Cross-Publishing HTML
CD-ROMs Aren't Web Sites
By Tim Kientzle
If you've already polished your production process for an HTML-based Web site, then it makes perfect sense to consider HTML-based CD-ROMs as a way to broaden your market. The same features that make HTML well-suited to Web publishingıportability and wide availability of Web browsersıalso make HTML appropriate for CD-ROM publishing.
However, CD-ROMs aren1t Web sites. In this article, I'll discuss how HTML production for CD-ROMs differs from production for Web sites, and point out some of the more difficult issues in producing HTML-based CD-ROMs. In particular, I'll give a brief technical overview of a Java applet search engine that I developed for this purpose.
Background
Here at Dr. Dobb's Journal, CD-ROM is just one part of our publishing strategy. We produce new material first in print form, then convert it into HTML for our Web site, electronic sales, and CD-ROMs. Because of the varying lead times for print and electronic publishing, all of these formats become available at about the same time. And since we produce several HTML-based products, it's important that we be able to use the same HTML files for multiple purposes.
In 1993, our first archive CD-ROM provided five years of back issues through a proprietary hypertext system. We've updated it every year since. This past fall, we finished converting the entire disc to HTML: over 2500 articles comprising 200MB of HTML text and GIF images. We worked with an outside vendor to do the initial conversion, then manually combed through the entire collection, fixing errors that crept in.
