About...
©1999-2002
Osmar R. Zaïane
(zaiane@cs.ualberta.ca)
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can a user not registered in this course access protected pages?
A: The answer is yes for most protected pages. All students registered
in the course and those sitting in have a user ID and a password to
access these protected pages. A visitor can also access with user ID
"guest" and password "guest". However, some information and
applications are not available to user "guest". For instance, a guest
can not see the students names or access their workspaces. The only
enveiled student identity is the user ID. In addition a guest can not
access the digital printable form of the textbook. A guest can
participate in the discussions in the chat rooms.
Q: How do I print the on-line papers?
A: The papers for reading that are posted on our web site are actually
hyperlinks to documents published on other sites, usually the authors'
sites. These documents can either be in postscript format or in pdf
(portable document format), and they can either be compressed with zip
or gzip, or uncompressed. If the documents are compressed, you have to
decompress them with pkzip or winzip on Windows based machines or gzip
(GNUzip) on unix based machines. Once decompressed, pdf files can be
viewed with Adobe Acroread, and postscript files can be viewed with
Ghostview. Both of these viewers are available free from the Internet.
From pdf or postscript viewers, you can print the
documents. Postscript files can be sent directly to postscript printers.
Q: How do I know if a file is in postscript or pdf?
A: Postscript files usualy have the suffix ".ps" while pdf files have
the suffix ".pdf". On this site we have icons to help identify file
types: 
for postscript and 
for pdf. When a
file is compressed, this icon 
is
used. Check the About page for the legend of other icons used in this site.
Q: How do I change my password?
A: You can change your password at anytime. To do so, click on "change
password" on the course main page. The same password and user ID are
used to access all protected pages in this course web site.
Q: Can I print the course slides?
A: Yes. The slides are provided in many formats. The HTML format is
for viewing only. It is not practical to print slide by slide unless
you want to spend the time to do so. A postscript file and a pdf file
are provided as a pritable version of the slides. Slides are grouped by
chapter. In other words, you can print slides one chapter at a
time. Slides are printed 6 slides per page.
Q: What are the students resources?
A: Student Resources are Web resources submitted by
students and added automatically to a list of resources that all users
can consult. To submit a Web resource a student needs to provide a
title, a URL and optional comments. The resources are ordered
chronologically and the user IDs of the students who sent the
references are appended to the information.
[Grading] [Glossary] [U-Chat Tool] [Web Links] [Student Resources]
