Technologies used for the Antarctica exhibit
Astute viewers of the Antarctica exhibit will note that the HTML
version is copywritten by the University of Michigan, not by myself.
The reason for this is that I've used a lot of University of Michigan
equipment to create the HTML presentation.
Clients and servers
At the most basic level, I've been using a Sun SPARCstation 10 for
the SILS HTTP server, which serves the exhibit's information to the
Internet. We're using NCSA's httpd server, currently
at version 1.0.
To test and view the exhibit, I've used Mosaic 2.1 for
X, and Mosaic 1.0.1 for the Macintosh.
Authoring
HTML authoring has been done primarily on the SPARCstation, using
the Motif-based ted editor from North Carolina State
University. Remote authoring was done using vi or
pico (from the University of Washington), or locally on
my Powerbook using TeachText.
I don't feel a personal need for fancy HTML editors or style sheets.
Then again, I also insisted on manual transmission when buying my
car...
Imaging and scanning
Much of the existing material in the Antarctica exhibit was taken
(with permission) from the Orient Lines brochures. I used the SILS
Media Integration lab to scan and OCR the text and some of the
images.
The scanning system consisted of a Quadra 840AV and an HP DeskScan
IIc scanner. Images were scanned using the HP DeskScan software, and
all text was scanned and OCRed using Omnipage
Professional.
During my trip, I plan to use my Powerbook to make journal entries
(to avoid transcription). I use FrameMaker for all of
my text editing on the Powerbook. I'll also have an Olympus mini
tape recorder for recording audio clips.
I'll be taking photos using a basic 35mm camera, and I'll have the
film processed to Kodak PhotoCD when I return. I'll then be able to
use the digital PhotoCD images for addition to the exhibit.
(Examples of this use of PhotoCD images can be seen in the test photos
I took of my hometown, Lapee
r, Michigan.) The SPARCstation's CD-ROM drive mounts the PhotoCD
as a High Sierra filesystem, and I use Hadmut Danisch's
hpcdtoppm utility to extract the images from the
PhotoCD files.
Image manipulation
To put the images into reasonable formats, perform cropping, scaling,
and gamma correction operations, I've used the PBM Plus
toolkit, the Utah Raster Toolkit, and the Independent
JPEG Group's cjpeg and djpeg utilities, in
addition to Hadmut Danisch's hpcdtoppm utility
mentioned above. All of these tools run on the SPARCstation. I use
John Bradley's xv for most of my viewing needs.
Internet resource discovery
To create the Internet resource guide, I used the Archie
and Veronica Internet services. While professional
Internet resource discovery also involves sending e-mail and USENET
queries, I haven't had the time to carry out that stage of things
yet. I also used the University of Michigan's Project DIRECT
services (specifically the preprelease ClariView
product) for gathering Antarctica-related information from ClariNet
newsfeeds, but due to licensing restrictions I can't make any of that
information available on the Internet.
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