to the Internet and similar topics. * 5 Appendices - Appendix on Internet Jargon - Appendix by Ms. Emily Postnews - Appendix on The Electronic Frontier Foundation - Appendix on Internet Connectivity (ISO 3166/Internet Society) - Appendix on Smileys: ``The Unofficial Smiley Dictionary'' * 4 Indices - E-mail addresses mentioned - Internet Sites mentioned - Commands, Suffixes, and Tools mentioned - General Index -=- * -=- * WHY DO YOU WANT THIS? Why do you want this? Well, for one thing, it's better than Bloomfield's "99 more things to do in zero gravity", and then it's free. So what else do you expect? Ok, for an encore: it definitely saves you some time and trouble: traditionally users learned by word of mouth, stumbling upon things, being trapped by dozens of pitfalls, and laughed at by systems wizards. These times are OVER! This guide should serve as a first straw to clutch at when you're stranded in this mindboggling universe called Internet; and are curious about what else can be done. It also presents the fundamental topics on a "rookie" level that are all too often assumed and considered trivial by many more experienced network users/admins/gurus. -=- * -=- * WHERE DO YOU GET IT? As mentioned before, it is available from the EFF's FTP server "ftp.eff.org" in the "pub/Net_info/EFF_Net_Guide/" directory. Or check out the European default server "ftp.Germany.EU.net" in "pub/books/eff-guide". See below for instructions on "How to configure The Guide". AND read the SERVERS file that comes with the Texinfo distribution for more servers than you probably ever need... -=- * -=- * DISTRIBUTION DIRECTORY: |-README // FAQ file |-README.VMS // help for VMS folks |-extended-guide-|-eegtti-2.3.ps.gz // PostScript |-eegtti-2.3.dvi.gz // TeX DVI file |-eegtti-2.3-US.dvi.gz // TeX DVI US paper |-eegtti-2.3-US.ps.gz // TeX PS US paper |-eegtti-2.3.info.gz // GNU Info file |-eegtti-2.3.txt.gz // TEXT file |-eegtti-2.3.html.tar.gz // HTML (WWW) files |-eegtti-2.3.amiga.lha // AmigaGuide files |-eegtti-2.3.tar.gz // all Texinfo sources Both sites can uncompress the files "on the fly", i.e., you do not need to have the GNU gunzip utility. Just get the files with the ".gz" extension: get eegtti-2.3.ps instead of: get eegtti-2.3.ps.gz -=- * -=- * WHAT ARE ALL THESE FILES? Now, how to read it. The file eegtti-2.3.dvi is a DVI (DeVice Independent) file created by the TeX typesetting system. Filters exist to convert these DVI files into printer-specific files for a variety of printers. Also included is the file eegtti-2.3.ps, a PostScript version. eegtti-2.3.txt is the plain ASCII version of eegtti-2.3.info, ie. the latter can be browsed either using EMACS in INFO mode, or any GNU info browser, e.g. "info", or "xinfo". Just type "info -f eegtti-2.3.info" and there you go. For the folks who want to print the PS version on a Hewlett-Packard laser printer with Postscript option, take care. You cannot print the file double-sided, which results in "0.5in upwards shifted" even pages; but printing it single-paged is ok. This is obvioulsy due to a bug in the HP-printer's firmware, and was reported by Ed Moore of HP, using a LaserJet 4Si (with PostScript option, of course). Dawn Cooley reported troubles with a Texas Instruments microLaser Turbo. After downloading Adobe's error handler, The Guide printed fine. The tar file with suffix ".html" contains The Guide in some 300 files in HyperText Markup Language format. They can be thrown into your system's World-Wide Web directory, and then browsed using the various WWW tools. E.g. from within NCSA Mosaic "Load Local" eeg_toc.html, and there you go! An alternative is to set the default home page environment variable with: "setenv WWW_HOME eeg_toc.html" which makes The Guide the HOME page (press the HOME button to get back to the top) on startup. (Well, at least when NCSA Mosaic is installed on your system. If it's not, BUG YOUR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR! He obviously missed the leading edge of today's infosystems technologies.) In the tar file eegtti-2.3.tar.gz (a gzip'ed tar file---ask YOUR LOCAL SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR and/or Unix guru how to extract the files from this), there are a number of files suffixed by ".texi". These are all the Texinfo sources to this guide. A print-it- yourself-kit. If set-up properly you can make it print the Guide in any PostScript font you like. But we'll leave this as an excercise for the upcoming hacker generation. New in the collection is eegtti-2.3.amiga.lha, an archive containing the AmigaGuide (cf VERSIONS below) version of the book. -=- * -=- * FYI: WHAT IS TeX? FYI: TeX is a free typesetting system by Don Knuth of Stanford; the source of which you can FTP or buy on a tape. Texinfo is a package of macros written on top of TeX by the GNU Project for easy manual creation. See the FTP Chapter in The Guide on how to obtain TeX (e.g. ftp.Germany.EU.net/pub/packages/TeX). -=- * -=- * HOW TO CREATE A DVI FILE? Well, first you must configure The Guide to produce an US letter size, or a European A4 paper size version: this can easily be done with the provided "configure" shell script (C-shell), eg.: example % configure --letter Or: example % configure --a4 which results in the following message from "configure": EFF's (Extended) Guide to the Internet [Texinfo edition 2.3, cm font] *** configured for A4 paper size. Note, that "example %" represents your system's input prompt, that might look different for you, eg. on MS-DOS you're used to see something like C:\DUMMY> You might also configure The Guide "by hand", e.g. for the letter size version: example % cp config/Makefile.us Makefile example % cp config/eegtti.us eegtti.texi And for the A4 version: example % cp config/Makefile.a4 Makefile example % cp config/eegtti.a4 eegtti.texi To create a DVI file of your own (e.g. to produce an A4 paper version), simply run "texi2dvi" on eegtti.texi twice; or use the Makefile included; it does almost *everything* for you (...although "make coffee" doesn't work, yet). All there is to do is to type: example % make dvi It's really that easy! (If you have the appropriate tools installed, and a *real* operating system running on your box...) -=- * -=- * MORE ON CONFIGURATIONS? The general usage of the "configure" script is as follows: usage: configure -- --font --a4/--letter for (a4) --font times/palatino/bookman/etc. for (cm) e.g.: configure --a4 --font palatino which results in the following message from "configure": EFF's (Extended) Guide to the Internet [Texinfo edition 2.3, palatino font] *** configured for A4 paper size. This means you can also set the PostScript font that are contained in the "fonts" directory; you must also have a recent version of Tom Rockicki's dvips(1) program installed on your system. -=- * -=- * WHAT ABOUT A GNU INFO FILE? Well, some moons have passed since edition 1.00, and now it's there! But you need to patch "makeinfo v1.55" with the included "makeinfo-1.55. patch" file, and compile it with "-DJOKES=1" defined. Then type "make info" for the Info, and "make txt" for a TEXT/ASCII version. -=- * -=- * HOW TO CREATE THE HTML FILES? Just say "make html" which runs "texi2html" on "eegtti.texi" and creates a bunch of HTML files; Note that "texi2html" needs Larry Wall's "perl" program to be installed on your system. Maybe you need to edit the first line in the perl script "#!/usr/local/bin/perl" to whatever directory "perl" is installed on your system. The next version won't need Lionel Cons' texi2html script anymore; Texinfo will support HTML+ in "native" mode! -=- * -=- * HOW TO HANDLE TYPOS, MISTAKES, AND OTHER BUGS? Given, that this is an ever changing effort, some "bugs" or other "quirks" are inevitable, that might have been overseen during Texinfo production. If you find something, drop me an e-mail; if you have any comments or questions, want to make further addition or corrections, please send "all-your-stuff" to the address below. I'll probably include them into future releases of this guide. Thanx in advance for your patience! -=- * -=- * THE CURRENT TEXINFO EDITOR/COORDINATOR? Yours, -joke === ____ === Jörg Heitkötter === / / / ___ ___ _/_ === joke@Germany.EU.net === /---- / / / / /___/ / === EUnet Deutschland GmbH === /____ /___/ / / /___ / === Emil-Figge-Str. 80 ===== ===== D-44227 Dortmund ===== Connecting Europe since 1982 ===== Tel.(Fax) +49 231 972 2222 (1111)