FCN News 24 July 97

Don't read this by e-mail! Instead, read the hypertext version of this newsletter: <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/news/current.html>. Contents:

Upcoming Events

Local events of particular interest to FCN members (see also upcoming conferences and IT Curiculum below):

Here are some of the IT Curriculum workshops of particular interest to FCN members during the next 3 weeks. For the full schedule see <http://libweb.uoregon.edu/it/>. 

Wednesday, July 30
   2:00 pm -  3:20 pm  EC    Introduction to Lexis/Nexis
   3:00 pm -  4:50 pm  IMCB  System Maintenance & Troubleshooting: Windows 95
Thursday, July 31
   1:00 pm -  2:50 pm  RSR   Intermediate Web Publishing: Debugging Tools

Seen on (and about) the Net

New in Information Technology. The Chronicle of Higher Education has introduced a new information-technology section, featuring daily stories on new technologies and academe, a newly designed data base of on-line resources, and navigational tools to assist readers in finding information-technology materials on The Chronicle's Web site, from new jobs to new software. Subscribers can visit it at <http://chronicle.com/infotech>. This week's feature looks at the use of students to create college and course web sites. The story notes problems with the approach: " How do you update a Web page, for example, that was created and maintained by a student who is now long gone?"

CAUSE and Educom to merge. The two major professional organizations devoted to computing and computing support in higher education have announced plans to merge. For information, see <http://www.cause.org/admin/neworg.html>.

Changing Face of the Web. PC Meter Vice Chairman Steve Coffey says his company's profile of Web users is really changing: The fastest growing groups of users are now those under 18 and those over 55; those over 55 spend the most time looking at each page -- primarily financial information, which is what has drawn them to the Web in the first place. The average Web user surfs barely an hour a day -- the tiny contingent that surfs seven or more hours a day accounts for a majority of overall Web usage. Entertainment sites represent 14% of online time, vs. 1% for education sites. More than 25% of users visit adult sites, 12% of those while they're at work. (TechWire 21 Jul 97; quoted from Edupage, 22 July 97)

How To: Web browser displays Russian, Greek, CJK, etc.

It's fairly easy to configure a PC web browser (Netscape 3.0 or later, or MSIE 3.0 or later) to allow it to display web pages in non-roman scripts. All you really need to do is install the proper fonts on your machine.

Fonts for Cyrillic and Greek are available as part of the standard Windows 95 distribution (though they aren't normally installed); you can install them by using the Add/Remove Programs option and under Windows Setup tab adding the Component called "Multilanguage Support". Chinese/ Japanese/Korean/Vietnamese fonts for Windows 95 are available on the Microsoft web site.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to find free fonts that work correctly on a Macintosh. Although Yamada Language Center has a large collection of public domain Mac fonts, they don't seem to be in the encoding that Netscape expects, and so don't render most non-Roman web pages correctly.

Once you've installed your fonts, you also need to tell Netscape to use them. Instructions for this (for Netscape 4.0) are available from Netscape at < http://home.netscape.com/menu/intl/>.

If you have a PC running Windows 95 or NT and read a non-Roman script, you should put in the effort to configure it to display web pages in that language. If you need assistance (the above notes are very sketchy), contact your local PC tech support person, Computing Center MicroComputer support, or JQ Johnson, <mailto:jqj@darkwing>

Conferences and Workshops, Real and Virtual

This is a selected and somewhat idiosyncratic list of upcoming conferences relevant to educational tech., both "virtual" (online) and traditional. For conferences that require physical travel, my emphasis is on conferences in the Northwest and on those I find personally interesting. The Educom and CAUSE calendars, <http://educom.edu/web/calendar/calendarHome.html> and <http://cause-www.colorado.edu/information-resources/events.html>, contain a more extensive list of mainstream conferences. Virtual conferences and tutorials:

Traditional conferences and workshops:[new!][new!]

The Lighter Side -- Software learning process (a technical joke)

High School/Jr.High 

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 END

First year in College 

program Hello(input, output)
begin
  writeln('Hello World')
end.

Senior year in College 

(defun hello
 (print
  (cons 'Hello (list 'World))))

New professional 

#include <stdio.h>
void main(void) {
char *message[] = {"Hello ", "World"};
int i;
for(i = 0; i < 2; ++i)
        printf("%s", message[i]);
printf("\n");
}

Seasoned professional 

#include <iostream.h>
#include <string.h>
 
class string
{
private:
int size;
char *ptr;
 
public:
   string() : size(0), ptr(new char('\0')) {}
 
string(const string &s) : size(s.size) {
    ptr = new char[size + 1];
    strcpy(ptr, s.ptr);
}
 
~string() {
    delete [] ptr;
}
 
friend ostream &operator <<(ostream &, const string &);
string &operator=(const char *);
};
 
ostream &operator<<(ostream &stream, const string &s) {
return(stream << s.ptr);
}
 
string &string::operator=(const char *chrs) {
if (this != &chrs) {
    delete [] ptr;
    size = strlen(chrs);
    ptr = new char[size + 1];
    strcpy(ptr, chrs);
}
return(*this);
}
 
int main() {
string str;
 
str = "Hello World";
cout << str << endl;
 
return(0);
}

Apprentice Hacker 

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
$msg="Hello, world.\n";
if ($#ARGV = 0) {
while(defined($arg=shift(@ARGV))) {
   $outfilename = $arg;
   open(FILE, "" . $outfilename) || die "Can't write $arg:
      $!\n";
   print (FILE $msg);
   close(FILE) || die "Can't close $arg: $!\n";
}
} else {
   print ($msg);
}
1;

Experienced Hacker 

#include <stdio.h>
#define S "Hello, World\n"
main(){exit(printf(S) == strlen(S) ? 0 : 1);}

Seasoned Hacker 

% cc -o a.out ~/src/misc/hw/hw.c
% a.out

Guru Hacker 

% cat
Hello, world.
^D

New Manager 

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 END

Middle Manager 

mail -s "Hello, world." bob@b12
Bob, could you please write me a program that prints "Hello,
     world."?
 
I need it by tomorrow.
^D

Senior Manager 

% pine jim
I need a "Hello, world." program by this afternoon.
^X

Chief Executive 

% letter
letter: Command not found.
% mail
To: ^X ^F ^C
% help mail
help: Command not found.
% damn!
!: Event unrecognized
% logout

Administrativa

The UO Faculty Consultants Network Newsletter is published (approximately) twice a month. If you have materials for inclusion in the newsletter you can send them to <mailto:jqj@darkwing>. This newsletter (as well as other FCN-related material) is available on line in <http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~jqj/fcn/news/>.