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>Path: funic!news.funet.fi!sunic!mcsun!Germany.EU.net!Informatik.Uni-Dortmund.DE!lucky!heitkoet
>From: joke at ls11.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Joerg Heitkoetter)
>Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions,de.news.newusers.questions,unido.general,comp.org.eff.talk,comp.infosystems.gopher,comp.infosystems.wais,comp.infosystems.www,alt.folklore.computers
>Subject: Big Dummy's Guide goes Texinfo, HTML, etc....
>Supersedes: <ANNOUNCE_747573326 at lusty.informatik.uni-dortmund.de>
>Followup-To: comp.org.eff.talk
>Date: 20 Sep 1993 19:19:21 GMT
>Organization: CS Department, University of Dortmund, Germany
>Lines: 312
>Distribution: inet
>Message-ID: <ANNOUNCE_748552755 at lusty.informatik.uni-dortmund.de>
>NNTP-Posting-Host: lucky.informatik.uni-dortmund.de
>Originator: joke at ls11.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Joerg Heitkoetter)
Day-of-Announcement: September 20, 1993
The-Texinfo-Edition: 1.01
"Tea is now available in most Megamarkets in a variety of
easy to swallow capsules." -- Douglas Adams
G'Day folks,
I just want to let you know, that I just finished the *complete*
Texinfo release of the "Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet"
(cf README below).
It will be available "real soon now" on the Electronic Frontier
Foundation's ftp server, "ftp.eff.org". Get the files in directory:
"/pub/EFF/papers/big-dummys-guide-texi".
If you do not have the time (EFF is a bit slow). Take the European
A4 paper version from "ftp.germany.eu.net". Get the files in dir:
"/pub/books/big-dummys-guide/big-dummys-guide-texi".
Hopefully, this thingie will float through the Net like crazy, and
appear on a server close to you... please stay tuned and relax;
it's being distributed throughout the whole Internet, using the
well-known channels. Ok?
BTW: Apart from the face lifting -- TeX vs raw ASCII format --
the Texinfo release now includes *much more* additional goodies...
It also comes in a variety of easily convertible formats:
DVI, PS, HTML, INFO, and TXT.
Enjoy the trip!
-joke
--
Joerg Heitkoetter
Systems Analysis Group "An irritating speck of dirt,
University of Dortmund, Germany that came from absolutely nowhere"
<joke at ls11.informatik.uni-dortmund.de> -- Fish, INCUBUS
----- FYI: The original release note from "big-dummys-guide.txt" ------
Welcome to the Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet.
The genesis of the Big Dummy's Guide was a few informal conversations,
which included Mitch Kapor of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and
Steve Cisler of Apple Computer, Inc. in June of 1991. With the support of
Apple Computer, EFF hired a writer (Adam Gaffin) and actually took on the
project in September of 1991.
The idea was to write a guide to the Internet for folks who had little or
no experience with network communications. We intended to post this Guide
to "the Net" in ASCII and HyperCard formats and to give it away on disk,
as well as have a print edition available for a nominal charge. With the
consolidation of our offices to Washington, DC, we were able to put the
Guide on a fast track. You're looking at the realization of our dreams --
version one of the Guide. At the time I'm writing this, we're still
fishing around for a book publisher, so the hard-copy version has not yet
been printed. We're hoping to update this Guide on a regular basis, so
please feel free to send us your comments and corrections.
EFF would like to thanks the folks at Apple, especially Steve Cisler of the
Apple Library, for their support of our efforts to bring this Guide to you.
We hope it helps you open up a whole new world, where new friends and
experiences are sure to be yours. Enjoy!
Shari Steele
ssteele at eff.org
Director of Legal Services and Community Outreach
Electronic Frontier Foundation
July 15, 1993
----- big-dummys-guide-texi/README ------------------------------------
[Last update: September 20, 1993]
SPREAD THE WORD:
"The Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet is now available,
in a variety of easily convertible formats *and*
at your local laser printer."
* WHAT IS BIG DUMMY'S GUIDE?
This is still the first Texinfo edition of a book entitled "Big
Dummy's Guide to the Internet" (aka "bdgtti.texi") written by
Adam Gaffin for a joint project of Apple Computer, Inc. and
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
* WHERE DO I GET THE HYPERCARD STACK?
Steve Cisler courtesy of the Apple Library, used a Macintosh
computer and converted Adams writing into a so-called HyperCard
stack; this stack, readable by the HyperCard software that comes
bundled with every Mac, is available via anonymous FTP from the EFF's
server "ftp.eff.org" as file "big-dummys-guide.sit.hqx" see under
"pub/EFF/papers". More versions, e.g. Amiga Computers, and
GeoWorks on PCs are in the works by other volunteers, ie. the latter
by Adam himself.
* AND THE ORIGINAL ASCII? WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
Also available in the same directory is Adam's original ASCII
version "big-dummys-guide.txt" that served as the starting point for
this Texinfo based release.
Besides several "bug fixes," witty quotes, additions, including
some complete rewrites and a new layout, some more value has been added;
notably, two personal articles from EFFector Online, the EFF's
bi-weekly news magazine (available in comp.org.eff.news on USENET),
now serving as superb afterwords:
* NOW, WHAT'S IN THERE?
* "A Slice of Life in my Virtual Community" by Howard Rheingold
describes the social life on the Internet from the WELL's point
of view.
* "A Statement of Principle" by SF author Bruce Sterling
discusses some moral and legal issues you will definitely get to
know when becoming a "cybernaut" on Internet.
* "Subject: A Perspective on NREN" by Grag Chartrand *parodies*
the NSF's proposed US National Education and Research Network.
Moreover a bibliography has been stuffed into this edition:
* A comprehensive list of Paperware related to the Internet
(This is an updated version of the bibliography section that
comes with the first edition of "Zen and the Art of the
Internet" by Brendan Kehoe, plus the reference section of
Henry Edward Hardy's Master's Thesis "The History of the Net"
written at the School of Communications, Grand Valley State
University, Allendale, MI 49401. Version 7.2 was posted to
comp.org.eff.talk on August 28, 1993.)
This guide is 222 European A4 size pages in length, (i.e. 264
US-letter size pages) and is divided into the following sections:
* A 3 part Introduction
- Welcome by Shari Steele (and the Texinfo editor)
- Forward by Mitchell Kapor, Co-founder of EFF
- Preface by Adam Gaffin
* A 12 part Walk-trough-the-Internet
Chapter 1 -- Setting up, Getting connected, Jacking in...
Chapter 2 -- Electronic Mail
Chapter 3 -- Usenet: the Global Watering Hole
Chapter 4 -- Usenet: from Flame Wars to Killfiles
Chapter 5 -- Mailing Lists and Bitnet
Chapter 6 -- Telnet (Mining the Net, part I)
Chapter 7 -- FTP (Mining the Net, part II)
Chapter 8 -- Gophers, WAISs, and the World-Wide Web
Chapter 9 -- Advanced E-mail
Chapter 10 -- News of the World
Chapter 11 -- IRC, MUDs, and other things...
Chapter 12 -- Education on the Net
* A 4 part Afterword
- "Conclusion: the End?" by Adam Gaffin
- "A Slice of Life in my Virtual Community" by Howard Rheingold
- "A Statement of Principle" by Bruce Sterling
- "Subject: A Perspective on NREN" by Greg Chartrand
* A Bibliography
- Paperware on the Internet: A comprehensive list of over
200 (sic!) literary references of books, papers, magazines,
newspaper bits, and electronically published texts, all of them
related to the Internet and similar topics.
* 4 Appendices
- An appendix on Internet Jargon
- An appendix by Ms. Emily Postnews
- An appendix on The Electronic Frontier Foundation
- An appendix on Internet Country Codes (ISO 3166)
* 4 Indices
- E-mail addresses mentioned
- Internet Sites mentioned
- Commands, Suffixes, and Tools mentioned
- General Index
* WHY DO YOU WANT THIS?
Why do you want this? Well, for one thing, it's better than Bloomfield's
"99 more things to do in zero gravity", and then it's free. So what
else do you expect? Ok, for an encore: it definitely saves you some time
and trouble: traditionally users learned by word of mouth, stumbling
upon things, being trapped by dozens of pitfalls, and laughed at by
systems wizards. These times are OVER!
This guide should serve as a first straw to clutch at when you're stranded
in this mindboggling universe called Internet; and are curious about what
else can be done. It also presents the fundamental topics on a "rookie"
level that are all too often assumed and considered trivial by many more
experienced network users/admins/gurus.
* WHERE DO YOU GET IT?
It should be available from the EFF's FTP server "ftp.eff.org" in the
"pub/EFF/papers" folder. But EFF is *creepingly* slow to get things done.
You might better check out the European A4 paper edition on "ftp.germany.
eu.net" in "pub/books/big-dummys-guide". (But remember, that you have to
regenerate he DVI and PS files for US letter size paper. See below for
instructions on "How to configure DUMMY's".
* DISTRIBUTION DIRECTORY:
|-README // this file
|-big-dummys-guide-texi-|-bdgtti-1.01.ps.Z // DUMMY's in PostScript
|-bdgtti-1.01.dvi.Z // DUMMY's TeX DVI file
|-bdgtti-1.01.info.Z // DUMMY's GNU INFO file
|-bdgtti-1.01.txt.Z // DUMMY's TEXT file
|-bdgtti-1.01.html.tar.Z // DUMMY's 3 HTML (WWW) files
|-bdgtti-1.01.tar.Z // all Texinfo sources
* WHAT ARE ALL THESE FILES?
Now, how to read it. The file bdgtti-1.01.dvi is a DVI (DeVice
Independent) file created by the TeX typesetting system. Filters
exist to convert these DVI files into printer-specific files for
a variety of printers. Also included is the file bdgtti-1.01.ps,
a PostScript version. bdgtti-1.01.txt is the plain ASCII version
of bdgtti-1.01.info, ie. the latter can be br
