Electronic Texts on the World Wide Web

The links on this page were used in The Electronic Text (1) workshop held at the CTI Centre for Textual Studies, 30th March 1995

Accessing the Web

Accessing the World Wide Web requires a client or a browser. The most popular are:

• Netscape for Windows at home.mcom.com. Obtain from src.doc.ic.ac.uk
• Netscape for Macintosh at home.mcom.com. Obtain from src.doc.ic.ac.uk
• NCSA Mosaic for Windows at www.ncsa.uiuc.edu. Obtain from src.doc.ic.ac.uk
• NCSA Mosaic for Macintosh at www.ncsa.uiuc.edu. Obtain from src.doc.ic.ac.uk
• InternetWorks for Windows at www.booklink.com has received good reviews though I have not yet had a chance to try it. Download from ftp.booklink.com

Providing Texts on the Web

If you wish to create texts which can be read with a Web browser then you are required to learn the Hypertext Markup Language which tells the Web browser about the structure of the text (and thus how to display it on the screen). There are a number of HTML manuals on-line. The following are probably the clearest:

• HTML Quick Reference Card
• Composing Good Hypertext
• HyperText Markup Language at CERN

Details of HTML 1.0, 2.0 and the proposed 3.0.
• Running a World Wide Web Server by Brian Kelly (Leeds)

It is also worth having a look at SIGWEB, the UK and Northern Ireland special interest group on the World Wide Web.

When you have finsihed your web page you can check for any errors by using the HTML Validation Service

Converting Documents to HTML

There are now available a number of utilities which can convert word-processor documents to HTML text files or help you insert the correct HTML tags. A selection of them are freely available here for you to download.

• HoTMetal for Windows
• HTML Author for WinWord 6.0
• HTML Writer for Windows
• CU_HTML.dot -A document template for Word for Windows 2.0
• Microsoft Internet Assistant for WinWord 6.0 is an increasingly popular means of creating web documents from Word 6.0 files. It does have one or two elements peculiar to Microsoft (including the entry of 'meta' information)
• HTML Web Weaver for Mac
• HTML.edit for Mac This utility attempts to conform to the HTML 2.0 DTD standard.

Electronic Text Archives on the Web

The following are sample links to text archives. Each of these archives has further links to other resources (expect to get happily lost!)

• The HUMBUL Gateway

A large compilation of humanities resources which make a useful starting point.
• The Oxford Text Archive

Here you can access the catalogue of texts available and obtain a selection of publically available texts.
• The Electronic Text Centre at Virginia

What this centre has done is taken texts from the Oxford Text Archive and tagged them using SGML, before placing them in an archive. You can access them using a Web browser because the SGML texts are converted to HTML when you select them. The archive has texts in English (middle & modern), German, French and Latin. There is also an on-line version of the TEI Guidelines for SGML texts.
• The ALEX catalogue of Electronic Texts

This is a gopher server which contains links to 1,800 on-line texts ranging from short excerpts to whole books. The texts can be viewed by author, subject, language, date or title. You can also search for texts using the Alcuin search interface at North Carolina State University. Expect to see more formal catalogues of Internet resources like this.

Viewing Texts on the Web

The great benefit of the World Wide Web is not only being able to use a Web browser as a glorified ftp client but to be able to view the texts on screen complete with hypertext links to notes, images, and sounds. So long as they are kept to a managable length texts with the minimum of hypertext links can be very attractively displayed on the screen. Such texts make good teaching resources. We can expect a greater use of the Web for the provision of courseware materials which will be available to students on a local campus and to the world wide academic community (assuming the presence of a Web link). A sample of texts intended for this end are provided below.

• Isaac Rosenberg's 'Break of Day in the Trenches'
  This is an innovative tutorial developed by Dr Stuart Lee (Oxford) on the World Wide Web. Converted from the Hypercard package of the same name, 'Break of Day in the Trenches' enables students to record their initial impressions about this First World War poem before studying the poem and its historical context in greater detail. Dr Lee has provided a large collection of contextual information ranging from the different editions of the poem, to texts and images documenting life in the trenches. At the end of the tutorial students are encouraged to record how their understanding of the poem has been influenced by the background information.
• Worlds of Late Antiquity

Professor James O'Donnell at the University of Pennsylvania is very enthusiastic about the potential the Internet holds for teaching. He has put on-line much of his syllabus for a course he teaches on Late Antiquity. You can view materials relating to Augustine, Cassiodorus, and Boethius here.
• The Shakespeare Page

This is a project to provide a Web edition of the works of Shakespeare. At present the only formatted text available is Twelfth Night. The editors of this page hope to encourage scholars to add notes and commentary to chosen passages making the Web edition of Shakepeare a collaborative hypertext project.
• Stony Run

The Author of this page has made available a number of texts from the Early-Modern period including an edition of A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy by Laurence Sterne.