- Practical Internet Groupware
- Foreword
- Preface
- I. Using Internet Groupware
- 1. The Conferencing Dimension
- 2. Public Online Communities
- 3. Intranet Collaboration with NNTP and HTML
- Using Local Newsgroups: An Overview
- Conferencing and Email
- You May Not Need What I Send You
- What I Send You Now, You May Not Need Until Later
- When You Do Need What I Sent, You May Have Forgotten That I Sent It
- Group Spaces and Interpersonal Spaces Work Differently
- Groups Need Privacy Too
- If I Put It There, I’ll Be Able to Find It Later
- I Don’t Have Time to File Things Properly
- The Quest for a Read/Write Web Server
- Aggregating Web Content in Newsgroups
- HTML Authoring Strategies
- Reaching your Audience
- 4. Information-Management Strategies for Groupware Users
- II. Groupware Docbases
- 5. Docbases as Groupware Applications
- The Essential Simplicity of Internet Software
- How Docbases Are Groupware Applications
- Groupware Aspects of the BYTE Magazine Docbase
- Groupware Aspects of the BYTE Virtual Press Room
- Groupware Aspects of the BYTE Public and Private Newsgroups
- 6. Docbase Input Techniques
- 7. Docbase Navigation
- Introducing the Docbase Navigational Controls
- Zen and the Art of Docbase Maintenance
- Implementing HTML Tabbed Indexes
- Implementing Sequential Navigation
- A Static Implementation of the Navigational Controls
- Using Docbase::Indexer
- Docbase Navigation in Perspective
- 8. Organizing Search Results
- A Docbase’s Web API
- A Search Engine’s Web API
- Multiple Engines, Multiple Docbases
- Exploiting URL Namespaces and Doctitle Namespaces
- When URL and Doctitle Namespaces Don’t Suffice
- An Implementation Plan
- Generating the Results Display
- Plugging in SWISH-E
- Plugging in the Microsoft Index Server
- Docbase Search in Perspective
- 5. Docbases as Groupware Applications
- III. Groupware Applications and Services
- 9. Conferencing Applications
- Example 1: A Reviewable Docbase
- Transforming an XML Repository into Reviewable Web Pages
- You Can Easily Convert HTML to Equivalent XML
- XML Means No More Custom Parsing Code
- Perl’s XML::Parser Module Is Really Useful
- XML and HTML Can Fruitfully Coincide
- A Transitional Approach to XML Authoring Has Near-term Value
- DTDs Don’t Have to Be Complex
- Final Observations on the Transitional HTML/CSS/XML Approach
- Instrumenting a Docbase for Collaborative Review
- Uses and Limits of the Docbase Review Application
- An Alternate, Email-based Comment Mechanism
- Example 2: A Conferencing-Enabled Helpdesk Application
- Uses and Limitations of HelpDesk
- 10. Groupware Servlets
- 11. Membership Services
- The Case for Internet Directory Services
- The LDAP Consensus
- A Subscriber-Based Notification System
- The Hybrid Push/Pull Technique
- Directory Options for the Docbase Notifier
- Internal and External Populations
- A Simple Perl-based Group Directory
- A Data-Prototyping Strategy
- Anatomy of the Docbase Update Notifier
- Implementing Attribute-Based Docbase Subscription
- An Alternate, Non-SQL Approach to Attribute-Based Subscription
- Working with Users and Groups in the NT Accounts Database
- Working with Users and Groups Using LDAP
- Group Membership in Perspective
- 12. Authentication and Authorization Techniques
- HTTP Basic Authentication
- Basic Authentication for Apache
- Basic Authentication for IIS
- Protecting Scripts in Apache
- Protecting Scripts in IIS
- Attribute-Based Access
- An Authenticating Script for Apache
- An Authenticating Script for IIS
- A Pass-Through ISAPI Authentication Filter
- An Attribute-Based Authorization Script
- Scripted Authentication Using Netscape Directory Server
- An Authorizing Docbase Viewer
- Using Cookies to Authorize Access
- Setting a Cookie
- What to Put in a Cookie and for How Long
- 13. Deploying NNTP Discussion Servers
- 9. Conferencing Applications
- IV. Advanced Internet Groupware
- 14. Automating Internet Components
- 15. Distributed HTTP
- A Perl-Based Local Web Server
- Platform Capabilities and Application Features
- The dhttp System
- A Developer’s View of the dhttp System
- The Core serve_request( ) Method
- Hello, World with dhttp
- Into the Starting Gate
- Connecting dhttp to SQL Data
- Implementing Data-Bound Widgets
- Namespace Completion
- Polymorphic HTML Widgets
- Event Bubbling
- Networked dhttp
- Data Retrieval with dhttp
- Replicating Data
- Putting dhttp in Perspective
- Replicating Code
- Secure dhttp
- dhttp in the Windows Environment
- Groupware and dhttp
- A Perl-Based Local Web Server
- 16. Epilogue
- V. Appendixes
- A. Example Software
- B. Internet RFCs: A Groupware Perspective
- Email: Core Infrastructure
- Email: Fetching and Managing Messages
- Email: Semistructured Documents
- Email: Encryption and Authentication
- News Infrastructure
- Web: Core Infrastructure
- Web: HTML
- Web: URL Schemes
- Calendaring/Scheduling
- Chat
- Security
- Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)
- Directory Services
- Metadata and Resource Discovery
- Miscellaneous
- Index
- Colophon
HelpDesk’s biggest problem is that it lacks a single, coherent user interface. The Web and news views refer to each other using URLs, but they’re only weakly coupled. Most users would likely prefer tighter integration. The following are some ways to achieve that effect:
- A Web-based conferencing system
Using this approach, you could park the database viewer in one HTML frame and the conference component in another. Then you could use JavaScript to synchronize these two views—for example, by binding navigation of the database to navigation of the discussion (and vice versa).
- A Java-based newsreader
This solution would retain the NNTP server as a backend but replace the newsreader with a Java applet. Here, too, it would be possible—though tricky—to synchronize the database view and the conference view using JavaScript.
- A scriptable browser-based discussion widget
The kinds of user-interface controls that make today’s newsreaders more attractive than web-based alternatives—notably, collapsible trees, sortable views, and rich-text message composers—could become first-class scriptable browser widgets. At that point there might be no need for a standalone newsreader or, for that matter, a mailreader.
- A componentized newsreader
Alternatively, instead of moving the newsreader’s rich UI into the browser, why not make the standalone newsreader a scriptable component? As I’ll point out again in the epilogue to this book, it’s odd that the Internet messaging clients—mailreaders and newsreaders—aren’t programmable in the same ways that browsers are.
Whatever emerges, the key point is that conferencing ought to be a service that any application can profitably use. NNTP conferencing isn’t the only possible component, but it’s capable, universally deployed, and a lot more adaptable than you might think.
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