WWW-based Engineering Notebook Components

Since the display, storage and client/server software for displaying engineering notebook entries are already widely available in both commercial and free software systems, the creation of a WWW-based engineer's notebook system required ``only'' the creation of an authoring system by which engineers could easily publish their notebook entries on the World Wide Web. WWWeasel does exactly that, providing both the ability to let engineers type text into documents, create/preview/insert media into those documents, and preview/insert links to other engineer's documents and media. WWWeasel helps integrate the server, client and authoring system by calling out to both the client and server parts of the system when their services are needed.

Thus, the system we propose for use in this electronic engineering notebook system consists of the following three components:

• The WWWeasel HTML multimedia authoring environment - this allows engineers to create the text and media associated with each engineering notebook entry. It also contains tools to help browse/view media and documents on one's own server, as well as browse/view/copy/link to documents and media on other engineer's servers, as well as any other accessible World Wide Web server.
• A personal or group HTTP server used to store and serve up hypermedia documents authored by one or more project engineers working in close collaboration. Whether the individual, the work group, or some other organizational entity provides the HTTP server is a decision often best left unspecified - rather than dictate the network policy and setup required to run WWWeasel, we defer to the culture of the company and the system administration personnel to decide how to deploy internal/external web servers. Individuals wanting to use WWWeasel without having to bother their network administrators may easily install the Apache HTTP Server on their own workstation, along-side installing WWWeasel.
• A WWW browser used to view hypermedia engineering notebook entries, as well as other documents available on the Web. WWWeasel comes with NCSA's Mosaic browser because that browser is available under a ``non-commercial'' use license that is suitable for distribution with demo, research or ``non-commercial use'' versions of WWWeasel. For ``professional'' use, however, we recommend that the Netscape browser be used and that a license to use the browser is procured from Netscape Communications Corporation.

One of the advantages of having a personal Web server for each author/engineer using WWWeasel (such as the Apache solution mentioned above) is that each individual may more easily control the accessibility of documents being published, typically using host-based authentication. This should be a reasonable solution for protecting engineering notebook data from inappropriate distribution on the internet.

Note that whichever document server technique is used, the only special capability that WWWeasel requires is the ability to write documents and media into a given filesystem and directory location where the HTTP server stores its documents and media. If a group server is used, an NFS-mounted file-system allows WWWeasel to edit engineering notebook entries on the HTTPD server. If a server such as Apache is used either on one's own personal workstation, or on some other server machine with an automounting YP-user based NFS filesystem, then each user's home directory may contain a directory ``public_html'' in which HTML documents may be placed. So if the engineer saves a file named ``<documentname>.html'', it may be referenced by others at the WWW location ``http://<host>.<org>.<domain>/~<username>/<documentname>.html''. E-mail notification to the appropriate ``workgroup'' or a separate ``what's new'' WWW page allows this internet location and to be found out by others.

We see the work to date on WWWeasel as being an enabling foundation for doing electronic engineering notebooks and multimedia collaboration over the Web. The authoring, media capturing, and media handling provided by WWWeasel are a necessary part of any multimedia notebook, however a number of improvements and extensions present themselves for ``future work.'' Some of the following components may have significant impact in increasing the success of using WWWeasel and the WWW for engineering notebooks:

• The ability to allow documents (and accompanying media) that have been authored in WWWeasel to be securely uploaded to a remote Web server, preferably using EIT/Terisa's S-HTTP protocol.
• Using S-HTTP authentication techniques, simplify and make secure the access-control of documents over the web, both for reading documents on the Web server, as well as documents being uploaded to a remote server.
• Adapt a document/media/revision control system to enable wide-area concurrent collaborative editing of the same pieces of hypermedia.