WELCOME TO REC.ARTS.COMICS (part 5 of 10: Internet Resources General Information)
written by lots of different people
edited by Paul A. Estin 1990-1993
Tom Galloway 1993-present
[last update: 2/28/95]
Contents of this post:
Please do not email the r.a.c. FAQ maintainer with questions about how to FTP, gopher, or use the Web. I don't know how your system is set up. The appropriate person to ask these questions of is your local system administrator. The information here is intended to be a brief introduction to these Internet access methods.
The following parts of the Welcome messages contain information about various
comics resources on the net. Their locations are specified by what are called
URLs, which stands for Uniform Resource Locators. They look like the
following:
gopher://gopher.internet.com/msdos/text/manual1
ftp://ftp.sun.com:1100/pub/games/trek
http://info.cern.ch:80/start.html
The first part, before the :, specifies the access method, e.g. a gopher, ftp, or hypertext document (http, used with WWW or the Worldwide Web). Following the colon are two slashes, and then the name of the machine the resource is located on (the :1100 and :80 indicate specific ports on the machine). This is followed by a slash, then either a file name or any number of directories, separated by slashes.
So, for example, the first URL indicates the access method is gopher, the machine being connected to is named gopher.internet.com, the top level directory is named msdos, its subdirectory is named text, and the specific file or directory is named manual1.
A special case of a URL is one such as:
mailto:tyg@hq.ileaf.com
Here, the method "mailto" indicates email, and the : is followed by the
address the email goes to. This is used in the Welcome messages both for
convenience, and because the messages are automatically converted into a
hypertext form where a user viewing them via a WWW browser will be able to
click on the URL to send mail.
2) How to do Usenet/FTP/Gopher/WWW by email
Many people may not have access to FTP, Gopher, or WWW since they require a high degree of net connectivity. However, it is possible to access files normally obtained using these methods by using email. Bob Rankin has written a very useful summary of how to do this. To get a copy, do any of the following:
mailto:listserv@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu
Leave Subject: blank, and enter only this line in the body of the note:
GET INTERNET BY-EMAIL NETTRAIN F=MAIL
mailto:mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu
Leave Subject blank, and enter only this line in the body of the note:
send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email
mailto:mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk (for UK/Europe/etc.) Leave Subject blank, and enter only this line in the body of the note: send lis-iis e-access-inet.txt
It is also available via FTP at the following sites: ftp://ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu/NETTRAIN/INTERNET.BY-EMAIL ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email ftp://mailbase.ac.uk/pub/lists/lis-iis/files/e-access-inet.txt
For WWW files, another document about how to retrieve them by email is available by sending mail to listserv@mail.w3.org with a message body consisting only of "WWW" (do not include the quotation marks).
Many resources are available at different sites on the net via a mechanism called FTP (for File Transfer Protocol). Essentially, FTP allows you to connect to a machine located elsewhere, and request that it send you a copy of a file stored there. If you have an account on the remote machine, your access to that machine's files is as complete as it would be if you were logged in there. If you do not have an account, you will be using what is called "anonymous ftp", and your access will be limited to those files which have been made available for general, open, access.
If your system is fully on the Internet, use your local help command to get information about how to use FTP (the actual FTP command is probably ftp, in all lower case) to access the files listed in the Welcome posts. If your system is not fully on the Internet, it is still possible to perform FTP operations via email. See the above on how to learn how to do this.
Gopher is another utility for getting files from remote sites. It's a bit more transparent to use than FTP, and makes it a easier to move from one directory to another as well as to explore a tree of subdirectories. Gopher is essentially a souped up FTP with descriptive information about directories and files available, and a better user interface. If your system has gopher, use your local help facility to find out how to use it (the command is usually "gopher"). If not, see the above on how to perform gopher operations by email.
The World Wide Web (WWW) project started by CERN seeks to build a world wide distributed hypermedia system. With hypermedia, it's possible to "click on" an object to traverse a link to where more information about that object is located.
To access the Web, you need a browser program. The browser can read hypertext documents and can access documents from other sources by traversing links and accessing files by ftp, (Usenet) news, gopher, and other methods. By selecting an object with a link, you can view text and, depending on your browser, possibly related sounds and images as well. Clickable objects are usually underlined, or a different color of text, or cause the brower mouse cursor to change shape when over them.
The URLs mentioned above are derived from the WWW, but have quickly fallen into common use as a consistant way of indicating the address of a resource and the method that can be used to access it.
There are a number of different browsers available, such as Mosaic, Netscape, lynx, and others. Most browsers, except lynx, allow you to view images, hear sounds, etc. However, these requires a fairly major Internet connection. If on a dialup connection or account, lynx is a browser which works with the text components of the web; no images are viewable with this.
In general, you should ask your local sysadmin about what WWW browser(s) your site has, and where to get more information about how to use them. However, the basics of using the non-lynx browsers are simple enough to include here. In general, you want to find a button or menu entry that is something like "Open URL". This will prompt you to enter a specific URL, which will be where you will then connect to. Pretty much all browsers allow you to add the current document's URL to a "hotlist" or "bookmark" file which can be displayed by the browser. You then only have to click on the descriptive name of the document to move to it, rather than having to type in its URL.
For lynx, just type the command lynx, followed by the URL you want to connect to.
If you need more help, look for the correct newsgroup in the hierarchy
comp.infosystems.www
IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. It allows large numbers of users to talk to each other in real time, much like the Unix talk command or the VMS phone command. IRC consists of a large number of channels, and users can join the channel (or channels) that they are interested in and talk to other people on that channel. See the IRC entry in part 8 for comics oriented channels.
The best way to get on IRC is to get a program called an IRC client, which will handle all of the details of connecting you to an IRC server. Check with other people at your site to see if anyone else already has an IRC client, or obtain the source code via anonymous ftp from cs-ftp.bu.edu in the directory /irc/clients. Or just try typing "irc" at your command prompt. You can also use the telnet server by typing "telnet tiger.itc.univie.ac.at 6668" at the command prompt; however, please do not use the telnet server unless it is impossible for you to run a client. Its resources are very limited. Please do not mail the FAQ maintainer to ask about how to hook up your system to IRC; ask your local site administrator.
The anonymous ftp site cs-ftp.bu.edu has a lot of information about IRC, as well as clients for almost every different operating system. You might also want the following files: /irc/support/alt-irc-faq Much more extensive information about IRC and how to use it. /irc/support/servers.* The complete list of publically accessible IRC servers.
IRC is very extensive and a complete description of all the commands is beyond the scope of this FAQ. Use the IRC command /help or read the alt.irc FAQ (see above). All new users of IRC should type /help newuser to get the new user information. Briefly, all commands in IRC begin with a slash (/). Anything you type that doesn't begin with a slash is sent to your current channel so that other users can read it. The command /join <channel> where <channel> is the channel name joins that channel. The command /quit will exit from IRC. Another important command is /ignore, which will allow you to ignore messages from annoying people (much like a Usenet killfile). Type /help ignore to get more information.
If you have questions, just /join #comics and ask someone. Most people
will be glad to help. One other note: you will hear about "ops" or
"channel ops" a lot on IRC. A person who has "ops" on a channel has
control over the way the channel functions. On #comics, we have found that
ops is too often abused to be useful, so we usually make sure no one on
#comics has ops.
A MUSH is a multi-user online game, a variety of tinymud, which is a particular type of mud. The emphasis on MUSHes is roleplaying and building, over combat. There are several comics oriented MUSHes where people roleplay as comics characters which are listed in the following parts of the Welcome messages.
[end of part 5]
This Welcome Message/FAQ is Copyright 1991-5 by Tom Galloway,
and is made available as a service to the Internet community.
It may not be sold in any medium, including electronic, CD-ROM, or
database, packaged with any commercial product, or published
in print, without the explicit, written, permission of Tom Galloway.
"There are no net.gods, just some people with bigger mouths than others."