Instructions for Maintaining NPAC CDROM Directories

Background

This directory, known as the "webtech" directory, is one that contains original NPAC course materials. It is one of those that can be periodically written to a CDROM. The other directories are those containing talk slides, in the "users/gcf" directories, and some few examples that reside directly in the "reference" directories on carver.

In order to write a cross-platform CDROM, certain format rules must be followed for the directories to be written. An explanation of the CDROM formats and rules is found in Tips for creating CDROM's by David Bernholdt. At NPAC, the process of writing the CDROM takes place in two steps. Given a set of directories that contains the desired contents of the CDROM, a mapping script, developed by Deepak Ramanathan, is run on the directories, producing a directory of CDROM content in the required format, mapping the link tags to their new location, and marking links that go "outside" of the CDROM material itself. Then this directory is the one actually "burned" onto the CDROM.

Therefore, in the original directories, not all of the rules are required as the mapping script will fix those problems. For example, it is o.k. to have HTML files in upper or mixed case, and the mapping script will change them to all lower case, and also change any links going to those files.

On the other hand, it is not possible for the mapping script to fix file names that do not occur in link tags. So, for example, file names that appear in applet tags, such as .class files or .jar files, must be in all lower case.

So in the following, we present the rules that must be followed in this directory to enable the mapping script to produce CDROM-writable directories. If you find any problems or unclear situations, please tell Nancy McCracken.


Nancy McCracken. njm@npac.syr.edu.