Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!yale.edu!ox.com!msen.com!emv From: emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) Subject: Re: copyright status and future development of comp.archives In-Reply-To: schoff@PSI.COM's message of 26 Jun 91 19:48:28 GMT Message-ID: Sender: usenet@ox.com (Usenet News Administrator) Organization: MSEN, Inc. Ann Arbor MI References: <56075900D99F401D02@vms.cis.pitt.edu> <9106261948.AA20843@psi.com> Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1991 18:57:59 GMT In article <9106261948.AA20843@psi.com> schoff@PSI.COM ("Martin Lee Schoffstall") writes: We have a tool which integrates X.500 and Anonmous FTP so that you can (today) explore the RFC hierarchy by author, title, etc, and then grab the document from various sites which hold the RFC's. The tool is called x5ftp and will be released no later then the end of the project (31dec91). And we're extending the model to deal with other things than RFC's.... Well, I'd have to say that dealing with RFC's is about as easy as they come, and you'd better have a damn fine project when you're done or I'll be quite disappointed. The texts are regular and structured, there's a lot of boilerplate text which could be extracted out and conclusions drawn from it, and there's a substantial amount of "superstructure" in that RFCs reference other documents and there's a strong sense of "this supersedes that, this modifies that, etc.". It's a consistent, high quality, verified data stream, you should be able to do a lot more with it than just browse author and title. There is no "RFC Hierarchy"; the collection of RFCs is a complex, tangled web of references, updates, improvements, discussions, and ephemera. Attempts to impose a strict hierarchical structure on it will fail to capture the richness of information in it. Does your tool provide any way to search through the various sections of the RFCs? For instance, modern RFCs all have a "security considerations" section; can you browse through those looking for RFCs which have extensive discussion? That would be valuable. Does your tool provide any kind of similarity metrics or groupings between the RFCs, so that (e.g.) RFC's 1064, 1176, and 1203 are presented together (IMAP), with RFC 1223 not too far away (POP3) ? A tool with proper browsing support would facilitate this kind of exchange. Several RFCs reference materials which are available for anonymous FTP from other sites; does your browser have direct support for (e.g.) the NOCTOOLS catalog? A good system would let you point and click and get the goods delivered back to your local machine. A proper browser or filtering agent would have the ability to store queries for later replay. If I find an RFC that I like, can I store the query that found so that the next time an RFC (or internet draft) is issued that's similar to it I will be notified? An RFC tool would be a useful thing, but I don't have high hopes for x5ftp, to the extent that X.500 is a gubbishy protocol for these kind of searches and that you're constrained to use that technology. ... we decided to issue the equivalent of a position paper which is titled "Towards Networked Information Retrieval"... Full citation below. A reasonably good paper, albeit wordy, illustrating the defects in both X.500 and Z39.50 for information retrieval; neither process seems adequate to handle the problem at hand, though you could argue that any work in this area is progress and should be supported. Notably missing from the paper is a mention of Brewster Kahle's WAIS project (see below), which is an implementation of Z39.50 that addresses some of the defects mentioned. Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. emv@msen.com "(6) The Plan shall identify how agencies and departments can collaborate to ... expand efforts to improve, document, and evaluate unclassified public-domain software developed by federally-funded researchers and other software, including federally-funded educational and training software; " "High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, S. 272" -- MSEN Archive Service file verification uu.psi.com -r--r--r-- 1 dsadmin staff 50666 Jun 25 18:27 /wp/nir.ms -r--r--r-- 1 dsadmin staff 56973 Jun 27 11:16 /wp/nir.txt -r--r--r-- 1 dsadmin guest 117611 Jun 25 18:27 /wp/ps/nir.ps found psi-networked-information-retrieval ok uu.psi.com:/wp/{nir*,ps/nir*} -- MSEN Archive Service file verification quake.think.com total 5561 drwxrwxrwx 2 14 1024 Jun 25 00:07 wais-discussion -rw-rw-rw- 1 1637 635857 Jun 21 21:50 WAIStation-Canned-Demo.sit.hqx -r--r--r-- 1 14 463981 Jun 13 20:44 wais-8-b1.tar.Z -rw-rw-r-- 1 1556 475161 May 21 18:43 wais-8-a12-3.tar.Z -rw-rw-rw- 1 1637 635225 May 16 03:01 WAIStation-0-62.sit.hqx -rw-rw-rw- 1 999 321268 May 13 20:48 wais-ir12.ZU -rw-rw-rw- 1 14 409388 Apr 5 00:44 wais-8-a11.tar.Z -rw-rw-rw- 1 1637 1094536 Mar 28 00:37 WAIStation-0-62-Sources.sit.hqx -rw-rw-rw- 1 14 1070714 Mar 23 01:24 WAIStation-0-61.sit.hqx -rw-rw-rw- 1 14 475815 Mar 23 01:19 wais-8-a10.tar.Z found wais ok quake.think.com:/pub/wais/