5       How to Create a Document 



Once you have used NCSA Mosaic for a time, you may want to 
create your own documents and make them available to the 
Web. If you have used a markup language previously (such as 
TeX, LaTeX, or troff) you will make the transition to the HTML 
markup language readily. This chapter is a brief introduction 
to HTML and document construction. An online reference 
guide is available from the Help menu. 

HTTPthe Server

You might want to set up a Web server to give the Web com-
munity access to your information. The standard transfer 
protocol used by Web servers is called the HyperText Trans-
fer Protocol (HTTP). See System Configuration and Modifica-
tion Assistance on pageC1 for more information. (You can 
also serve HTML documents from a Gopher or anonymous 
FTP server.)

NCSA has developed server software for UNIX platforms that 
is available on the NCSA anonymous FTP server (see NCSA 
Server Addresses on pageC2). HTTP server software is cur-
rently available from other Web sources for UNIX, Macintosh, 
and Microsoft Windows platforms.

HyperText Markup Language

To create a hypermedia document for display on a Web 
server, you need to learn the HyperText Markup Language 
(HTML), which is a collection of styles that define the various 
components of a document. HTML is based on SGML (Stan-
dardized General Markup Language).

NCSA Mosaic can display ASCII text files. This is another way 
of saying that you do not have to learn HTML to have docu-
ments available on a Web server. However, if you want to 
have a document formatted when accessed by a viewer such 
as NCSA Mosaic, you must code it with HTML.

The coded file creates what you see formatted in the Docu-
ment View window. To view the coded file, select View Source 
from the File menu. In the resulting Document Source window 
(see Figure 5.1) is an HTML-coded file. (This is usually but not 
always true; you could be viewing a straight ASCII text docu-
ment.) Save your coded file with the .html extention (e.g., 
myfile.html).

Figure 5.1       Document Source Window

Some Basics

HTML-coded documents are called source files. Source files 
are in plain text format and can be created using any text edi-
tor (e.g., EMACS or vi on UNIX workstations). Several Web 
browsers (tkWWW for X Window System machines and 
CERNs Web browser for the NeXT) include rudimentary 
HTML editors in a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) 
environment, and you may want to try one of them. See Web 
Resources on pageC1 for more on HTML editors.

HTML tags consist of a left angle bracket (<), followed by 
some coding (called the directive), and closed by a right angle 
bracket (>). HTML tags are generally paired (e.g., <H1> and </
H1>. The ending tag looks just like the starting tag except a 
slash (/) precedes the directive within the brackets. For exam-
ple, <H1> tells the viewer to start formatting a top-level head-
ing, and </H1> tells the viewer that the heading is complete.

HTML tags are inserted in the source files to tell NCSA Mosaic 
(or some other Web viewer) how to interpret or display the 
coded information. For example, citation tags are defined by 
NCSA Mosaic to be displayed in italics. Each time you enclose 
a book title between <cite> and </cite> tags, NCSA Mosaic 
automatically displays the text in italics. This is known as a 
logical style, because it is configured by the viewer. Viewers 
can interpret a logical style in different ways.

Hyperlinks

The chief power of HTML comes from its ability to link 
regions of text (and also images) to another document (or an 
image, movie, or audio file). These regions are highlighted to 
indicate that they are hypertext links. To create a hyperlink, a 
special HTML code is entered that includes the URL (see The 
URL Format on page 3-4). 
At the same time, text or a graphic is designated to serve as 
the anchor (the information that is displayed in color or 
underlined and clicked on). A hyperlink may be made to a 
remote or local server.

Images

NCSA Mosaic can display images inside documents, making it 
a highly visual medium for your information. However, each 
image requires processing time, which slows down the initial 
display of the document. Using a particular image multiple 
times in a document causes very little performance degrada-
tion compared to using the image only once. 

An image is sized before it is included in a document. Images 
can fill a screen or they can be postage stampssmall 
images that save time when NCSA Mosaic displays the docu-
ment but are still large enough to present information and 
be a teaser for the larger image displayed in a separate win-
dow.

An image tag is coded into the source file to tell NCSA Mosaic 
that an image is to be displayed. The image tag is an HTML 
extension first implemented in NCSA Mosaic.

Online Help

The Beginners Guide to HTML, which explains creating and 
coding HTML files and lists common HTML codes, is located 
under On HTML... on the Help menu. Refer to this document for 
more detailed information on making hyperlinks and includ-
ing images in your documents. The Beginners Guide may be 
printed for easy reference by selecting Print... from the File 
menu.
