Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages

1. Review effectiveness of hyperlinking method in the light of PhD and Philosophy of Religion experience.
2. Check (in use) that the optional "don't print" feature for specific footnotes doesn't print other footnotes further down the chain.
3. Investigate Note_Links: needs versioning, and section of calling Note. Currently, the section called is incorrect.
4. Improve the various Categorisation / Sub-topic Hierarchies: possible solution is to create a multi-level Jump Table (+ maybe split pages) for Categorised Philosophy Papers, Identity Papers & Books – similar to Blackberry pages.

1. Add easily-visible "quality markers" to Notes.
2. Use generated Javascript to allow multi-level expandable / contractable lists in Notes and Paper Abstracts.
3. Add "Specific", "Contextual" & "General" Notes as an optional footer to all Notes. I think this is important – part of the difficulty in understanding some philosophers is knowing what their background assumptions are, as this influences what they take to be “obvious” or “a given”.
4. Create automatic key-word referencing (ie. to Notes in the Notes-Group "Personal Identity").
5. Provide easy links to works by the same author; Books, Papers; Joint authors.
6. Document⁴ Website Generator.
7. Improve flexibility of password-protected areas (ie. multiple areas, with different log-ons).
8. Allow the option to concatenate Notes in the Printed version (ie. linearly embed them essay-style), rather than treating the hyperlinks as footnotes – but still keep the hyperlink & cross-referencing in place. The difficulty here is the need for linking passages to make the text run smoothly.
9. Fix "American" date formats in Electronic Resources page + add scrolling titles.
10. Improve flexibility of reading lists attached to printable version of Notes (different sort orders, priority items only, etc).
11. Create "Books by Subject" and "Books by Title" lists.
12. Add collection of "non-identity" weblinks.
13. Create lists of "Identity" papers / books “to obtain / borrow”. Currently my lists are only of those I can immediately lay my hands on.

1. Add page hit-counters (though this is only a vanity item, and may be depressing).
2. Improve the “straight through processing”. Currently there is the need to manually copy from MS Access to MS Word and back to edit Notes or abstracts of Books / Papers. Also, there’s no automatic pick-list of references within Word (the references to Notes, Books or Papers have to be looked up within Access and manually typed in). This will be much more difficult to achieve than the other things I’ve done.
3. Introduce Style Sheets (though the use of templates makes this less critical). One day I hope to make the site more “professional-looking”.
4. Create a search facility. Currently this facility exists only within the MS Access database. The fact that it does so means that the absence of a web-based search facility is no great hardship for me (though others may be inconvenienced). It seems that a search facility can more than double the size of a website. My site is already 150 Mb encompassing 25,500 pages.
5. Investigate alternative technologies. It may seem eccentric to redevelop a whole host of web products that are commercially available, but this approach provides a lot of flexibility. However, I ought to check up on what’s already out there. In particular, investigate:-
   • Wikis (WikiWikiWeb) – I have a private license for Confluence (Link (Defunct)). I did have the system installed and running under Apache Tomcat, but the workstation it was running on has demised. Where a Wiki is most useful is if collaborative work is required. Currently, maintaining both sides of the Blog discussions is somewhat tedious.
   • CMSs (Content Management Systems): eg. Plone (Plone). These seem remarkably similar to Wikis. See Robert Frazier’s (Link (Defunct)) site for an example.
   • Windows Help Files: the software to create these is commercially available and is routinely used by technical authors. However, Windows Vista seems to have abandoned them.
6. Run my own local web-server. This should only be necessary if I choose to run a CMS or Wiki, unless I could have these commercially hosted (probably expensive). Using a home server for this purpose would create issues of performance, availability and robustness.
7. Increase use of Frames. This is a mixed blessing.

Live Version of this Archived Note

Table of 12 Earlier Versions of this Note (of 23)

Table of 12 Later Versions of this Note (of 75)

1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026