Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!netsys!lamc!wet!epsilon
From: epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT Database Prowess
Message-ID: <477@wet.UUCP>
Date: 23 Aug 89 10:16:17 GMT
References: <19350@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU> <2211@hub.UUCP> <1445@opus.cs.mcgill.ca>
Reply-To: epsilon@wet.UUCP (Eric P. Scott)
Organization: Wetware Diversions, San Francisco
Lines: 21
Keywords:

In article <1445@opus.cs.mcgill.ca> bajan@opus.UUCP (Alan Emtage) writes:
>Couldn't we benefit from the techniques used by the Webster application?
>I sent a message to NeXT asking for any documentation on the internal
>structure of the Webster database and got a (very nice) reply saying in 
>effect that this was "private" to Webster. My reaction was one of mild
>amusement since, as far as I'm concerned it's naive to think that this
>information won't soon be available (if it isn't already).

The "Webster database" is an image of the typesetter tape.  No
one's pulling a fast one here--NeXT's indexing is flexible enough
to work on a variety of file formats in addition to straight ASCII.
NeXT gave you an honest answer; you just asked the wrong question.

>As a side project, I was thinking of doing something similar to Webster,
>but using the KJV of the Bible as the text, as an academic exercise.

When NeXT did their first major demonstrations on our campus,
they had (some version of) the Bible online, fully indexed and
searchable in the Digital Librarian.  No pictures, though.

					-=EPS=-