Production Notes

MIJ-NSR is produced using the e-Journal production tools of Openly Informatics, Inc.

Server

The MIJ-NSR server is an Apple Power Macintosh G3/233 computerconfigured with 128MB of RAM and a 4GB hard drive,. The server is running WebSTAR 3.0.2 under MacOS 8.6.

Complete backups are done weekly using Dantz Retrospect. Periodic backups onto CD-ROM are archived at the MRS Headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Netpresenz is used to provide FTP service.

Database

Filemaker Pro 4.0 is used as the database engine for MIJ-NSR. Internet access to the databases is provided by custom Applescript CGI programs

Scripts

Administration and web production of MIJ-NSR is almost completely automated using Applescript. An important component of the Applescripts are the OSAX components used to speed up and simplify scripts. The OSAXen used for MIJ-NSR include:

ACME Script Widgets
Late Night Software Scripting Additions
Jon's Commands (by Jon Pugh)
Users and Groups Suite (by Quinn ÒThe Eskimo!Ó )
Hacking Suite (by Lawrence DÕOliveiro, University of Waikato.)

Script Debugger is our script editor of choice, and non-scriptable apps are controlled using Prefab Player.

File Conversion

RTF manuscripts are converted into HIJ, an SGML-like intermediate format, and then processed into HTML for the web using custom scripts. The first stage of conversion uses RTFtoHTML with custom settings and configuration. Certain text manipulations use BBEdit.

TeX manuscripts are converted to HIJ using custom scripts. LaTeX Math is rendered by OzTeX.

Image Conversion and Processing

Images extracted from RTF files are converted to GIF or JPEG files using Clip2GIF (on a Mac) or PaintShopPro (running on a Windows 95 PC).

Postscript files are converted to PDF using Adobe Acrobat Distiller, then rendered by Adobe Acrobat Exchange and trimmed and converted to GIF by Graphic Converter.

Additional image processing for all the image files is done using Graphic Converter, driven by Prefab Player.

Miscellaneous

Log Analysis is done using Analog. Eudora Pro is used to format, process, filter, send, and file incoming and outgoing mail.

For more information about automated e-journal production, please contact Openly's development team..