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The World Wide Web (WWW)
is a network archiving system which is primarily
used for retrieving text information. Some
servers allow you to search for keywords in a database and
retrieve database entries from a
menu presented afterwards. The keywords
should be of high significance
(e.g., an accession number).
SECURITY ADVICE:
Databases accessed by GOPHER will nor run under the control of the
local administration. Be aware that the result might not match the
quality constraints applies
usually. i
This is true in particular for non-academic sites.
Amongst others, the following 'gopher' servers are available:
% lynx
After you have started 'lynx', you should see a screen full of text.
Use the cursor keys
to select an option and hit <RETURN> to activate the field.
To do a database search, you first need to find the "page" which
offers the option to search
databases. Once there, select one of the databases
and you will be prompted to enter a keyword.
The hits will be presented
as menu options. Selecting either of these gets you the text on
the screen.
After having inspected a text file, you can either continue with
<RETURN>,
save it by pressing the <S> key. Save it now,
and then convert the format of the retrieved
sequence as described in section "Reformatting Sequences"
.
NOTE: The filename of the sequence saved will change during this
procedure.
If you have access to 'mosaic' at your site, you should use 'mosaic' instead of 'lynx'.
Make sure that you have configured your
DISPLAY correctly and type
% mosaic
The proceeding is analogous to 'lynx', but you use the
mouse to activate the desired field.
Other browsers than 'mosaic' are available from various
commercial enterprises. In academia,
the
Netscape
browser is, at the time of this writing, licensed without charge.
Other browsers are supplied as part of the workstation or communication
software.
SRSWWW: EMBL, SWISSPROT, other databases, many sites world-wide
NCBI: GENBANK, SWISSPROT, other databases
HOUSTON: various databases
You must be connected to the Internet to contact a remote server.
To connect to a
WWW server (also known as 'httpd' daemon), you need to have the so-called
WWW client program.
Famous WWW clients are available for
many platforms, including PCs and Macintoshes.
The 'mosaic'
client uses a graphical user interface and
can only be used on systems which are equipped for
this purpose,
such as X-Windows or personal computers
(Windows,
Mac). Text information can be browsed with the text-oriented 'lynx'
client.
Both client and server software is available from the CERN laboratory,
where WWW was developed. The 'mosaic' client
was developed at NCSA, but the software is mirrored
an many sites.
To start WWW on a terminal or terminal emulator, type
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