Dennis Groves writes...

> This is copyrighted material we can not use it. That said, I feel
> it is an important part of the education process to define terms for
> those who do not yet speak the language - the language in this case is
> security.

I agree that this is important, esp for newbies. The only alternative
is to explain the term in the context where it is being used which could
lead to inconsistent definitions.

> What I had in mind was this, that anytime a "security word" appears in
> documents that we produce as a part of this project that a
> person can click on that "security word" and the definition will pop
> up in a little window much the way that the bio's do now.
>
> Any thoughts from the group?

I have two thoughts on this. One option is that we do our own glossary.
I think that's the best long term approach, but not the best short term
one--simply because of the time that it takes.

The other option is that we (with permission, of course) just link to
terms in someone else's online glossary. I find all of the following
useful to varying degrees:

        NSA Glossary
                http://www.sans.org/newlook/resources/glossary.htm
        The Internet Society's Internet Security Glossary
                http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2828.txt (unfortunately not
                        searchable as-is, but the copyright is pretty
liberal)
        Lynn Wheeler's Taxonomy and Glossary
                http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/secure.htm
        SetSolutions Security Glossary of Terms
                http://www.setsolutions.com/security.htm
        Mitre's Security Glossary
        
http://www.mitre.org/resources/centers/infosec/publications/sec-glossary/sg.
html
        Government of Newfoundland and Labrador's (?)
                "Complete Security Glossary"
http://www.edu.gov.nf.ca/curriculum/teched/resources/glossarysecurity.html
                        (also not really searchable, as-is, unless you count
                        using Ctrl-F from your browser window ;-)

If we use the first option (constructing own glossary rather than
linking to others--and not necessarilly the same one for every term),
then I think the link should be to the exact term with a larger
glossary page. This larger glossary page should have navigation links
and a search for terms. This has the advantage that subsequent checks
ought to find the page in the browser cache. The alternative would be
to dynamically generate a small pop-up window with just that single term.
Either way, there should be links between terms.

Also, to distinguish glossary terms from other links, I'd suggest putting
them in italics or some different color than the rest of the text so that
it is evident that these a glossary terms.

Perhaps if we define a glossary, we should use XML (anyone know of a
standard
DTS or schema for a glossary / dictionary?). That would give a lot of
flexibility, including formating different ways with XSLTs.

-kevin

---
Kevin W. Wall		Qwest Communications International, Inc.
Kevin.Wallqwest.com	Phone: 614.932.5542
"We want to ship a _lean_ operating system." --Tom Pilla, Microsoft
spokesman citing the one reason that the company dropped the Java
Virtual Machine from the upcoming Windows XP (as quoted in
eweek, July 23, 2001).

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