Cohousing-L Mailing List: New resource! Cohousing WWW documents and email access to them

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

Executive overview of this announcement:
----------------------------------------

* Cohousing web pages are now available - summary of attractions.
* What web browser to use.
* What to do if you only have email (skim the first two sections)


Cohousing web pages are now available.
--------------------------------------

I have put together some pages about cohousing for the benefit of the web 
and other cohousers.

For the initiated: 
the URL is http://everest.cs.ucdavis.edu/~stanifor/cohousing.html

There is some introductory information aimed at the casual web-surfer.  The 
good stuff is things like Rob Sandelin's resource guide (which I highly 
recommend, especially for groups in the forming stages), a Master's thesis 
by Donna Spreitzer about Cohousing, etc.

The pages aren't perfect, and I mean to improve them over time, but I think 
they're good enough to be pretty useful to folks.

What web browser to use.
------------------------

If you have an account on a machine on the internet, you should be able to 
get access to the World Wide Web, and it would be worth your while to do so, 
even if you don't want to look at cohousing info.

If the machine on your desk is directly connected to the internet or has a 
SLIP or PPP connection, find out if you have Mosaic on your system.  If you 
don't, get it or persuade your system administrator to get it by ftp from 
ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu .  There are versions for the Mac, MS-Windows, and 
X-Windows.

If you dialup over a modem to a machine which is on the internet (a 
university account or such like), see if the machine you log into has Lynx 
(type lynx, or try 'man lynx' etc).  If it isn't there, get it or ask your 
system administrator to get it from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu.  It's a text mode 
browser which is quite usable, though not as sexy as graphical browsers such 
as Mosaic.  You use the 'g' command to specify a URL such as the one given 
above, and then arrow keys to navigate around. 

I'm not sure if aol, delphi, etc, support Mosaic or not (if they don't, bug 
them till they do, because they ought to).

What to do if you only have email
---------------------------------

If you are just barely on the internet and all you can do is email, or if 
you just don't feel like dealing with all this new-fangled stuff, don't 
despair!  I have written a quick program to make my cohousing pages 
available by email.  It's a little crude but it works just fine.  (If it 
doesn't work for you, contact me).

Here's the help file for you guys:


The Email Server
================
   I maintain an email server for these web pages.  This page is a guide to
help those who are not web-enabled to use this service.


What is the World Wide Web?
===========================
   It is a world-wide system of linked documents on the internet.  Each
document contains text, possibly graphics, and links to other documents.
The links take the form of words in the document which are highlighted.
People normally access the web using graphical browsers such as Mosaic or
OmniWeb, or text browsers such as Lynx.  The browser displays the text, and
clicking with the mouse on a link causes the browser to automatically load
the document pointed to.  This is the the cause of the excitement.  With a 
few clicks of the mouse you can be reading something almost anywhere in 
the world on a huge range of topics. The Web is growing exponentially - many
organizations and individuals on the internet are creating documents to
describe themselves or provide information.


Why do you care?
================
   Readers of the list cohousing-l may be interested that I have put
together a variety of useful resources about cohousing in the form of Web
pages.  Included, for example, are Rob Sandelin's Cohousing Resource Guide
(available for the first time in a convenient form on the internet), and
Donna Spreitzer's Master's Thesis on Cohousing, together with other
documents of interest.  The long texts have been broken up into smaller
linked documents suitable for browsing or email access.


How do I access this stuff by email
===================================
   For those of you unlucky enough not to have a Web browser (and get
access to one if you can!)  I have put together a simple program to provide
them to you by email.  You access the program by sending mail to 
coho-request [at] helvellyn.cs.ucdavis.edu.  Don't mispell it or miss bits out!
Commands to the program are given on the subject line or in the body of the
message (it doesn't matter which). The program understands two commands:


help

   and

get file1 file2 ...

   The first command (help) returns this file.  The second command returns
a list of named files.
   What the program does is to go through the raw web document and strip
out all the strange formatting codes and make the message human readable.
It also numbers all the links it finds as [1], [2], and so on.  It makes a
list of the files these links point to at the end of the document.  It then
emails the result to you.  You can then request any of the linked files
which interest you in a subsequent message to the server.


Try it!
======
   Start by sending a message with subject "get cohousing" to the server
(coho-request [at] helvellyn.cs.ucdavis.edu)
   If you have difficulties or comments, criticism or praise (especially
the last!)  let me know, and I'll do my best to help out.  I'm
stanifor [at] cs.ucdavis.edu.  Mail to me gets read by a human.  Mail to coho-
request will never be seen by a human.  Malformed requests to it will be
returned or ignored at the whim of the program.
   If you want me to fix a bug, please include the message you sent which
had the problem and the reply you received (if you got one).

Notes - ignore on first reading
==============================
   The server prepends a 'get' to the filenames at the end so you can
conveniently cut and paste them without forgetting to put a get in there.
   All transactions are logged so I know if the service is being used, and
which pages are interesting.  No-one but me will ever see these logs.
   This service has no formal relation to the cohousing-l mailing list.
Fred did give me quite a bit of help and advice though.

 Stuart Staniford-Chen[1] 10/5/94





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