Subject:                              Time:  10:38 AM
  OFFICE MEMO         web stuff                             Date:  3/27/95
The following quote was received today from the Society for Music Theory
Listerv, discussing their web page.  I had not thought about the possible
relationship between a "link" and  what we used to call "footnotes". 

quote follows: (MTO is "Music Theory Online", which has been around for
quite a while as a text based service with gif's you could download to
provide musical illustrations)

Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 12:08:17 -0500
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From: Lee Rothfarb 
To: cfstokes@oratmail.cfa.ilstu.edu
Subject: The Web and HTML

Dear MTO Subscribers,

With great delight I would like to report that our new Web pages
have been very popular as a way of retrieving the latest issue
of MTO.  The Co-editorial Board and staff of the journal are
pleased to be able to offer this additional, effective mode of
access, which offers so many possibilities for growth.  The WWW
access is but a first step.  We hope to continue developing in 
the direction of a hypertextual, hypermedia publication.

In order to evolve toward that goal, we encourage potential
authors to investigate the HyperText Markup Language (HTML),
a set of special "tags" inserted into a plain-text document
to allow integrated text, graphics, sound, and even video.
Though the latter two components may not be practical for the
time being--the Net is still catching up with the growing 
demand for bandwidth brought about by the Web--the former two, 
text and graphics combined into a single document, will in time 
become the norm.  Robert Judd, MTO Manager, will soon be 
broadcasting a document on securing the necessary tools for 
using the Web, and for producing Web documents in HTML.  The 
greatly expanded possibilities for MTO and its subscribers are 
well worth the effort which, in some cases, is not as great as 
one at first might think.  A number of books on the Web and
HTML are already available in bookstores.

A word of assurance:  MTO will continue to provide plain-
text versions of all parts of the journal so that subscribers
who do not yet have Web access can still retrieve and read the 
journal as they have in the past (mto-serv, FTP, gopher).  The
MTO staff is committed to reaching *all* of its readers (nearly
900 world-wide), not just those who can already use the Web.

It is clear, however that the "older" methods of retrieval will 
eventually become dated and more difficult.  No single Internet host, 
boethius included, will be able to store the large files (graphics, 
audio) that might make up a Web document.  The very goal of the Web 
is, of course, to go beyond the storage capacity and power of a 
single Internet host by linking text, graphics, and other kinds of 
data stored on hosts anywhere on the Net.  If in a Web document 
written in HTML an author includes a footnote with a link to some 
other document, it would be necessary for a non-Web subscriber to 
retrieve the other document, wherever it might be.  Assembling all 
the documents in such links would be time-consuming and difficult.  
The Web solves such problems by providing the embedded hypertextual 
links.  In short, then, taking advantage of HTML goes far beyond nice 
fonts and layout, and hence MTO's development toward becoming a full-
fledged Web publication means eventually going beyond what I believe 
are currently the chief modes of access (mto-serv, FTP, gopher).

In conclusion, we encourage subscribers to inquire about Web
access at their institutions.  As mentioned above, subscribers
should watch for a document about getting the required software
to run a Web "browser" for online and, possibly, offline reading 
of HTML documents.  Further, authors will want to inform them-
selves about HTML editors, which greatly ease the process of
producing Web documents.

In the meantime, please send your reactions to our new Web pages,
and your suggestions for the future, to me or to Robert Judd.
Thanks for your support!

Lee Rothfarb, MTO General Editor    Robert Judd, MTO Manager
mto-editor@boethius.music.ucsb.edu  mto-manager@boethius.music.ucsb.edu