A page on the World Wide Web is formatted in the HyperText Markup Language. If you were to view the document in text mode—which is possible with many Web browsers, including Netscape—you’d see that the text is scattered with “tags,” like <H2>. There’s no mentions of point sizes, colors, or the like. The beginning of an HTML file looks like this:

  <TITLE>Netscape Handbook: Graphical Elements</TITLE>

  <A NAME="RTFToC0">

  <B>

  <FONT SIZE=+3>G</FONT><FONT SIZE=+2>raphical elements</FONT>

  </B></A>

  <ol>

  <A HREF="../online-manual.html">Netscape Handbook: Table of

  Contents</A>

  <li><a href="graphics.html#RTFToC1">Netscape window</a>

  <li><a href="graphics.html#RTFToC2">Point and click navigation</a>

  <li><a href="graphics.html#RTFToC4">Content area and text fields</a>

  <li><a href="graphics.html#RTFToC9">Security information</a>

  <li><a href="graphics.html#RTFToC5">Window controls</a>

  <li><a href="graphics.html#RTFToC3">Toolbar buttons</a>

  <li><a href="graphics.html#RTFToC6">Directory buttons</a>

  <li><a href="graphics.html#RTFToC7">Newsgroup list buttons</a>

  <li><a href="graphics.html#RTFToC8">Newsgroup article buttons</a>

  </ol>

  <HR ALIGN="right"WIDTH=85%>

  <A NAME="RTFToC1">

  <FONT SIZE=+3>N</FONT><FONT SIZE=+1>etscape window</FONT>

  </A>

  <P>

  This section on graphical elements describes what you see in the

  Netscape window. Most of the tools and text fields that help you to

  navigate the Internet are visible, though you have the option of hiding

  some tools in order to give more space on the screen to the content

  area.<p>



  On the page describing point and click navigation, you'll find a

  description of each type of graphical element: colors/underlining,

  status indicator, progress bar, toolbar buttons, content/text fields,

  window controls, and menus. Subsequent pages go into more detail on how

  toolbar buttons, text/content fields, and window controls work. An

  entire section of pages is devoted to menu items, including those that

  let you set important options and preferences effecting the look,

  performance, and functionality of the Netscape window.<p>



  You can open multiple Netscape windows to view multiple pages of

  information. The title bar of the window shows the title of currently

  loaded page. <P>

  <HR ALIGN="right"WIDTH=85%>

  <A NAME="RTFToC2">

  <FONT SIZE=+3>P</FONT><FONT SIZE=+1>oint and click navigation</FONT>

  </A>

  <P>

The work of rendering the home page is done at the local level, matching local resources to the specifications of the Web page. You’ll notice that there are a few different point sizes and typefaces on the home page. The Web document makes a reference to <TITLE>; the Web page then matches a local font and point size to the text.

A graphic is also rendered locally. When the document downloads, the graphic is sent separately, in the GIF format, which makes for quicker file transfers. (Even so, some GIF documents can be very large and take a long time to download, even at a high-speed network link.)

URL Formats

You tell a Web browser where to look by entering a Uniform Resource Locator, or URL. The WWW community has standardized on a number of URL formats, as listed in Table 9.2.

This means that you can connect to many Internet resources via a Web browser. Most Web browsers have a menu selection or dialog box that allows you to enter a URL.

Communications with the UUCP Commands

In many respects, the Internet is the “new wave” of UNIX communications. However, there are many UNIX and Linux users who might want to take advantage of other communications methods.

One older method is UUCP. Originally, UNIX-to-UNIX Copy Program (UUCP) was written to communicate between systems via ordinary telephone lines. The UUCP program allows you to copy files from one system to another. Today, these connections can take place between those same telephone lines via modem (at all speeds, from 2400 bits per second to 19.2 kbps), direct wiring, a local-area network, or a wide-area network connected via dedicated phone lines. Although the connection mechanisms have changed, the basic UUCP system has not; it remains mechanism-independent, which makes your life much simpler. As a user, you don’t need to know the specifics of the connection mechanism; all you need to know is how to access the utilities that make communication possible.

Dealing with UUCP and the networking utilities on a configuration level is an advanced topic best left to system administrators and those with iron stomachs, suitable for dealing with the complex task of networking Linux machines.

There’s no one great überprogram that oversees Linux connections to the outside world. Much like everything else in the Linux and UNIX worlds, the communications utilities are quite small and serve limited purposes by themselves; only when strung together do they actually make up a powerful communications system.

Why connect to the outside world? Some companies directly link far-flung offices via dedicated phone line to ensure instantaneous communication among employees. Others connect via modem over phone lines to the UUCP Network, a series of UNIX computers that pass along electronic mail and files all around the world.

In a rather confusing situation, UUCP refers both to a specific command (uucp) and a series of related commands (most of which begin with uu). In this chapter, uucp will refer to the specific uucp command, while UUCP will refer to the general command set.

To make things even more confusing, there’s more than one implementation of the UUCP utilities on the market. In this chapter, we’ll be covering the HoneyDanBer UUCP, named for its three creators (Peter Honeyman, Dan A. Nowitz, and Brian E. Redman). This implementation is supported in the version of Linux on the accompanying program CD-ROM.