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Date:Mon Oct 27 16:43:42 1995 
Subject:Re: Pop and the Web 
From:Adrian Howard 
Volume-ID:951028.02 

> From: Jocelyn Paine <popx@vax.ox.ac.uk>
> Subject: Pop and the Web
>
[snip]
> I think that at the moment, I could just about deliver Eden over the Web
> by using dynamically generated GIF files - it might be necessary to
> generate clickable maps too. Together with input forms, this would allow
> students to zoom in on parts of an image, to quit the current session,
> and so on. However, it wouldn't allow the reader to (for example) wire
> up neural networks by drag-and-join, or to run an animation that sends
> new pages at regular intervals. (Actually, Netscape's Server Push
> feature will do the latter, but I think it's a bit unpredictable in
> timing.)

While you cannot do drag-and-join directly, you'll be surprised at what
you can lash together using imagemaps and forms. Looking at:

	http://www.research.digital.com/nsl/projects/life/life.html
	(an implementation of "Life")

	http://www.geom.umn.edu/apps/gallery.html
	(a "gallery of interactive geometry")

might help generate some ideas.

For animation you could always create an MPEG/QT movie dynamically and
send that.

> It occurred to me that one could define one's own viewers for new image
> file types. These might be more appropriate for some of the images
> appearing in my AI demos than the standard graphics formats.

Unfortunately, as soon as you start writing your own viewers your back
to "a lot of system-dependent GUI hacking" :-)

>(Roll on VRML.)

There are already VRML viewers for most platforms (not terribly nippy
ones in some cases --- but they're there).

>Also, these viewers might be able to run some of the interaction
> locally. However, I don't think it's possible to send HTTP requests back
> from such viewers to the server.

Both NCSA Mosaic and Netscape allow client side applications to
communicate with a HTTP server using the browser as an intermediary. For
more info see:

	http://home.netscape.com/newsref/std/index.html#client_api
	http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/adrianh/popcci/

Unfortunately none of the protocols are quite as useful as they could
be.

>Java should be able to cope with the
> latter, once it's available.

Indeed

Adrian