Introduction to Audiovisual Archives

Chapter 10

The Technical Development of the “Web Portal” Publishing Model ¹

10.1. The notion of “publishing module”

In Chapter 7, we presented the interfaces for accessing audiovisual resources which have been analyzed and indexed beforehand with the ASW Description Workshop. In this chapter, we will introduce the components and computerized tools that helped us to create these interfaces.

In order to determine these different components and tools, we shall see how we can characterize what a publishing module is. Before starting, we shall clarify a semantic point. Throughout this chapter, we will use the following generic terminology: “server” and “client”.

By the term “server” we mean the hardware and/or applications responsible for the remote processing and distribution of the pages of our portal. Note that our server applications are Semiosphere and Semioscape (see Chapters 8 and 9).

By the term “client” we mean the hardware and/or applications responsible for receiving the information sent by the server. In our case, the client hardware will be the user’s computer and the application will be the Web browser (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, etc.).

We can define a component or publishing module as being the set of functions enabling us to manage a specific aspect of publishing, from access to the data to their display. One part of the module acts on the server, and another acts on the client. A module may call upon other modules. The functions for accessing ...