Using a Macintosh computer, any printable page can now can be served up on the World Wide Web electronically. The whole process is electronic. No paper or scanners are used. This means any spreadsheet, any gray scale image, or any text document can be made accessible to a very large audience in a matter of minutes. A document with very complicated formatting can be viewed on the Web the way it was intended to look. Converting each page into a binary graphic bypasses the need to rely on HTML coding to do page formatting.
This imaging process required a Macintosh running System 7.1, the LaserWriter 8 printer driver, GIFConverter 2.3.7, WordPerfect 3.0 for the Mac, and whatever software package created the document. There are three main steps involved. The end result is an image in GIF format which looks identical to a hard copy of the same document.
The first step gets a document from whatever application is being used to an Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) format. With the LaserWriter 8 printer driver selected through the Macintosh Chooser, select a page of the document to print. Instead of sending it to the printer, select File as the destination and then Save. When this is done, the following window appears. As indicated, select the EPS Mac Standard Preview format, name the file and then save.
This creates an EPS file which WordPerfect 3.0 for the Mac can read.
Step two takes the file from EPS format to a PICT format. Once the EPS file is opened using WordPerfect, double click on the image to get to the graphics editor in WordPerfect. From the graphics editor, simply select Save Graphic As from the File menu. As shown below, choose PICT as the output format and save.
The final step converts the Mac PICT file into a binary GIF format using GIFConverter. Open the PICT file using GIFConverter (current version is 2.3.7). Simply select Save As from the File menu and select GIF as the output format. Give it the appropriate name and save.
You now have a full page document in binary format. The image looks identical in every way to the printed version. Clearly, this image can be read and processed by Web client software such as Mosaic. The implications of this accomplishment seem significant. Database reports, spreadsheets, and text documents all suddenly have a much larger audience than the author originally thought possible. Additionally, any formatting done within the application which created the document will not have to be duplicated using HTML coding. This is extremely convenient for documents with complicated layouts that HTML is just not sophisticated enough to handle at this point.
These techniques were the end result of some discussions between myself and the assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs at the University of Texas System Administration in November 1993. It was decided that there was a need to put a 144-page book of reports into an electronic format. This document, published annually, contains many faculty and student demographic tables, financial and investment reports, and research expenditure information. I have the sole responsibility for putting this book together and publishing it. Finding a way to make an electronic version available shortly after hard copy publication was crucial. At the time, I had no access to a scanner and no additional personnel resources to pull from. Using the above described method, I was able to simultaneously publish each page on paper and electronically after the data and formats were finalized.
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Steve Rung: srung@utsystem.edu