Electronic Conference on Trends in Organic Chemistry: ECTOC-1/CD

June 12-July 7, 1995

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ECTOC-1 ECTOC-1

Check List for Viewing ECTOC-1/CD

[Late-breaking notes] [Contents][Computer Requirements] [How to View|Mac|Windows] [Chemical Documents][How to Browse] [Rotatable Molecules][Editors] [ECHET96][Acknowledgements]

  1. What is on the CD-ROM: A collection of documents and files comprising six keynote articles, 73 contributed articles and posters and the e-mail discussions, which together constitute the permanent record of the ECTOC conference held during June 12-July 7, 1995. This material was originally mounted at the following World Wide Web location; http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/ectoc/.

    The articles in this collection comprise two principle types of file; "HTML" (Hypertext-markup-language) documents which normally end in the suffix .html or .htm, and graphical images which end in the suffix .gif (and more rarely .jpg). HTML documents are text files, and can in principle be viewed using any text editor or word processor. However, they also contain "markup" instructions, which when passed to a special program called a World-Wide Web client, result in a more sensible viewed appearance. You are therefore strongly advised to use such a client program to view all these documents.

    A Note on Filenames: The Macintosh and Windows-95 Versions of this CD-ROM contain the original document names, as also found on the on-line version. These names have been shortened to the 8.3 format required for the Windows 3.1 version, and hence may bear little resemblance to the original names.


  2. Computer Requirements: Either (a) a Macintosh with CD-ROM drive, running MacOS 7.1 or greater and fitted with 8 Mbyte of memory or (b) a Multimedia PC running Windows 3.1 or Windows-95 and fitted with 8 Mbyte of memory. It is not essential to have an active Internet connection to view the articles and posters. However, many of the documents do have hyperlinks to supplemental sources of information which will need such a connection.
  3. How to View the Material: The recommended viewer is Netscape, currently (January 1996) available as version 2.0, although Version 1.1 can also be used. Netscape can also automatically display all the graphical images on this CD-ROM. Because of the cost of licensing a stand-alone version of Netscape, which would add signficantly to the cost of producing the conference in this form, this World-Wide Web client is not included on the CD-ROM.

    Macintosh users: Perform the requested action on "Double click to start". This is pre-configured to start Netscape if it is present on your disk. If you are using another client, then "drag-and-drop" index.htm onto the icon of your chosen client. If such a client is unavailable or if your computer has insufficient memory to run it, a product called HTML Viewer (from Sassafras Software, P.O. Box 150 Hanover, NH 03755-0150 USA) is included which can be used for viewing local files only. To use this;

    1. "Drag" the index.htm file visible on the left of open window folder "onto" the icon labelled Viewer seen on the right.
    2. Navigate by clicking on the (normally red) hyperlinks.
    3. Hyperlinks which point to locations other than the CD-ROM will not be activatable (this also applies to "imagemaps"; see below). You need a full WWW client such as Netscape for this.

    Warning: The folder entitled "keywords" contains a large number of small files, and "double clicking" on this folder may "freeze" your computer for several minutes.

    Windows 3.1 users: You should acquire Netscape, Internet Explorer or similar program. To ensure that all HTML documents automatically open into Netscape, proceed as follows.

    1. Highlight INDEX.HTM or $START.HTM in the WIN31 directory of the CD-ROM (e.g. drive D:\) from within File Manager.
    2. From the File menu, select Associate
    3. Select e.g. Netscape from the dialog list and close File Manager.
    4. Double click INDEX.HTM or $START.HTM to start your browsing.
    5. Navigate by clicking on the hyperlinks.

    Windows 95 users: You should acquire Netscape, Internet Explorer or similar program. If you have a Web Client installed on your hard disk, all documents with the suffix .HTM or .HTML should automatically open into the browser. To start,

    1. Find index.htm or $Double_click_to_start.htm in the WIN95 directory of the CD-ROM (e.g. drive D:\) and perform the requested action.

    If you are unable to acquire a copy of either Netscape or any other good Client program (such as Mosaic, MacWeb/WinWeb, etc etc) from any other source, please contact Henry Rzepa at the following address for further advice;

    Dr H. S. Rzepa
    Department of Chemistry
    Imperial College,
    London, SW7 2AY.
    Tel +44 171 594 5774. Fax +44 171 594 5804.

  4. Chemical Documents: There are also a smaller number of more chemically oriented files on this archive, including ones with suffixes such as "pdb", "tgf", and "wrl", which need special programs to view them. Programs which can perform such functions are included in a special progs directory. These have to be unpacked with special programs, also included on the archive.

    Macintosh computers:

    1. Double click on StuffIt_Expander_3.5.2_Install. Stuffit-Expander will be installed on your Hard Drive
    2. Thereafter, if you use e.g. Netscape to acquire programs, these will be passed automatically to the expander for further processing.
    Windows Computers:
    The archives found in the Progs directory are "self-extracting" .EXE files which you simply have to run to extract. Some of these programs are what is known as "shareware". If you intend using them other than for evaluation purposes, please follow any instructions contained in the program archives.

    As far as we are aware, the programs included on this CD-ROM are virus-free. However, you are strongly advised to check all programs that you might install on any local disk system for viruses.


  5. How to Browse This Collection: If you view any document with a World-Wide Web client such as Netscape, words will been seen as either underlined and in a different colour to the rest of the text, or if they are images to have a coloured border. This is an indication that a hyperlink exists to either a different region of the same document, or to a different document on this archive, or even to a document on a server on the Internet. To help you navigate around using these hyperlinks, some hints are set out below.
    Home page We have tried to make one small "icon" common to most of the documents in this collection. It appears as a tiny image of the conference logo and clicking on it should always return you to the main page.
    keyword search
    Another icon which looks like a question mark relates to keyword searching of the CD-ROM. After first identifying the first letter of any keyword you wish to search for, you should go to the appropriate index file and use the FIND feature in the netscape (or other) client program toolbar.
    keyword search
    If you wish to use the original on-line key-word feature, click here. For this to work, you will have to have "Internet connectivity" on your computer.
    A number of documents contain hyperlinks to various Internet resources, which will similarly require "Internet connectivity". Most of these documents are beyond our control, and you might find that after a certain passage of time, the hyperlink might no longer activate. If the new location of the document is known to us, we will try to update it via the on-line version of ECTOC.

    ImageMaps: Papers 01, 02, 41 and 71 contain "clickable maps". These are "resolved" locally by a Web client supporting "client-side" resolution such as Netscape 2.0, otherwise by a program running on the ECTOC site if Internet connectivity is available. If neither of these options is active, then alternative hyperlinks to the clickable maps are also provided within these papers.


  6. Rotatable Molecules: Quite a number of "3D" coordinates are included as part of the conference. There is one for example associated with the logo at the top of the main conference page. Try clicking on this to see what happens. If you only get a screen full of numbers, check the following;
    1. You have RasMol or other molecule viewer installed on your computer.
    2. Your Browser (i.e. Netscape) has the correct MIME type set.
    For ECHET96, we expect that it will be possible to rotate molecules directly within the document window itself using a Java applet.
  7. The People Involved in the Production of the Conference and the CD-ROM:
    Dr Henry S Rzepa (Editor in Chief)
    Department of Chemistry,
    Imperial College,
    London, SW7 2AY
    
    Dr Jonathan M. Goodman,
    Department of Chemistry,
    University of Cambridge,
    Lensfield Road,
    Cambridge.
    
    Christopher Leach
    Department of Chemistry,
    Imperial College,
    London, SW7 2AY

  8. The Next Conference in the ECTOC Series: The next conference in this series will be known as ECHET96, and will focus on trends in Heterocyclic chemistry. Preliminary information on the conference is available here. For up to date information, you must consult the on-line version.
  9. Acknowledgements: The editors wish to extend particular thanks to our colleagues who supported us in this endeavour and who undertook much of the burden of initial refereeing. Most of all, we want to thank the chemical community who participated in the original conference, and who helped to make this project a success.
  10. Back to index

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© ECTOC-1. January 1996.