About this site
This page contains notes on how my website was designed and is managed, as well as information on copyright, standards and the site's design philosophy
Contents
Technical information
I try to be as open as possible on how my website works, since I have no reason to keep this secret. If you are interested, have a look at the HTTP documentation. If you want to know more on what runs on svasey.org, see the svasey.org documentation
Web standards
I try to follow web standards as well as I can. All my pages should be valid XHTML 1.0 transitionnal, meaning that any standard-abiding browser should be able to display them more or less the same way, without serious graphical bugs.
If you think some of my pages are broken with your browser, or if you have a suggestion on standards or accessibility, please contact me
Design Philosophy
Content types
Most pages are available in HTML, printable HTML, plain text, or PDF.
Printable HTML
The printable HTML version is the same as the HTML one, but without fancy footers and headers, and optimized for printing.
Plain text
The plain text version was used to generate the HTML one. It can be useful if you want to see the source or if your browser cannot render the page correctly.
The PDF version is useful if you want to print and read the webpage's content offline. It is generated using LateX
Languages
Most if not all of my pages should be available in English. Some are also translated in French, but might link to English pages when no translation is available.
Keep in mind that the English pages are considered the "original version", and you should really refer to them unless your English is too bad.
Look and feel
The site's design is intentionally minimalistic. Except for the header and footer, black text on a white background without any fancy design elements is the rule.
I consider my webpage as a mean to convey information, not entertainement. It seems to me text is one of the best way to transfer information, whereas images and other multimedia content should be used sparsely and only to illustrate the concepts.
The minimalistic design has another advantage: it makes the pages weight very little and hence load very fast !
Advertisement
There are no ads anywhere on my pages. I simply do not see the need for them, and I think even seemingly relevant text ads can disturb a human visitor (at least they disturb me when I see them).
Philosophically, I think information should be free, and my definition of free includes the "free of marketer propaganda" aspect.
Copyright
Public domain
I do not think there is any points to copyright laws. Information can so easily be copied there is no way to prevent that. What's more I do not think it is ethical to restrict such a basic right as copying. Of course, those laws seem to give some privilleges to authors, which is why they are still heavily used. Lots of essays have been written on the subject; good ones are Anarchism Triumphant and Abandoning Copyright, A Blessing for Artists, Art, and Society.
For those reasons, I hereby release all the content of my site in the public domain.
This means that you can copy, change and publish for commercial purpose or not any content on svasey.org.
I still try to respect copyright when I can: some content published on my site is copyrighted by somebody else than me. In that case this will be clearly noted and you should honor that copyright.
Citation and Attribution
When I take some material from other site, I always try to cite the original source and make it clear that the content is not from me.
Similarly, I would like you to do the same for my content: if you want to copy and publish it elsewhere, I ask you to please put a link to the original page and mention my name.
Of course, since my work is in the public domain, you are not forced by law (on the Internet, it doesn't mean anything anyway) to do so. Still, I would appreciate it if you do. That would be a way to say thanks !
