Subject: Electronic publishing on the World Wide Web

From: [email-masked] (Toni Kazic)
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 94 11:32:47 CST

Dear Netters,

Recently someone asked if a form for electronic submission of ACS abstracts
existed.  The question came up during the recent discussion of the potential
of electronic publishing, and the uses to which the World Wide Web might be
put.  It seemed to me a natural opportunity to use the former to illustrate
the latter.

Kevin Cross of the ACS was kind enough to send me a copy of the official
submission form.  Hugh Chou and I have built a Mosaic window which collects
the information on the form, including the text and figures for the abstract,
and assembles the abstract automatically.  THIS DOESN'T SUBMIT THE ABSTRACT TO
THE ACS; it's merely to demonstrate the possibilities.  The result can be
viewed by clicking the appropriate highlighted text anchors.  The information
is collected and processed via a Perl script; a LaTeX file is generated; and
the PostScript output is displayed via whatever viewer your Mosaic client
uses.  We did not attempt to actually collect the data in the boxes, apart
>from that immediately relevant to the abstract, since we don't know what the
ACS does with it: but the possibilities for automated abstract tracking and
meeting management are obvious.

You can access the window from

	http://ibc.wustl.edu/acs/acs_form2.html

The LaTeX style file (acs_abstract.sty) and a sample LaTeX abstract (acs.tex)
are available for "home use".  The Perl scripts which form the back end
(page1.perl, page2.perl, and get_url.perl) are also there.  The HTML code for
the form proper can be pulled directly from the Mosaic window by hitting the
"View Source" button under "File" at the top menu bar.  Everything is free to
the public, of course.  Those who followed the recent discussion on
programming languages and paradigms may find our multilingual approach
interesting.

Please try this out and let us know what you think.

Toni Kazic

Institute for Biomedical Computing
Box 8036
Washington University School of Medicine
700 South Euclid Ave.
St. Louis MO  63110

314-362-3121
314-362-0234  (fax)

[email-masked]