From rinehuls@access.digex.net Tue Dec 31 18:29:03 1996 Received: from access2.digex.net (qlrhmEbBUV1EY@access2.digex.net [205.197.245.193]) by dkuug.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id SAA02145 for ; Tue, 31 Dec 1996 18:28:58 +0100 Received: from localhost (rinehuls@localhost) by access2.digex.net (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id MAA28256 for ; Tue, 31 Dec 1996 12:28:53 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 31 Dec 1996 12:28:53 -0500 (EST) From: "william c. rinehuls" To: sc22docs@dkuug.dk Subject: SC22 N2370 - Guidelines on Creation/Maintenance of Web Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII __________________beginning of title page ___________________________ ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces Secretariat: U.S.A. (ANSI) ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 N2370 January 1997 TITLE: Guidelines on the Creation and Maintenance of Web Servers and Pages SOURCE: Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 WORK ITEM: N/A STATUS: Since the time period for response to this document does not permit SC22 to develop SC22 comments, SC22 Member Bodies are requested to provide general comments through their National Bodies. Specific comments related to SC22 should be forwarded to Mr. Robert Follett, JTC 1/SC22 Chairman, for his use when this document is discussed at the next meeting of the JTC 1 Ad Hoc on Implementation of IT in February 1997. CROSS REFERENCE: SC22 N2365 DOCUMENT TYPE: N/A ACTION: To SC22 Member Bodies, WG Conveners and HODs for information or action, as appropriate. Address reply to: ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22 Secretariat William C. Rinehuls 8457 Rushing Creek Court Springfield, VA 22153 USA Tel: +1 (703) 912-9680 Fax: +1 (703) 912-2973 email: rinehuls@access.digex.net _________________end of title page; beginning of text __________________ ISO/IEC JTC 1 Information Technology ISO/IEC JTC 1 N 4243 DATE: 1996.11.27 REPLACES DOC TYPE: Other document TITLE: Guidelines on the Creation and Maintenance of Web Servers and Pages SOURCE: Document Editor PROJECT: STATUS: This document is circulated to JTC 1 National Bodies for review and consideration at the December 1996 JTC 1 Plenary meeting in Paris. ACTION ID: ACT DUE DATE: 1996.12.13 DISTRIBUTION: P and L Members MEDIUM: E DISKETTE NO.: NO. OF PAGES: 7 Secretariat, ISO/IEC JTC 1, American National Standards Institute, 11 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036; Telephone: 1 212 642 4932; Facsimile: 1 212 398 0023; Email: lrajchel@ansi.org ITSCG AWG 3 N14 (Rev. 2) August 1996 Originator: JTC 1 and ITSCG AWG 3 task group (These guidelines are being developed jointly by ISO/IEC JTC 1 and the ITSCG.) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Guidelines on the creation and maintenance of Web servers and pages Draft version 4.0 (1996-08-21) 1. INTRODUCTION The 'WEB Industry' and its application is moving at a rapid pace. The WEB is already serving the needs of many standards organizations (SDOs). Within the ISO, WEB pages are already up and running. The WEB also facilitates communication between different standards bodies as we move into new areas of work such as the Global Information Infrastructure (GII). It is clear that ISO and its committees, such as JTC1, needs to move fairly quickly in terms of guidance on the use of the WWW within its organization in order to gain maximum benefit in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, and importantly to help portray to the standards community (and public) a high level of consistency and quality of information content. A key advantage of the WEB and associated browsing tools is that it is relatively easy to access and use, and provides a great deal of flexibility in the way the information is presented and organized. In many respects the WEB is an 'art form' and the page reflects the owners artistic characteristics in for example the use of graphics and links to other WEB sites. However, in a structured organization such as the ISO with its layers of Technical Committees (TCs), Sub Committees (SCs), and Working Groups (WGs), some commonality in how the WEB is used and linked would be desireable. However, at the same time any guidelines to ensure commonality should not be too restrictive on individuality. WEB pages may be configured to provide public access to all or part of the information content. In the standards domain we can envisage structuring the information into 'public' and 'restricted' components. The public component can be used to provide general background information, and in many case serve to support the public relations aspects of the organization. The restricted component can be reserved for access by those involved in the standards development process, (using an appropriate security access system) but it also can include access by subscription to published standards. These are important considerations in terms of the sale of standards as a source of revenue. These guidelines follow the ISO Policy concerning the distribution of ISO documents electronically for the preparation of standards. The timeliness of standards is becoming a key 'quality' aspect, and in this respect WEB pages must be kept upto date both with respect to the public and restricted components. In addition, WEB page addresses (i.e. Uniform Resource Location (URL)) must be stable to assure continuity of links between different pages. Maintenance of pages with respect to both timeliness of information and link stability is therefore an important consideration. The ease in which different formats can be accommodated is also a key aspect. At the standards development phase many different formats must be accommodated. As the document reaches completion we are likely to see increasing use of Standard Generalised Markup Language (SGML) and HyperText Markup Language (HTML). This is part of the transition scenario. Although a number of page browsing software packages are available the Industry is tending towards selection of a small number of these and this is not likely to become an issue for the ISO. Although other means of storing and accessing information are and will be used e.g.. FTP servers, the WEB page should be configured to access these information sources ie the WEB Page will be the gateway to databases! 2. OBJECTIVES The objective is to provide guidance to the ISO Standards Community on the creation of 'quality' WEB servers and pages taking into account the need to: - 1. Provide a balance between the consistent presentation of information on the one hand and enabling flexibility in page format to page creators on the other hand. 2. Take into account the ISO Policy on distribution of ISO Documents electronically, and aspects such as privacy. 3. Ensure the stability and maintenance of appropriate links between servers. 4. Maintain security on certain levels of documents. 5. Ensure a consistent level of WEB Page quality, given that the WEB will provide to the public a window on ISO, its committees such as JTC1 and its activities. 6. Address International and National Committees. 3. SUMMARY OF ISO POLICY ON ELECTRONIC DISTRIBUTION The current ISO policy concerning the distribution of documents is being drafted. 4. SECURITY In order to comply with the ISO policy as described in section 3 above, we provide some basic guidelines here on the security mechanisms used in Web servers. The policy requires that certain documents shall not be made available publicly, but shall be protected via passwords. In order to comply with the policy, the Basic security scheme that is provided with most Web server software can be used. At this time of writing (1996-04-17), the W3C has not yet produced a standard security protocol. Therefore the Basic scheme can be recommended as the de-facto security protocol. It should be noted that the Basic scheme, although satisfactory for most purposes, does not provide the best level of protection. There are other security protocols in use today such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Secure-HyperText Transfer Protocol (S-HTTP). SSL was specified by Netscape and is available in their browsers. As the Netscape Navigator is widely deployed, SSL is an alternative, more secure scheme to the Basic scheme. However, it should be noted that not all browsers comply with SSL. Any use of SSL protection will have consequences for users of non-SSL compliant browsers. The same comment can be applied to the use of other security protocols such as S-HTTP. 5. GENERAL PAGE STRUCTURE Structuring a WEB page is analagous to writing a book, in which although there are an infinite number of ways of presenting the bulk of the material, certain basics such as the title, list of contents, introduction, etc. are laid out in a fairly consistent fashion. These guidelines focus on the 'consistent' aspects. * 5.1 Top page This page should contain the title, a brief description of the page and a list of topics or contents. This list will enable the reader to go directly to that section of the page, e.g. o Administrative aspects o Draft Documents, Standards, etc. o Links to related organizations o News items o Contact person o etc. Appendix B contains a sample prototype page * 5.2 Use of Graphics The use of graphics is encouraged as this generally facilitates transfer of information to the reader on committee structures, relationships, etc. However, the performance of the Internet, i.e. speed of access is very much dependent on the amount of graphical information on the page. There are options which can be implemented to speed up access in the presence of graphics. Page creation can either decrease the number of graphics used on a page or offer text only pages with graphics on a separate page(s). The reader can then use the browser option which turns off graphic viewing capability. Alternatively a thumbnail schematic (including the size of the full image file) can be provided with an option to access the full-size schematic - time permitting. * 5.3 Links The use of links from one document to another is the basis on how the Web is formed. For the purpose of user-friendliness, documents that lead to a "deadend" should be avoided. Since an hierarchy already exists in our standards development process (TC, SC, WG), a minimal Web structure can already be specified. The following hyperlinks are required for each home page. 1. On the top level (ISO Web) home page This page shall provide the hyperlinks to technical committees, subcommittees, and working groups. 2. On the TC home page This page shall contain hyperlinks to the home pages of its SCs and WGs and to the top level home page. 3. On the SC home page This page shall contain hyperlinks to the home pages of its WGs, to the TC home page if one exists, and to the ISO Web home page. 4. On the WG home page This page shall contain hyperlinks to the SC home page if one exists, to the TC home page if one exists, and to the ISO Web home page. Similarly, National Committees should be linked to the National Body/Secretariat Page. The actual presentation is left to the author of the pages. Please see a prototype page, http://www.iso.ch:8080/. It is recommended that links are provided at the top of the page to move up in the hierarchy. 6. CHOICE OF LINKS EXTERNAL TO ISO Given the increasing use of the WEB by other International and Regional standards organizations, e.g. ITU, ETSI, and forums/consortia, and the need to facilitate communication between these organizations, it is recommended that the opportunity is taken of providing links with these other 'home pages' as appropriate. For example, this would be particularly appropriate in those cases where a liaison with another standards body, forum or consortia is in place. However, it is recommended that where such links are provided, text is provided to make the user aware that the link will access a site outside of the ISO system. 7. INPUT AND ACCESS OF INFORMATION * 7.1 Input formats The documents made available on a TC/SC/WG site should conform to the ITSCG/JTC 1 guidelines (Ref. ----) on electronic document distribution which specifies acceptable formats, encodings, and compression software. The use of other formats are acceptable as long as viewers for these formats are easily available to public. An example of an alternate format is SGML/Panorama as used by JTC 1 SC 18 WG 8. All HTML pages on a server should use the latest approved version of HTML. The use of browser-specific extensions should be avoided. The use of extensions, although quite appealing when viewed using a specific browser, may cause problems in other browsers. If browser-specific extensions must be used, then alternative pages should be supplied that conform to the approved version of HTML. * 7.2 Search and Indexing A site may want to provide a search function. There are many search engines and the recommendation of a single search engine that can run on many different platforms is not within the scope of these guidelines. In general commercial search engines (Verity, OpenText, etc.) provide better performance, support, and functionality. However, for those sites on more limited budgets, mention should be made of public domain software including WAIS and Harvest. Examples of the use of WAIS can be found at ANSI and ISO/CS. A good example of the use of the distributed Harvest indexing mechanism can be found at the National Research Council of Canada (http://www.nrc.ca/). 8. MAINTENANCE * 8.1 URL maintenance The maintenance of URLs (Uniform Resource Location) is a well-recognized problem. Basically the cause of the problem is the prevailing use of URLs as a "location" as well as a "name". If a link is "hard-coded" to a particular site and if all documents were moved to a different server site, the links to the documents on the original server site will die. Note that simply renaming a filename has the effect of "moving" a document, hence causing all links to the document to be broken. There are a number of proposed solutions. If the maintainer of the Web pages have access to the Web server configuration files, it is possible to provide a new location header that will redirect a browser to the new location. This only avoids the problem, however, as the links to the old site still remain. At this time it is recommended that if links need to be made to other sites, then the links should be made to stable pages. These are pages that are required to exist on a TC, SC, or WG site. A stable page may change content on a regular basis (such as a "latest news" type of page), but it is "stable" in that it has been agreed that such a page should always be available at a particular site. One can then be assured that the link to the page will remain relatively stable. A volatile page or document is not required to exist on a site. The document may be removed or moved on short notice. If a link needs to be made to a volatile page or document on another site, then the administrator who is making the link should contact the administrator of the volatile page so that in the future if the page is moved or removed, the creators of links to the page can be notified. In the case when a stable page is moved or removed (for example, the whole site may be moved to another server), the e-mail mailing list for all server administrators, isowww@isodoc.iso.ch, is provided so that anyone who made a link to the page can be notified on the changes. Examples of stable pages for a TC, SC, or WG site can be defined as the following: o the home page o documents register o meeting calendar o contacts or address page o work programme o index page of protected documents o ... To further reduce the possibility of broken links, it is recommended that "link-verifier" software be run occasionally on your site to check for broken links. If a broken link to a remote site is found, the server administrator of that site should be notified immediately. Hopefully in the near future, the problem of maintaining robust links will be solved by the use of URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), a specification that is currently being developed within the IETF. * 8.2 Mirroring Originally mirroring was and still is a technique to maintain copies of the contents of an FTP server at another FTP site. The usual justification for maintaining these additional sites is to optimize the use of network resources. Another advantage is that the additional sites provide a backup in case the original site is temporarily unavailable. Finally it is also possible for one site to mirror many servers, providing a central source of data. That site could then be easily mirrored to other sites, hence distributing the data. Similiar justifications can be applied for HTTP (web) servers. Mirroring a Web site, however, is more of a challenge than mirroring an FTP site due to the use of hyperlinks in documents. The original server administrator must take care of whether or not URLs contain complete server addresses. URLs without server addresses (relative URLs) are quite often used as a shorthand by server administrators to reference documents that are contained on their own server. If a page containing relative URLs is mirrored, then all the pages that are referenced by the relative URLs must also be mirrored. In addition the "directory" structure must be carefully matched. Other difficulties occur in mirroring a Web site. For example, it is not possible to easily mirror authentication, hence only public pages can be mirrored. CGI-scripts and special configurations such as server-side includes are also nearly impossible to mirror. If a server administrator wishes to mirror another Web site, it is recommended that sites should mirror a directory tree. The original site administrator should use relative URLs only for documents in the directory. Any references to documents outside the directory tree should use absolute URLs. URLs that call CGI scripts or point to protect pages should always use absolute URLs. 9. REGISTRATION OF SERVERS All servers are required to be registered both with the ISO Central Secretariat and with National Bodies at the national level in order to properly identify a site that truly represents the work of the committee. This can be done by contacting the Committee Web Sites Administrator (and National Body) at ... [will most likely provide a Web form and e-mail address] After a site is properly identified and registered, a link will be provided on the TC/SC/WG home page. The mailing list of server administrators will be updated. An announcement shall be made on the server administrators mailing list. At this point, other sites are free to make links to the new site. APPENDIX A- SAMPLE WEB PAGES Examples of Web pages following the general page structure are available from JTC 1 SC 22. Examples of mirrored pages from JTC 1 SC 24 are available at http://www.iso.ch:8080/jtc1/sc24/. The original source of the mirrored pages is http://www.cwi.nl/JTC1SC24/. ________________________-end of document SC22 N2370 ____________________