Building a journal using the ZENPRESS JournalMaster
Let's run through how the ZENPRESS JournalMaster works and builds a publication.
We start with a folder (we call it an "issue folder") containing article text files and figure .GIF files (image files) for a given issue, as well as a file containing author biographies, a file containing masthead information, and a folder containing text files and graphics for our advertisements.
The ZENPRESS JournalMaster import phase
There are two phases ZENPRESS goes through to generate an issue. There's an import phase and a render phase.
In the import phase, the issue folder is imported into ZENPRESS. Here's what happens while the folder is being imported:
- Dangerous characters, non-printable character sequences, and characters that aren't appropriate are filtered out.
- Special HTML codes are substituted for specialty characters.
- Smart quotes and other word processing typographic marks are filtered out.
- When articles are imported, our various versions are created (including a paginated version, an EasyPrint version, the mobile handheld version, and the various channels that are used in My.Netscape.com and a variety of other sites.
- Articles are automatically paginated into screen-size readable and bookmarkable chunks.
- Next, previous, and continued segments are automatically coded, so readers can jump from page to page.
- Control breaks are interpreted, forcing page keeps and page breaks. While the concept of control breaks has been around since the dawn of time. I have not seen them anywhere in any Web-related activities. One of the unique features that we bring to this is the ability to do pagination and control break functionality on the Internet in a network environment.
- When articles are imported, each article is scanned for .FEATURE, .DEPT, .SPOTLIGHT, .SUMMARY and .SPONSOR commands embedded in each article.
- The issue Table of Contents is automatically generated from those commands.
- Each article is scanned for .AUTHOR and .BIO commands.
- Author bios are automatically retrieved from the Author bio database. Different, timely, author bios can be used, overriding the author bio database entries.
- The publication's Home Page is updated with a spotlight article, the article titles and the current news headlines.
- The masthead is created and formatted appropriately for each contributor listed. ZENPRESS creates a masthead for each issue and, as we do new issues, the old mastheads are still available to be viewed along with the older issues.
- The Back Issues page is updated with article title listings for each issue. All issues are preserved and back issues are accessible through the back issues page. Each Table of Contents and masthead along with ads is applied to the appropriate issue. In effect, the entire publication is available online as a back issue.
- Ads are imported into a ZENPRESS advertisement database and persistent ads retained.
- Ads are checked to confirm that each page with space for an ad in a given publication has been assigned an ad.
- The destination Web sites for ad URLs are verified.
- Finally, graphics are moved into their appropriate directories on the server.
In effect, the import phase builds a series of specialized databases and performs substantial data pre-processing and normalizing.
The ZENPRESS JournalMaster render phase
Once the import phase is complete, it's time to render the journal (in other words, generate the HTML that makes up the actual publication).
Here's what happens when we render a new issue (this happens monthly):
- FTP connections with server volumes are established.
- Issues are generated into HTML pages.
- Figure links are automatically created.
- Large figures generate a small thumbnail graphic and link to a larger picture.
- All the EML dot commands, the Smart Style Objects, are automatically interpreted by ZENPRESS and the appropriate HTML generated.
- Special servlets generate server-specific HTML like that needed for click-log tracking.
- All of the individual pages are moved onto the server. They can also be generated locally and tested locally before they're uploaded to a live server.
ZENPRESS hourly rendering tasks (and the ZENPRESS NewsMaster)
ZENPRESS also has hourly rendering tasks. These elements of the render phase update the publication's Home Page and News Page each day, as well as the Back Issue Article of the Day. These features are integrated into the ZENPRESS NewsMaster publication mold, which is tightly integrated with the ZENPRESS JournalMaster mold.
Back issue management is really the purview of the ZENPRESS JournalMaster. But since the Back Issue Article of the Day needs to be updated daily, it's controlled in the ZENPRESS NewsMaster. Each day, all back issue articles are scanned and a back issue article of the day is randomly chosen. Its title will be displayed prominently on the Home Page.
The Home Pages and News Pages are updated and automatically rendered directly to the server. Likewise, all of the alternate style pages, the handheld mobile versions, the special channels for My.Netscape.com, and the XML headline files are also dynamically created, generated and rendered to the server.
In other words, the ZENPRESS JournalMaster does quite a lot. We can generate more than 50,000 lines of HTML code in less than a minute.
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