About this web site

It used to be traditional in journalism to tell would-be reporters to stick to the five 'W's in their reporting: What, Where, When, Why, and Who - though not necessarily in that order! It's still a very good way to get down to the facts quickly, but we'll extend it by adding How the site was built. So here's the five 'W's (and an 'H') of this site, and to add something that a newspaper or television couldn't do, maybe just a little bit of information about you.

What?

AhISee.com is a web site presenting various sorts of information and resources for different groups of people. To see what's available, look at the pull-down menu. Alternatively, and especially if you don't have JavaScript enabled, use the alternate navigation or the site map to get an overview of what's here.

Where?

This website was originally written and compiled in Europe - specifically the island of Menorca, which is in the group of islands called the Balearics, which are part of Spain; they're in the Mediterranean Sea. Would you like to see a map to show where Europe   and the Balearics   are? If you understand Spanish or Catalan, you may like to look at the Menorca website. AhISee.com is hosted by Dollarhost in Canada. Do you want to see another map?  

When?

The site was first put up in October 2000. The material here was originally written anytime from about 1985 onwards, right up to... well, today! Any of the older material has been revised before posting. The site will get updated every time there's something new finished.

Why?

The site has several purposes.

• In part it's intended to help other people in areas where maybe I can offer some aid, useful advice, shortcuts. Why such altruism? In part I'm paying back for some of the help I've received from others on the Internet, and my contribution towards all that genuinely free and public domain software that many individuals and organizations have seen fit to provide to me and many others over the years.

• In part, it reflects my various interests - things I enjoy talking about, doing, understanding.

• In part it's to help people shortcut some of the bull**** that is liberally spread around most technical areas; someone usually profits from making the simple obscure. I hope to benefit from doing the opposite.

• In part, it's a showcase for some of my work - I work as a writer, sometimes, amongst other tasks.

• In part it's ego - as a colleague of mine pointed out, most domain names are sold to individuals because of ego! Such sites are called 'vanity sites' and I'm certainly as vain as anyone else :)

Who?

At the moment, this site is put together by one person, James Roberts. If you really want to know more, then check out my Bio. There'll be some guest articles when I figure out how to successfully threaten various individuals enough to get them to get writing!

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And you...

The Internet, unlike traditional media -- newspapers and other print media, radio, television -- is not a one-way street. Not only do you get to receive information from the internet, but more often than you may think, you provide it.

We have no intention of poking around inside your computer, but you may be surprised just how much the server computer (that's got these web pages stored on it) can get to find out about your computer, in any normal web transaction. To find out more, follow this link   (don't worry, it's safe!)

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How it was built

The site was built with a selection of tools, many of these being free (GPL) or free-of-cost software. At the moment we're principally using (in alphabetic order):

• AceHTML Pro: a comprehensive non-WYSIWYG HTML editor with syntax checker and HTML references
• Apache Win 32: the web server of choice, in a Windows version, which is essential for testing everything
• Arachnophilia: excellent completely customisable free-of-cost non-WYSIWYG HTML editor
• Bobby: free accessibility (and other coding aspects) validator
• CSE HTML Validator Lite: a free code checker that finds some errors that others don't
• HTMLPP: free HTML preprocessor (written in PERL) that we've used to convert pages from CP/M and other ASCII text to HTML with indices
• HTML Tidy: from Dave Raggett of the W3C, fixes up our sometimes-horrible HTML code
• Microsoft Front Page: good for playing with page layouts. Not so good at coding them concisely! We hand-code the pages.
• Note Tab Light: free editor with nice GREP facility
• PPWizard: the free HTML pre-processor of choice. Woof! Here, REXX! Builds this site in 37 seconds... after 9 weeks of programming, mind you!
• Search and Replace 98: basic free non-GREP fast and effective ASCII search and replace tool

...as well as Paint Shop Pro, Textbridge, MS Image Composer, U-Lead Photo-Impact, Word, Excel, Windows 2000, Windows NT4, Windows 98, Linux RedHat 6.1 and the rest! Thanks to all the authors of this mostly-excellent software. Nothing in this world is, of course, perfect...

If you want details, the site is set up as a set of templates using PPWizard. These build all the repeating elements of the site, while allowing for flexibility and reducing the number of errors. This gives much the same sort of result as using SSI, but without the server overhead and dependency.

Input sources include text files from CP/M, DOS, Windows, Atari and scanned material. This is marked up and built into basic HTML pages with tables of contents by HTMLPP in "guru" mode. For more details on the site-building tools we use, click on the buttons below or go to the Links page. For details on techniques, look for articles in the Internet introductions section.